Nutrition for Life

Sugar and Health

Sugar and Health Author: Jeffrey Rose For most of the history of humanity man ate a diet of wild game and natural vegetation including some seeds, nuts, and fruit during certain seasons. In our era, with the advent of processed foods, mankind's diet has undergone a radical change. People are eating foods that never existed in nature before, foods which the body was never designed to utilize. The result is that the heavy consumption of refined sugar, and refined flour products too, has led to serious health problems for those who regularly eat them. Today 65% of Americans are overweight, and 27% are clinically obese. Even children are starting to show more and more symptoms of this growing health problem. Diabetes is starting to appear more frequently in the very young. When we look at the diet of the typical American, it is easy to see how this has happened. The average American each year consumes 125 pounds of sugar in the form of 300 cans of soda, 200 sticks of gum, 18 pounds of candy, 50 pounds of cakes and cookies and 20 gallons of ice cream. I want to make clear just how much sugar is found in the sodas people are drinking each day. There are 7 to 8 teaspoons of sugar in some form, in the average soda drink. If you have a soda at lunch, one as a snack in the afternoon, one with your dinner, and one as you watch TV or go out for a final snack later in the night, you have consumed 28 spoonfuls of sugar. Americans (and English) are also consuming too many foods which are made from highly refined flour, which act just like sugar in the body, such as pasta, bread and cookies and cakes. In addition to all the many obvious sources of sugar in the typical American diet, sugar is used as an inexpensive additive to improve the taste of many items in which the producers in order to increase profits use cheaper inferior ingredients or use less expensive ingredients. Among these items, you may have guessed, because they taste so sweet, are ketchup, and jams and jellies, which really should have no added sugar and should be made primarily from the fruit. Fruit flavored drinks and fruit flavored yogurts, and especially, sweetened canned fruit have unnecessarily large amounts of sugar in some form in them. But it is also surprising how much sugar, unhealthy sugar, is found in items like peanut butters, bread, soups, pickles, mustard, canned dishes like baked beans, and salad dressings. Even Americans general idea of proper cuisine contributes to this problem. Making potatoes a staple at almost every meal has been an additional negative health factor. Potatoes, among all other vegetables, are the one of the most likely to affect the body in the same way as refined sugar.A surfeit of carbohydrates in any form will lead to gaining weight and eventual obesity, but it is sugar in all its forms, and refined flour in our diets that do the most harm. They lead to a fast rise in blood sugar, which causes the pancreas to produce a large amount of insulin to lower our blood sugar quickly, because high blood sugar is dangerous to our health. Unfortunately, this strong dose of insulin makes the blood sugar drop below our normal level and makes us feel down in mood. In order to compensate for this psychological effect, we are driven by cravings to seek an immediate repeat of our ingestion of sugar to again raise our blood sugar to make ourselves feel better, and so the cycle continues on and on. This results in our taking in more calories than are necessary to supply energy to the body. The end result is overweight and eventual obesity. The high amounts of insulin also have other deleterious effects.They make the insulin receptors become less and less sensitive, requiring the pancreas to produce larger and larger amounts of insulin each time, to deal with same amount of high incoming sugar. Eventually the receptors become very insensitive to the incoming insulin, and the person has developed a condition referred to as insulin resistance. Insulin resistance aggravates another problem which results from the production of insulin in the body. When insulin in the body is high, another hormone called glucagon is low. Glucagon is a hormone which promotes the release and utilization of fat from the fat storage cells for energy. So that when glucagon is present, you will be burning and thus reducing your fat stores. In other words, you will be losing weight and the weight will be a loss of fat. However, the high level of insulin in insulin resistant people keeps them from burning any of their fat stores. They can only burn incoming sugar and carbohydrates, and when they are depleted, they will begin to break down and use muscle tissue as a source of energy. This is, again, because the insulin has blocked getting access to the body's fat by blocking the production of the necessary hormone, glucagon. Now you understand why people who have eaten a lot of sugar, and sugar acting foods like refined flour and grains, and potatoes, in their life all the time have had trouble losing weight, or permanently keeping off any weight they have lost through extreme measures like very strict diets or fasting.Eventually people on these refined high carbohydrate diets exhaust their pancreas, which stops generating any insulin at all, and they become diabetic, and must take insulin regularly to keep their blood sugar from staying at dangerously high levels.There is another serious problem with too much sugar, sugar addiction. For many years people have spoken of sugar addiction because of the seemingly addictive behavior of people who have a strong desire for foods with sugar. However, it is only recently that it has been scientifically been shown to be a genuine addiction. Rats fed sugar showed classic signs of withdrawal when their sugar; was taken away from them. When they were allowed to eat sugar again, they binged on it. The sugar had triggered natural pleasure producing opiods in their brains. The effect is similar to morphine and heroin, though not as powerful. Actual studies of these animals' brains showed an accelerated growth of dopamine receptors in the nucleus accumbens in their brains. This helps explain why people who eat sugar regularly, have strong cravings and seek a sugar "fix" many times throughout their day. You are probably addicted to sugar if you have the following: if you have cravings for food containing sugar, if you can't stop eating after one piece of candy or one bite of cake or other baked goods; if you can't go for more than a few hours without experiencing a letdown with fatigue or irritability or anxiety; if you have to have your sugared coffee and donuts or other baked goods every morning and have and eat candy and other sweets in your home all the time; if you regularly drink