Welcome Back! by Dr. Elaine Chin

Author:Dr. Elaine Chin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sutherland House

Source: US Department of Agriculture; Economic Research Service ©Statista 2020

Source: US OECD/FAO (2020), “OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook”, OECD Agriculture statistics (database)

What Man-Made Sugars Do to Us

Studies done in 2011 by Dr. Kimber Stanhope, a nutritional biologist at the University of California, show that our livers process man-made sugars differently than natural sugars. In one study, participants consumed a normal low-sugar diet for a number of days; blood levels were taken to determine a baseline. The next portion of the study involved swapping out 25% of their calories for sweetened drinks containing high-fructose corn syrup. Participants’ blood levels were tested every 30 minutes around the clock. At the end of the modified diet 2 weeks later, participants showed increased levels of LDL (“bad”) cholesterol and other risk factors for cardiovascular disease.174

This study shows us that when we consume too much high-fructose sugar that is man-made, our livers become overloaded and convert a portion of it to fat as triglycerides, and fatty liver is the result.

How about Sugar Substitutes?

In July 2013, Susan Swithers, a behavioral neuroscientist at Purdue University, took aim at diet beverages and the reputation their manufacturers promote as healthy drink alternatives. In her mission, she scrutinized the most recent research on high-intensity sweeteners. She wanted to show that, despite the sweeteners’ low-calorie contents, these drinks could cause a host of other health problems in those who consume them, such as weight gain and overeating. She focused on drinks that contain aspartame, sucralose, and saccharin (approximately 30% of American adults regularly consume these sweeteners in their diets). Following these evaluations, she suggested that diet soda may actually be as unhealthy as non-diet soda.

Artificial sweeteners affect the body’s ability to track calorie intake and caloric needs. In other words, when the mouth tastes something sweet, the digestive system expects to receive calories and fat. Still, when these things never materialize, it confuses the body’s metabolism. People feel hungry again, which causes them to eat more than they would if they’d consumed foods containing natural sugars. This response is known as the cephalic phase insulin release and it is triggered not only by our sense of taste but also by our senses of sight and smell. As well, in response to the sweetness of artificial sweeteners, the pancreas mistakenly thinks the sweet taste is real dietary sugar. Over time, chronically high insulin levels in the blood lead to decreased insulin receptor response, known as insulin resistance, a precursor to prediabetes and diabetes.175

The San Antonio Heart Study reported that artificially sweetened beverages also increased body weight in adults and teenagers compared to the same demographics who consumed beverages that had been sweetened with traditional sugar. And a host of other studies, including the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, reported greater risks for type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and metabolic syndrome (a combination of disorders that, when occurring together, increase the risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease) in people who consumed artificially sweetened beverages.176, 177

It’s not difficult to

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.