＂Sugar restriction＂ does not mean that it is correct not to eat sugar and avoid a ＂high sugar＂ diet.
Who has investigated the causes of death in 23 countries and concluded that sugar is more harmful than smoking. American authoritative experts have suggested that sugar, like tobacco and alcohol, is a potentially harmful and addictive substance, and taking too much is like chronic suicide. A recent study shows that the more sugary drinks you drink, the greater the risk of premature death, with men as high as 29% and women as high as 63%. A large number of studies have shown that high-sugar diet can easily lead to obesity, arteriosclerosis, diabetes, malnutrition, osteoporosis, myopia, dental caries, seborrheic dermatitis, acne and pigmentation and many other health hazards.
For a time, "sugar" became the root of all evils, and abstinence from sugar and resistance to sugar gradually became popular. Many people didn’t even eat staple food or touch any sugar. Experts point out that sugar is the most important energy source for human beings, and its importance to human body cannot be replaced by other nutrients, especially the brain can only use glucose for energy supply. "Sugar restriction" does not mean not eating sugar, "sugar reduction" does not mean reducing staple food, but "eating sugar and managing how much sugar to eat". WHO suggests that people should control their daily sugar intake below 10%-5% of the total intake, and adults should control their daily added sugar intake below 50g, preferably below 25g(6 teaspoons). Therefore, in daily life, we should form good habits, eat less "free sugar", be careful of "invisible sugar", reduce "added sugar", scientifically control the intake of sugar and avoid the harm of "high sugar".
■ Bi Yanxia, a nutritionist at Beijing Friendship Hospital
From the point of view of nutrition, the sugar in the diet has a professional name, called carbohydrate. Because the name is too long and awkward, it is called sugar for short.
Cereals, potatoes and some beans are the main dietary sources of sugar, and some nuts are also good sources of sugar. Vegetables and fruits also contain a small amount of sugar. There is also a large part of "sugar" that emphasizes "free sugar" and does not include endogenous sugar in fresh fruits and vegetables.
"Free sugar" includes monosaccharides and disaccharides added to food by producers, chefs or consumers, as well as sugars naturally found in honey, syrup, fruit juice and concentrated fruit juice. Sugar in sugary drinks that everyone drinks, sugar added when making cakes, sugar added when cooking, etc. are all free sugar.
What are the health risks of "high sugar" diet?
Compared with fat and protein, sugar can provide energy quickly and is the first choice for energy supply in the body. However, if the sugar intake is excessive, it will not only affect the consumption of body fat, but also the part that cannot be consumed in time will be converted into fat, which will also promote cholesterolemia and easily lead to obesity and arteriosclerosis; Excessive intake will also make blood sugar rise rapidly, increase insulin burden and easily induce diabetes; Sugar can also affect the body’s absorption of calcium, vitamins and other substances, which is easy to cause malnutrition and osteoporosis.
If children eat too much sweets, the fracture rate will increase and the dental caries rate will increase; High-sugar diet is also a risk factor for myopia. In addition, a large number of studies have also proved that eating sweets often makes the skin oily, prone to acne and long spots, seborrheic dermatitis and dandruff.
Free sugar and added sugar should be limited to eat less.
The harm of sugar to human body mainly refers to free sugar, and online sugar abstinence and anti-sugar agitation are also mainly aimed at free sugar. In the newly formulated "Guidelines on Sugar Intake for Adults and Children", WHO suggested that the intake of free sugar should be reduced throughout the life course, and the intake of free sugar for adults and children should be reduced to less than 10% of the total energy intake; If it can be further reduced to less than 5% of the total energy intake, it will bring more benefits to health.
Dietary Guidelines for China Residents (2016) suggests that the daily intake of added sugar should not exceed 50g, and it is better to control it below 25g(6 teaspoons).
Don’t misinterpret "reducing sugar" as "reducing staple food"
Sugar is the most important energy source for human beings, and its importance to human body is irreplaceable by other nutrients. It can be digested into glucose that can be directly used by the body in the body, providing energy for the human body quickly, especially the brain can only use glucose for energy supply.
As soon as many people say that they want to limit sugar, they start to reduce their intake of staple foods or even not eat them. This is a wrong misinterpretation. Healthy people need to ensure that the daily intake of staple foods is 250 ~ 400g, including miscellaneous grains, cereals and potatoes. The practice of not eating staple food is easy to cause insufficient carbohydrate intake, resulting in insufficient carbohydrate energy supply, affecting many physiological activities of the human body, and even affecting fat metabolism, and even causing ketoacidosis in severe cases.
Moreover, the intake of sugar is seriously insufficient. If protein is used for energy supply, it will consume protein in muscles, liver, heart and kidneys, which will cause serious harm to human body.
Beware of "invisible sugar" and subtract "added sugar"
By reducing sugar, we mean advising people to reduce the intake of added sugar in food, but it does not include sugar in natural fruits and natural carbohydrates in staple foods.
