Is eating sugar good for your health?

Did you know? These common foods around us are very high in sugar!

The sugar content in old yogurt reaches 4%~12%;

The sugar content in tomato sauce reaches 15%~25%;

The sugar content in hawthorn slices The sugar content reaches 70%~80%;

The sugar content in beef jerky exceeds 16%;

The sugar content in vermicelli exceeds 80%;

…

Everyone knows that eating too much sugar is bad for the body, but what are the effects?

The Sweet Trap

In order to understand the impact of sugar on health, the famous Australian director Damon Gameau made a documentary "A Movie About Sugar". He regarded himself as " "Mouse", eat 40 spoons of sugar (about 160g) every day for 60 consecutive days. In addition, they do not eat high-sugar foods such as candy and soda.

After the experiment, Damon had a physical examination. He found that he had gained 8.5 kilograms in weight during this period, his alanine aminotransferase exceeded the safe range, and he also developed fatty liver. Doctors said that if he continues to live like this, his body is likely to further develop insulin resistance and may even lead to type 2 diabetes.

It can be seen how harmful excessive intake of sugar is to health.

Research has found that long-term exposure to a high-sugar diet can cause the following harms:

1. Induce headaches

2. Accelerate skin aging

3. Increase blood vessel pressure

4. Increase hunger

5. Induce fatty liver

6. Make people feel bad

7 .Induces heart disease

8. Causes cholesterol disorders

9. Causes diabetes

Our country has a long history of eating sugar. From more than 2,000 years ago, we We know that grain and malt are used to make maltose. Later, brown sugar was squeezed out from sugar cane, and after filtering and refining, white sugar was obtained.

Did you know? In fact, sugar can also be regarded as a kind of medicine...

Sugar is a kind of medicine

Common brown sugar, white sugar, maltose, etc. have their medicinal value recorded in traditional medicine.

01

Brown sugar

Brown sugar is extracted from sugar cane. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that it has the functions of tonifying and warming the liver, activating blood circulation and removing blood stasis, and dispersing cold. Brown sugar contains nutrients such as sucrose, protein, amino acids, fat, calcium, phosphorus, zinc, iron, manganese, cadmium, vitamin B2, carotene, niacin and chlorophyll.

Traditional Chinese medicine records that brown sugar can treat dysmenorrhea, wind-cold colds, cold and painful epigastrium and abdominal pain, postpartum lochia, dry mouth and vomiting, and hemorrhagic dysentery due to deficiency.

02

White sugar

White sugar is often purified and refined from brown sugar. The main ingredients are similar to brown sugar, but the efficacy and indications are slightly different. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that white sugar is sweet in taste and neutral in nature, and returns to the spleen and lung meridian; it has the functions of moistening the lungs and promoting fluid production, relieving cough and asthma, harmonizing the lungs, soothing the liver and nourishing yin. It is often used to treat diarrhea due to spleen deficiency, cough due to dryness of the lungs, and dry mouth and thirst. and other diseases.

03

Maltose

As the name suggests, maltose is made from malt and grain. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that it can detoxify and nourish the skin, replenish the spleen and qi, and moisturize the lungs. It is a food suitable for all ages to relieve cough.

In addition to the above three kinds of sugar, there are also honey, lactose, fructose, maple sugar, etc., all of which have their corresponding functions. Due to space limitations, I will not go into them one by one here.

As we said before, eating too much sugar is not good for your health. In fact, normal intake of sugar is beneficial to your health. After all, sugar is a carbohydrate and is one of the essential nutrients for the human body. .

Sugar intake

According to the recommendations of the World Health Organization and the Chinese Nutrition Society, in order to prevent overweight, obesity and dental caries, we should reduce our daily intake of added sugar to Less than 10% of total daily energy requirements.

View the table below based on age and gender.

How to control the amount of sugar consumed every day?

1. Eating refined grains and coarse grains together every day can not only supplement a variety of nutrients, but also reduce sugar intake.

2. You can make your own freshly squeezed vegetable juices. A large amount of sugar will be added to the juices and drinks outside for taste. Ingesting such drinks will undoubtedly increase the amount of sugar entering the human body.

3. Use dried fruits as sweeteners. You can use dried dates, raisins, dried apples, dried apricots, dried longans, etc. to flavor food, but remember not to buy candied or oiled preserved fruits. Otherwise, additional sugar, salt and other substances will be added.

4. Eat on time and eat less snacks and desserts to ensure stable blood sugar in the body and reduce the intake of carbohydrates.

In order to reduce sugar intake, a large number of sugar substitute foods and sugar-free drinks have appeared on the market in recent years. Are these drinks and snacks safe?

The amount of sugar substitutes must also be controlled

As health care concepts such as sugar control and sugar reduction continue to gain popularity, in order to cater to the “sugar-free” psychological expectations of consumers, many manufacturers have launched In line with concepts such as "0 sucrose" and "0 calorie sugar-free", the ingredient list of their products is not only sugar-free, low in energy, but also tastes very sweet. How did they do it?

This is mainly due to the role of sugar substitute.

Sugar substitutes are not sugar. They make us feel sweet but do not provide us with a lot of calories. Although sugar substitutes contain relatively low calories, they cannot be consumed for a long time. Long-term consumption will have an impact on people's health. Disrupts the body's metabolism and increases the risk of diabetes; low calories can cause hunger and stimulate people to overeat; disrupt the balance of intestinal flora and lead to illness.

It can be seen that whether it is sugar food or sugar substitute food, there is an issue of quantity. Excessive intake may cause health crises.

References

[1] Zhang Yue. The "Sweetness" Trap: Sugar may be more dangerous than salt [J]. Cooking Knowledge, 2019(12):16-17.

[2] Fan Zhihong. Exploring the source of honey and consuming “sugar” [N]. China Food News, 2012-07-31(001).

[3] Yuan Original. Excessive sugar consumption is as harmful as poison[N]. Economic Information Daily, 2013-11-22(024).

[4] Zhang Yanan. Healthy consumption of sugar, here are some tips for you[J]. Public Health, 2020(12):29-30.

[5]Liu Juying. How to avoid the trap of high-sugar diet[N]. People's Political Consultative Conference, 2021-11-24(007).

[6]Wang Zhengyuan. Are sugar substitute foods really healthy[N]. China Medical News, 2021-10-26(004).

[7] Tang Lingguang. It is better to use brown sugar than white sugar [N]. Health News, 2009-07-03(008).