No! Do NOT avoid fruits and vegetables! These two categories of foods have consistently been researched to provide you amazing health benefits!
Sugar is not bad for you, it’s the amount (volume) and the pace (speed) at which you consume it that causes all the harmful effects.
So, I guess you could say that we are in our FOOD IS MEDICINE ERA which can be good and bad. When we were in the FOOD IS FOOD ERA, there was a lot less focus on good and bad.
But now, we must categorize everything into Good & Bad, Eat This – Not That, and Super Foods vs. Evil Foods.
Sugar has been labeled as EVIL.
To reduce consumption of sugar, governments are taxing it, schools and hospitals are removing it from vending machines, and it’s blamed for everything from Diabetes, Heart Disease, and Cancer.
Research DOES NOT show sugar does any of these things.
Research DOES show that if you over-consume sugar, especially when you exceed your calorie allowance (making it a larger percentage of your total calories) it can lead to impairments, dysfunctions, and the breakdown of systems that cause health issues.
Your body needs sugar. Every cell in the body uses a type of sugar – glucose – to function. You can utilize fructose (fruit sugar), lactose (milk sugar), sucrose (table sugar) to derive glucose, all these forms can convert to glucose – try to go a day or minute without it!
However, although extremely valuable, you can’t overload your system. The pancreas, the organ responsible for releasing insulin (the hormone needed to shuttle sugar out of the bloodstream into cells) can get overworked and breakdown.
Evolution didn’t design your body so that you could take one of nature’s sources of sugar, a sugar cane, squeeze out all the sugar in a 5ft cane, dump it into an 8oz glass, and guzzle it down in 30 seconds!
Your body has insulin to move sugar out of the blood stream and put it into cells, cells that need it because you are exerting energy. But you need to exert energy – moving, thinking, doing something so you have a place to put these sugars. If not, you’re in trouble.
If you want to eat sugar, you need to be strategic.
I don’t drink my sugar unless I am being active (during sport) or after (for recovery). When I eat sugar (like fruit), I pair it with protein (like nuts) or fiber (in my salads).
10% of my total calories is my limit which = 75 grams (3,000 total calories, 10% = 300, 300/4 = 75 grams) from all sugars. And this is on my very active days. Also, most of my sugars are natural, from fruit.
I do not shy away from sugar, I’d rather eat sugar than sugar alternatives (like Stevia, Erythritol, Monk Fruit…and obviously Sucralose, AceK, Aspartame), but I manage how much and the speed it goes into my body.
Enjoy sugar and use it to your advantage but a little goes a long way!
- Information is for educational purposes only and not intended to be medical advice. The information should not be used as a basis for diagnosis or choice of treatment.