Added sugar refers to sugar and syrup artificially added to food, including monosaccharide and disaccharide, and common ones are sucrose, fructose and glucose. White sugar, soft sugar, rock sugar and brown sugar in daily life are all sucrose, that is, added sugar. The added sugar is also invisible in drinks, sweets, bread, snacks, biscuits, energy bars, jams, jellies, preserves, ice cream, ice cream, instant paste powder and many other foods.
Puffed foods such as potato chips and shrimp strips are also the biggest hiders of "invisible sugar" and "added sugar". These foods contain a lot of sugar, and starch will be converted into more sugar after gelatinization. These foods may make you unconsciously take too much polysaccharide every day, so you should buy them carefully.
In addition to these easily perceived sweet foods, sugar is also an essential seasoning in many dishes in restaurants. For example, 15-25 grams of sugar may be added to a portion of sea cucumber with onion, 25-30 grams of braised pork ribs, braised fish and fish-flavored shredded pork, and 40-50 grams of sugar to braised pork. Other processed meat products, such as preserved meat, which people like to eat, also contain a lot of sugar.
Learn to read nutrition labels and manage how much sugar you should eat.
"General Rules for Nutrition Labeling in prepackaged foods" stipulates that all kinds of ingredients should be arranged in descending order. When the sugar in a product is ranked further back in the ingredient list, the sugar content is lower. If the words such as white sugar, granulated sugar, sucrose, fructose, glucose, dextrin, maltodextrin, starch syrup, fructose syrup, maltose and corn syrup rank among the top ingredients, they are foods containing "invisible sugar", so we must take them in moderation.
"Sugar restriction" does not mean not eating sugar, but "eating sugar and managing how much sugar to eat". Therefore, in our daily life, we should form good habits, scientifically control sugar intake and avoid the harm of "high sugar".
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High sugar is far more harmful than you think. Eating too much sugar is like chronic suicide.
Many people always think that their obesity is caused by eating too many calories or doing too little exercise. We once paid attention to low fat, but ignored the harm of high sugar. American authoritative experts have publicly put forward in Nature magazine that sugar, like tobacco and alcohol, is a potentially harmful and addictive substance, and taking too much is like chronic suicide.
Because eating sugar will make you more and more happy, so you are addicted to it and let you keep eating sugar to satisfy your desires. And your body has suffered all kinds of injuries from the inside out and from top to bottom invisibly.
Recently, the top international medical journal Circulation has published a heavy research achievement. A 34-year follow-up study of 118,000 Americans shows that the more sugary drinks you drink, the greater the risk of premature death. Among them, men are as high as 29%, while women are as high as 63%.
Researchers in Boston, USA, have investigated 80,000 women in 22 years and come to the following conclusions: Women who drink one glass of orange juice every day have a 41% increased risk of gout; Women who drink two glasses of orange juice every day have a 2.4 times higher risk of gout.
Another recent study published in Science magazine found that fructose-rich corn syrup can directly promote tumor growth, and corn syrup is one of the main components in sugary drinks such as cola. This means that if the intestine becomes cancerous unconsciously and people drink sugary drinks such as cola, it is equivalent to indirectly "feeding" cancer cells, which will grow faster.
It can be seen that sugary drinks are far more harmful to health than you think. In December 2018, a former US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner publicly admitted to the public: In the past few decades, our nutritional advice to the public has failed, and the real enemy is sugar!
In order to find out the influence of sugar on the body, in 2017, Australian director Damon Gamewu decided to experiment with himself as a mouse. He ate 40 spoonfuls (about 160g) of sugar every day for 60 days, which was determined according to the average level of sugar intake of Australian residents. Moreover, all these 40 spoonfuls of sugar come from recognized healthy foods such as jam, juice, breakfast milk and low-fat yogurt, instead of foods with high sugar content such as chocolate, ice cream and cola (the sugar contained in foods is usually considered healthy, desserts, chocolate, ice cream and drinks are unhealthy, while juice, cereal, yogurt and a large number of "light" products are harmless. Moreover, he still maintains the previous amount of exercise, running around the garden three times twice a week and doing ten minutes of fitness in his indoor gym every day.
He made a documentary about this process, and the experimental results were extremely shocking. The most obvious thing is the change of body shape. After 60 days, his weight soared by 17 Jin, his waistline soared by 10cm, and all these were harmful fats on his stomach. Because of eating a lot of sugar, his metabolism was disturbed, and soon acne broke out on his face. What is invisible is the most terrible. In just one month, a hormone called ALT (the most commonly used sensitive index of the liver, whose level is directly proportional to the degree of liver damage) jumped from a healthy value below 20 to a healthy line. The expert team gave Damon a physical examination and said that he not only has fatty liver, but also may lead to insulin tolerance, diabetes and heart disease.
In this experiment, Damon’s daily calorie intake is the same as before, which is 2300 calories. So the culprit of obesity and health hazards is not calories, but sugar!
(Xiao Qin)