Soda is one of the worst sources of sugar, containing seven to eleven teaspoons per can, or the equivalent of thirty-nine milligrams of sugar per can, and much more than that for the supersized beverages now sold at many fast-food places. Sugar is insidious in our diet, hiding in many unsuspected places, including condiments, meat, french fries, and even in some salt—it’s shocking but true.
Look for any ingredient that contains the suffix -ose, such as glucose, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), fructose, dextrose, maltose, and so forth. Even natural sweeteners like honey, pure maple syrup, agave nectar, and barley malt are high in sugars and should be used sparingly. Here are some of the surprising sources of hidden sugar identified by Nancy Appleton in her book Lick the Sugar Habit.
• The breading on most packaged and restaurant foods contains sugar.
• Hamburgers sold in restaurants often have corn syrup and dehydrated molasses added to reduce meat shrinkage during cooking.
• Before salmon is canned, it is often glazed with a sugar solution.
• Many meat packers feed sugar to animals prior to slaughter to “improve” the flavor and color of cured meat.
• Some fast-food restaurants sell poultry that has been injected with a sugar or honey solution.
• Some salt contains sugar! Seriously.
• Sugar is used in the processing of luncheon meats, bacon, and canned meats.
• Most bouillon cubes contain sugar (and usually monosodium glutamate [MSG] as well).
• Peanut butter tends to contain sugar.
• Dry cereals often contain high amounts of sugar.
• Almost half of the calories from commercial ketchup comes from sugar.
• More than 90 percent of the calories found in a can of cranberry sauce come from sugar.
This list is by no means complete. Sugar hides almost anywhere, and as it becomes increasingly genetically modified, it is important to reduce your consumption of it. Frequently, it is not even listed on food packages, making it doubly difficult to spot hidden sugar in the foods you eat. Additionally, it can take different forms. HFCS is one of the most prevalent forms of hidden sugar in packaged and prepared foods.
NINE REASONS TO AVOID HIGH-FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP LIKE THE PLAGUE
If you take a look at most candy, cereal, bread, frozen food, yogurt, baby food, granola bars, salad dressing, crackers, condiments, or other processed food packages, you’re sure to see HFCS on the ingredients list. It might even be easy to equate commonality with safety, assuming that that if HFCS really was damaging to your health, surely the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would ban it, right? Wrong. Just because it has the name “corn” in it, which most people consider a healthy vegetable, combined with the fact that it is found almost everywhere doesn’t make it safe to eat. But HFCS is one of the reasons our sugar consumption is so high.
The average American currently consumes fifty-five pounds of HFCS every year, which is a higher per capita consumption than any other country in the world.1 If you’re currently consuming HFCS—and most people are without even realizing it—it is likely contributing to your environmental allergies. But there are many reasons you might want to reconsider avoiding it like the plague:
Chronic Inflammation—HFCS perforates the gut lining, allowing partially digested food, fecal matter, and harmful bacteria to cross the intestinal wall directly into the blood. The result: inflammation and an overactive immune system caused by the body’s own immune system attacks on these substances it perceives as foreign invaders. This overactive immune system and low-grade inflammation contributes to allergies and many other chronic illnesses. We’ll discuss more about the gut-allergy connection in the next chapter.
Diabetes—Research at the University of Southern California and Oxford University found that HFCS is linked with diabetes, which may explain the rapidly growing rates of diabetes.2 Their research, published in the medical journal Global Public Health, showed that HFCS consumption is linked to a 20 percent higher prevalence of diabetes in those who consume it over those who don’t. They also determined that this higher incidence of diabetes occurred regardless of the total amount of sugar consumed or obesity levels.
Fatty Liver Disease—Consumption of HFCS has also been linked to fatty liver disease.3 The sugary substance must be metabolized by the liver, and this puts a tremendous strain on this already hard-working organ.
Reproductive Disorders and Cancer—HFCS is largely made up of genetically modified corn because it is inexpensive to grow and has a high crop yield. But genetically modified foods have been linked in research to reproductive disorders4 and cancer.5
Obesity—HFCS requires little to no digestion, so it is quickly absorbed into the bloodstream. As a result, the sugar causes rapid spikes in insulin production, which is the body’s fat-storage hormone. Not only does your appetite increase, but your weight does as well. It’s no surprise that high consumption of HFCS is linked to obesity.6
Energy Depletion—Sugar found in HFCS requires greater amounts of energy to be absorbed by the gut than other types of sugar. Each molecule requires two molecules of phosphorus, which it takes from our body’s ATP. ATP is the body’s energy currency, so you can probably imagine what happens over time when there are constant withdrawals and few deposits. Just like a bank account, you will become overdrawn. When this happens you experience energy depletion.7
Learning Impairment—Research also shows that the daily consumption of beverages sweetened with HFCS such as soda impaired learning and the ability to remember information, particularly when consumption occurs during adolescence.
Increased Blood Pressure and Heart Disease Risk—A study published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology found that even people who eat an otherwise healthy diet but consume HFCS are at risk of an increase in blood pressure by up to 32 percent. The study, conducted at the University of Colorado, found that the inflammation caused by HFCS leads to inflammation in the bloodstream, which causes the blood vessel walls to tighten, resulting in blood pressure increases.8
THE GOOD AND BAD OF SUGAR SUBSTITUTES
Before you panic thinking that you have to swear off all sweets, you’ll be happy to know that there is an herb that works marvelously to replace sugar in many foods such as coffee, tea, and soda. Stevia, or Stevia rebaudiana, is a natural herb that tastes sweet but doesn’t actually contain sugar molecules. As a result, it doesn’t affect blood sugar levels or inflammation in the body and is therefore a healthy option for a healthy body. It is naturally between three hundred and one thousand times sweeter than sugar, depending whether you’re using the whole herb or the liquid extract. I personally find that liquid stevia has the best taste and least aftertaste, but I have found powdered ones that are excellent as well.
Make the switch from sugar to the naturally sweet herb stevia, which is available in many forms, including liquid extract, powdered extract, or powdered herb. Be aware that some manufacturers of the