ADDED SUGAR = ADDED HEALTH RISKS
If you’re like me, you’re probably eating and drinking more sugar than you realize—just because it’s added to so many foods & beverages. In a sense, my post this week is a continuation of last week’s, which talked about ultra-processed foods. That’s owing to the fact it’s in ultra-processed foods where so much added sugar is found (in addition to extra fat and salt)
All sugar, whether processed or natural is a type of simple carbohydrate our bodies use for energy. (You can get more info on sugars & carbohydrates in my post Sugar—the sweet & bitter truth.) Fruits and vegetables naturally contain sugar. But added sugars are those added to foods during processing and there is no nutritional benefit that comes from this extra sugar. Sodas, along with energy & sports drinks, desserts and some ready-to-eat cereals are the prime sources for most of us. For example, the average 12-ounce can of sugar-sweetened soda contains some 150 calories, almost all of them from sugar—often high-fructose corn syrup. This is the equivalent of 10 teaspoons of sugar!
Heart Disease Risk
In addition to poor nutrition, weight gain and tooth decay you can also increase your risk of heart disease with extra sugar. Here are excerpts from the August 27, 2019 Harvard Heart Letter by Julie Corliss Eating too much added sugar increases the risk of dying with heart disease:
A sugar-laden diet may raise your risk of dying of heart disease even if you aren’t overweight. So says a major study published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Added sugars make up at least 10% of the calories the average American eats in a day. But about one in 10 people get a whopping one-quarter or more of their calories from aditional sugar.
Over the course of the 15-year study on added sugar and heart disease, participants who took in 25% or more of their daily calories as sugar were more than twice as likely to die from heart disease as those whose diets included less than 10% added sugar. Overall, the odds of dying from heart disease rose in tandem with the percentage of sugar in the diet—and that was true regardless of a person’s age, sex, physical activity level, and body-mass index.
Nutritionists frown on this type of sugar for two reasons. One is its well-known links to weight gain and cavities. The other is that sugar delivers “empty calories” — calories unaccompanied by fiber, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients. Too much added sugar can crowd healthier foods from a person’s diet.
Could it be possible that sugar isn’t the true bad guy boosting heart disease risk, but that it’s the lack of heart-healthy foods like fruits and veggies? Apparently not. In this study, the researchers measured the participants’ Healthy Eating Index. This shows how well their diets match up to federal dietary guidelines. Regardless of their Healthy Eating Index scores, people who ate more sugar still had higher cardiovascular mortality.
Exactly how excess sugar might harm the heart isn’t clear. Earlier research has shown that drinking sugar-sweetened beverages can raise blood pressure. A high-sugar diet may also stimulate the liver to dump more harmful fats into the bloodstream. Both factors are known to boost heart disease risk.
Upper Limit
Federal guidelines offer specific limits for the amount of salt and fat we eat. But there’s no similar upper limit for sugar. According to the American Heart Association’s recommendation, women should consume less than 100 calories of added sugar per day (about 6 teaspoons) and men should consume less than 150 per day (about 9 teaspoons).
[Getting back to that average can of soda and its 10 teaspoons of sugar, quaffing even one a day would put all women and men over the daily limit.]
If you’re going to have something sweet, have a fruit-based dessert. That way, at least you’re getting something good out of it. Of course, plain fruit with no excess sugar is ideal. If you’re trying to curb a soda habit, try mixing a little fruit juice with seltzer water as a replacement.