Is sugar really harmful to health?
Although it is hard to imagine now, there was a time when humans could only eat sugar during the months when the fruit was ripe. About 80,000 years ago, humans engaged in hunting and gathering activities could only occasionally eat a small amount of fruit, and even rushed to eat with birds.
Now, we can eat a lot of sugar throughout the year, the nutritional significance of sugar is reduced, and the difficulty of eating sugar is greatly reduced. Just open a bottle of soda or open a box of cereal. Not an expert also knows that the sugar intake of modern people is not as healthy as before when they were looking for sugar everywhere. Nowadays, sugar has become the number one enemy of public health: the government imposes taxes on sugar, schools, and hospitals do not sell sugar in vending machines, and experts recommend that sugar should not be consumed in the diet at all.
But so far, scientists have not been able to prove how sugar affects our health independently of high-calorie diets. There are also more and more voices who believe that demonizing certain foods is very dangerous and can cause confusion and may cause us to stop eating vital foods.
Sugar, also known as "added sugar", includes sucrose, sweeteners, honey, and fruit juice, which is extracted and refined and added to food and beverages to improve taste.
But sugar is actually a broad concept, including ingredients or complex or simple carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are digested and decomposed into glucose by the human body, which helps human cells to produce energy and maintain the brain functioning. Complex carbohydrates include whole grains and vegetables. Simple carbohydrates are easier to digest and quickly release sugars into the bloodstream, including sugars that are naturally present in foods, such as fructose, lactose, sucrose, and glucose, as well as other artificial sugars, such as high fructose corn syrup.
Before the 16th century, only the rich could afford sugar. But with the colonial trade, sugar became more and more common.
In the 1960s, glucose began to be converted into fructose on a large scale, which promoted the production of high fructose corn syrup, a concentrate of glucose and fructose.
Many advocates of public health believe that this strong-tasting mixture is more dangerous than any other single sugar. When many people think of "sugar", they think of high fructose corn syrup.
High sugar craze
From 1970 to 1990, the consumption of high fructose corn syrup in the United States increased tenfold, which was higher than any other food. The researchers pointed out that this is also reflected in the increasing obesity across the United States. This may be because high fructose corn syrup is different from other foods in that it does not increase leptin. Leptin is a hormone that helps us feel full.
Sugar-sweetened beverages generally use high-fructose corn syrup, which has always been an important object in studying the effects of sugar on human health. A meta-analysis of 88 studies found that drinking sugar-sweetened beverages is associated with weight. In other words, people will not eat fewer other foods just because they get calories from drinking soda, perhaps because these beverages increase hunger or reduce satiety.
But the researchers believe that although the intake of soda and added sugar in the United States has increased along with obesity, the data only show that the two are roughly correlated.
Not everyone agrees that high fructose corn syrup caused the obesity crisis. Some experts pointed out that in the past 10 years, in some countries, including the United States, sugar consumption has continued to decline, but obesity levels have been rising. A large number of obesity and diabetes have also appeared in areas where high fructose corn syrup is almost or not used, such as Australia and Europe.
High fructose corn syrup is not the only sugar thought to cause health problems. Added sugar, especially fructose, is considered to be the culprit of various problems.
For example, it is believed that fructose can cause heart disease. When liver cells break down fructose, one of the final products is triglycerides. Triglycerides are a type of fat that will continue to accumulate in liver cells. When triglycerides enter the blood, it may cause fatty plaques to form inside the arteries.
A 15-year study seems to confirm this: the study found that people who consume 25% or more of added sugars in calories consumed daily have a risk of dying from heart disease less than 10%. More than twice as much. Consumption of added sugar can also cause type 2 diabetes. Two large studies in the 1990s found that women who drank more than one cup a day were twice as likely to develop diabetes compared to women who barely drank soda and juice.
Sugar is innocent?
But it is not clear whether sugar actually causes heart disease or diabetes. Many scientists, including Luc Tappy, a professor of science at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, believe that the main cause of diabetes, obesity, and high blood pressure is excessive calorie intake, and sugar is just one type of calorie.
In the long run, no matter what kind of diet, as long as the energy intake is more than the consumption, it will lead to fat accumulation, insulin resistance, and fatty liver," he said, "and the energy consumption and intake match people, even if it is high The fructose/high-sugar diet is also completely fine."
Tapie pointed out that, for example, athletes tend to consume higher sugars, but the risk of cardiovascular disease is lower. In order to improve performance, they will exercise and can metabolize a large amount of fructose they consume.
In general, there is insufficient evidence that added sugar directly causes type 2 diabetes, heart disease, obesity, or cancer. Higher intake of added sugar is indeed related to these diseases, but clinical trials have not confirmed that sugar is causing these diseases.
It is often said that sugar is addictive, but this may not be the case. An article published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2017 mentioned that a number of studies have found that mice may have sugar withdrawal symptoms, and that sugar can produce similar effects to cocaine, such as cravings. However, this article has been criticized and is considered to have misunderstood the relevant evidence. One criticism is that the time for animals to eat sugar is limited to two hours a day. If they are allowed to eat as much as humans do, they will not exhibit addictive behaviors.
But there are many studies that show that sugar affects our brains in other ways. Matthew Pase, a researcher at the Center for Human Psychopharmacology at Swinburne University in Australia, asked subjects to report how many sugary drinks they drank and used MRI to scan their brain health to study the relationship between intake and brain health. relationship. People who drink soda and juice more frequently have a smaller average brain capacity and worse memory. The brains of people who drink two cups of sugary drinks a day are two years older than those who do not drink them at all. But Pasay said that he only measured the amount of fruit juice intake, so it is impossible to determine whether it is the only sugar that affects brain health.
Pasay said: "People who drink more juice or soda may have other diet or lifestyle habits that affect brain health. For example, they may exercise less."
A recent study found that sugar may even help improve memory and performance in the elderly. The researchers gave the participants a drink with a small amount of glucose and asked them to complete various memory tasks. Other participants drank beverages containing artificial sweeteners as a reference. The researchers tested the participants’ involvement, memory scores, and how much effort they thought they had put in.
The results show that the intake of sugar can make the elderly more active to complete difficult tasks, and at the same time do not feel that they have put in more effort. Elevated blood sugar levels will also make them happier in the process of completing tasks.
Young people will increase their energy after drinking glucose drinks, but it will not affect their mood or memory.
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