Sugars to Avoid and Sugars You Can Eat

If you want to eat healthier, lose weight, or prioritise your overall wellness, the most impactful method to achieve that is by reducing your sugar intake. Sugar has been identified by numerous health experts and doctors as the most common toxic ingredient that can cause significant health problems. Consumption of sugar can affect your mood, hormones, skin, and even lead to health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, obesity, cancer, dementia, stroke, depression, and even infertility.

Sugar is fine for you in small amounts, and the same rule applies to most things - everything in moderation. It’s not necessarily the sugar that you add to your food that’s the issue. It’s the sugar that’s added by the food industry. You’d be surprised just how many foods have a high sugar content. For example, foods such as bread, tomato and pasta sauces, baked beans, cereals and even low-fat yoghurt have a fair amount of sugar. So it’s easy for your daily sugar intake to creep up to a dangerous level.

One of the most important steps towards a healthier and happier year is reducing your sugar intake or eliminating it altogether. Just like quitting smoking, drinking, or other harmful habits, cutting back on sugar is a great way to improve your overall health. By giving up sugar, you will experience a rapid improvement in your health. It's important to note that there are many types of sugars, and some of them should be avoided completely.

what sugars to avoid and why

1) Agave Syrup

Agave comes from a plant, it’s all-natural or so you would think! But even though it sounds healthy, it’s pure fructose. Fructose is fine when you have it in fruit, but if you have pure fructose, it drives all these metabolic pathways that cause fatty liver, diabetes, inflammation, and high uric acid, which causes lots of dangerous downstream effects. It creates dangerous types of cholesterol and it’s produced with all sorts of toxic chemicals. It is also highly processed.

2) High Fructose Corn Syrup

High fructose corn syrup is particularly bad for several reasons. Table sugar is glucose and fructose bound with a bond and it’s 50/50 and it takes work to break apart the glucose and the fructose. Whereas high fructose corn syrup is free fructose and it’s anywhere from 55 to 75% fructose. Now, free fructose is not found in nature. It’s bound up in fruit, for example, on other foods. And it’s incredibly dangerous to the body in that form and causes tremendous amounts of fatty liver.

High fructose corn syrup is also is harder for the body to absorb as it takes energy to absorb fructose. Where glucose just goes in, the body uses ATP (Adenosine triphosphate) or energy to absorb fructose. This then causes a depletion of energy in the gut or ATP. And you need the energy to keep the tight junctions, the little Lego kind of connections that keep your intestinal cells together, you need those for your gut to not be leaky. When you have a leaky gut, it creates inflammation, obesity, cancer, heart disease, and autoimmunity. When you eat a lot of fructose, free fructose, it causes a leaky gut which compounds the problem. So it just should not be in your diet.

If you want to significantly improve your diet, avoid any food containing high fructose corn syrup. Always check the labels.

3) Artificial Sweeteners

Artificial sweeteners are a thousand times sweeter than regular sugar. The FDA has approved six sweeteners, five of which are artificial: saccharin, acesulfame, aspartame, neotame, and sucralose. The sixth sweetener, stevia, is natural and low-calorie so not artificial. It is a valid concern that individuals who consume artificial sweeteners may compensate for the lost calories by consuming other high-calorie foods, which can negate the potential weight loss or health benefits. This can happen because we tend to deceive ourselves by thinking "I'm drinking diet soda, so I can eat cake."

It is possible that some food products change the way we taste things. Non-nutritive sweeteners, which are more powerful than table sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, produce a sweet taste similar to sugar with fewer calories. Frequent use of these intense sweeteners can over-stimulate sugar receptors, leading to a reduced tolerance for complex flavours. As a result, people who use artificial sweeteners frequently may find less sweet foods, like fruit, less appealing and unsweet foods, like vegetables, unpalatable.

If you think artificial sweeteners are good, well, think again. They actually may be worse for your brain and metabolic health. Aspartame is a neurotoxin. Artificial sweeteners can cause you to avoid healthy, filling, and nutritious foods while consuming more artificially flavoured foods with lower nutritional value. Additionally, studies suggest that artificial sweeteners may prevent us from linking sweetness with calorie intake. This can lead to increased cravings for sweet foods, a preference for sweet foods over nutritious options, and weight gain.

If you find yourself asking “Can I have…?” when it comes to artificial sweeteners, it basically means that you’re an addict and you should listen to the voice in your head that’s trying to negotiate with you about which sweetener you can have.

