In previous posts I've covered some of the chemicals that are added to food that should be avoided. Now lets looks at some of the foods.
The general rule of thumb is to minimize the "Four Whites": White Sugar, White Flour, White Rice and Salt.
For this post we are focusing on White Sugar.
Traditional White Sugar is highly refined sweetener with very little taste, no nutrition value and only provides sweetness. Unfortunately, in today's day and age it is a huge part of most diets.
So what's so bad about Sugar? Well, beside the blood sugar/mood swings and hyperactivity we all know about...
- Sugar is the food cancer eats. With friends we've known over the years that have battled cancer the first thing nutritionists tell them is to stop eating sugar, period. It just makes sense then that the rest of us should probably minimize our consumption.
- Sugar promotes inflammation. Finding ways to decrease excessive inflammation in the body seems to be the key to healthy living. This is why Chia seeds and other foods that decrease inflammation are getting so much press lately. A leading cardiologist recently went on record saying that cholesterol levels wouldn't matter if the veins were not so inflamed, its the inflammation that causes the problems.
- Sugar suppresses the immune system. Right after you eat sugar you temporarily tamp down your immune system. Your body views white sugar as a toxin and spends its defensive energy fighting it instead of germs. The effect can last for several hours. Therefore, each time you eat sweets during the day your decreasing the effectiveness of your immune system.
- Sugar speeds up the aging process. It does this by suppressing the release of human growth hormone. Which this article explains is why people get injections of to stay looking young. This is the article I used to outline my ideas for this post and it goes into a few other issues too.
Many Organic foods promote that they use "Organic Sugar", "Raw Sugar" or "Evaporated Cane Juice/Syrup". Though there are differences in how they come about the effect on the body is the same as traditional "Sugar". However, the differences in how their processed is worthy of note.
What the alternatives mentioned above gain you is an avoidance of additional hindrances, such as pesticides, herbicides, in the growing process and chemicals like sulfur dioxide (that's why sugar plants smell so bad), and calcium hydroxide in the manufacturing process. The simple fact that they process molasses out of sugar and then add it back to make brown sugar is a fact that has always blown my mind. The retention of some of the molasses is why Raw Sugar is not white and why it has more flavor than White Sugar.
Raw Sugar is processed through a pressing process enhanced by lime, then dried/evaporated into crystal form and then put into a centrifuge to separate the solids and the liquids. Sounds like a much nicer process, personally I'd rather avoid all those chemicals used to process white sugar from start to finish.
All that said it would be really difficult to avoid sugar all
together and there's no need to for most people. What you need to be
is aware of how much sugar your eating and try to find ways to minimize
it where you can. One way to do this when choosing between foods; choose the product that has sugar the furthest down the ingredient list. Another way is to decease the quantity or frequency in which you consume these products. This can be a life long tweaking process. I find the
more I eliminate sugar from my diet the less I can tolerate it, since
sugar is a toxin this makes perfect sense.
Note: Not all sugars are the same on the body, the sugars found naturally in fruits are different
than the white sugar we are talking about here. Molasses, Maple Syrup,
Honey, Stevia and Agave also react more positively with the body. What we
are talking about here is processed sugar from the cane plant.