4) Sugar Alcohols

Similar to artificial sweeteners, sugar alcohols are created synthetically (typically from sugars themselves) and are used in many processed foods. Sugar alcohols are a type of sweetener derived from plants, fruits, and vegetables. They are commonly found in a variety of products, such as sweets, bubble gum, cough drops, chewable vitamins, sodas, energy drinks and smoothies. Despite being present in many "health foods", they are not as sweet as traditional artificial sweeteners. Because they don’t make you full, they are prone to have a host of negative effects on your body. Sugar alcohols can be linked to weight gain, high blood sugar, and heart disease risk. Although they do contain calories, our bodies are unable to absorb them due to their large size. Look for words with -ol on them, mannitol, maltitol, sorbitol, xylitol, erythritol - these are sweeteners you don’t really want to consume. If you do, they can often cause gut issues including bloating, distention and diarrhoea. However, Xylitol may be tolerated by some people in small amounts and is often found in natural toothpastes as it is protective for teeth but it is poisonous to dogs.

There are many names for sugar

We have so many ways of saying sugar and often we miss it on the label because it’s sort of hidden. Food companies will put four or five different kinds of sugar in a product because they’re forced to list the ingredients in order of the amount on the label. So if they’ve put five kinds of sugar, they can list a healthier ingredient first, like flour for example and not put sugar as the main ingredient. So it’s sneaky what they do.

There are a million names for sugar. Syrup, bright maple syrup, sorghum syrup, corn syrup, pancake syrup, molasses. Anything with the word sugar in it, date sugar, coconut sugar, brown sugar, beet sugar, confectioner’s sugar, it’s all sugar and in the end, it’s all bad!

sugar is more ADDICTIVE than cocaine

Sugar is not only harmful in the sense of the volumes of sugar we eat and the consequences, but it’s also highly addictive. In fact sugar may be more addictive than cocaine. Studies conducted on rats have found that sugar is more addictive than opioid drugs, such as cocaine. When people try to completely cut out sugar from their diet, they can experience withdrawal symptoms such as depression and behavioural problems. According to a review published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, refined sugar has a similar effect on the brain as illegal drugs like cocaine. Eating sugar has been found to produce drug-like effects on rats, including bingeing, craving, tolerance, withdrawal, dependence and reward.

According to research scientists, sugar can alter mood and trigger feelings of pleasure and reward, much like drugs such as cocaine affect the brain. They have cited studies conducted on rats, which showed that sugar was preferred over cocaine, and studies conducted on mice, which showed that the mice experienced withdrawal symptoms when sugar was removed from their diet. The findings demonstrate how addictive sugar can be.

So are there any sugars THAT are ok?

Regardless of the source, sugar is sugar. Whether it's honey, maple syrup, brown sugar, refined sugar, raw cane sugar, or any other type of sugar, they are all pretty much the same in terms of their nutritional value. If you crave something sweet or want to indulge in a treat, the best option is to make it yourself.

If you have to have something sweet then do so in moderation or for the occasional recreational treat you can use:

- Monk fruit is typically better but use sparingly

- Stevia can be ok for some people, but most stevia out there has been processed by Coca-Cola and Pepsi in the form of Truvia, PureVia, which are an extract of stevia. They remove the bitter alkaloids, which actually may be beneficial from the plant. Look for pure Stevia.

- Coconut sugar - Coconut sugar belongs in the same boat as most sugar alternatives. It's healthier than refined sugar but less healthy than consuming no sugar at all.

- Maple syrup in moderation might be a better option for long-term health. It’s still high in sugar, so limit your intake to about 1 teaspoon at a time to avoid going overboard.

- Use whole fruit as a sweetener - the sugar in whole fruit is a healthy replacement for added sugars, and the fibre, vitamins, water, and minerals in the fruit help your body metabolise the natural sugars

The best thing you can do is to eat real food, food in its whole unprocessed form that’s low in starch and sugar. To dramatically cut or eliminate or avoid flour and sugar from your diet. Does this mean forever? No, it doesn’t mean forever but it is one of the most important things to know about in terms of how it affects your health, how it affects the environment, and how removing most of it in your diet can create dramatic improvements in your overall wellbeing and health.

It is fine to have it occasionally and sparingly. It may take a while to learn to live without all this sugar, but know this, your brain will reset, your hormones will reset, and your immune system will reset. It is one of the most important things to know about for people to take care of their health long-term and to live a long, healthy life. If you’re looking for help with your health, please book a one-to-one consultation with one of our practitioners for more information or take a look at our weight loss programmes.