sugared sodas during the day to give yourself a pick-me-up because you're dragging. Nutritionally, refined sugars present another problem. It takes vitamins and minerals to digest and assimilate ingested refined sugars. Unprocessed sugar cane juice is rich in vitamins and minerals and provides some nourishment to the body, though it is still too high in sugar to be good for the body. But refined sugar is an empty calorie, which uses up valuable vitamins and minerals in order to be digested without supplying any of them. Thus, eating a lot of refined sugars depletes the body of these valuable health promoting factors. That's why, you now can understand, even overweight people who have become so because of large amounts of sugar in their diets, can actually suffer from malnutrition. Here's a list of some of the negative health effects of sugar, and the refined flour products and potatoes that act like sugar within the body. Sugar can cause an increase in insulin being generated in the body and cause an increase in insulin sensitivity and overstress the pancreas causing damage,cause diabetes,cause weight gain and obesity and produce a significant rise in triglycerides and reduce helpful high density cholesterol, known as HDL and promote an elevation of harmful cholesterol, know as LDL and increase total cholesterol and cause atherosclerosis and increase systolic pressure;promote tooth decay; cause hyperactivity, anxiety, concentration difficulties, and bad behaviour in children and lead to alcoholism cause depression.If you are seriously craving sugar, you should avoid all sugars. The following is a list of sugars and sweeteners that act like sugars, though you may not have recognized them as sugars before reading this article. AVOID THESE SWEETENERS: corn syrup, fructose, high fructose corn syrup, honey, sucrose, maltodextrin, dextrose, molasses, rice milk, almond milk, white grape juice, fruit juice sweetened, brown rice syrup, maple syrup, date sugar, cane sugar, corn sugar, beet sugar, succanat and lactose.  There are many other points to be made if one wishes to guide oneself correctly. Raw sugar and brown sugar, which was at one time sold in a lot of health food stores and still may be found in some supermarkets, is actually highly refined white sugar with some molasses put back in to give it brown color. Fructose doesn't increase leptin, a hormone that decreases your appetite, and doesn't suppress ghrelin, the hormone that makes you hungry. Thus, people who eat food containing fructose are likely to take in more calories, not less. And remember, almost all simple sugars, fructose included, and not just refined white sugar, are metabolized quickly and raise insulin levels too quickly. Just like refined white sugar, they play a role in creating insulin resistance. In addition, fructose is converted into triglycerides more efficiently than glucose elevating triglycerides that are linked to an increased risk of heart disease. Fructose converts to fat more readily than any other sugar, and some believe its prevalence in our present food supply has made it an important factor in making Americans fatter and fatter.Eating small amounts of fruit will not provide unhealthy large amounts of natural fructose, but fruit juices are best avoided as being too high in fructose for the body to assimilate without generating too much insulin. Aside from limited amounts of fruit, avoid fructose in food just as you would table sugar. One of the best ways to limit your intake of fructose, in general, is to eliminate soda and fruit juices from your diet.Most artificial sweeteners are increasingly considered to be unhealthy for the body. Aspartame is the technical name for the brand names NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, and Equal-Measure. Aspartame, which is frequently found in diet sodas, accounts for over 75 percent of the adverse reactions to food additives reported to the FDA. Many of these reactions are very serious. In addition, Aspartame suppresses serotonin production, the chemical in the brain that contributes to your feeling satisfied after a meal. The end result from ingesting Aspartame, just as it was from people eating fructose, is that people are less satisfied with their food and tend to eat more. Diet sodas may actually be increasing your total intake of calories.Finally, artificial sweeteners in general, just like real sugar, give you an intense experience of tasting something sweet, which psychologically stimulates cravings to consume even more sweet tasting things.In general, you will be better off health wise if you only buy products that say no sugar added; Jams should say fruit only. Often fruit juices are added to the food item, but don't be fooled, this is an unhealthy form of concentrated sugar too, even though it is originally from fruit. And remember, cocaine and heroine are derived from natural sources, but no one would say they are good for your health. A lot of poisons start out as plant material too. So do not be fooled by people who insist certain sugars are healthy because they are made from natural sources. YOU ARE READY TO GET HEALTHIER AND FEEL BETTER Always keep in mind Sugar is nutritionally worthless and is full of fattening calories Sugar creates cycles of emotional highs and lows, and is chemically additive Sugar is very bad for your body's health READ FOOD LABELS ,if sugar appears in the ingredients in the first few listed items:  DO NOT EAT THAT PRODUCT Always keep in mind except for occasional fruit, it is best if you avoid eating any sugar at all.Many people are addicted to sugar and should avoid all sugars permanently for optimal health.And remember refined flour products in bread, bagels, pasta, and cookies and cakes, act just like sugar in your body, as do potatoes and potato products too.We must eliminate refined food products from our diets and choose carefully, selecting high-fiber, non-starchy vegetables as our carbohydrate choices. In this way, we generate less insulin and avoid any insulin resistance and the adverse health effects that result. Remember, even fruits that are relatively low in carbohydrates will generate some insulin in the body to deal with the sugars they contain. Since one of the goals of low-carb eating is to generate as little insulin as possible, enjoy eating fresh fruit, in reasonable moderate amounts. On the other hand, dried fruits should be much more limited because they have a high concentration of sugars. And remember, as noted above, fruit juices are too high in sugars to be appropriate for a low insulin generating diet. Berries, on the other hand, are a good choice About the Author:Jeffrey Rose, CMH, is New York's leading doctor-referred, Certified Hypnotist , and is the director at The Advanced Hypnosis Center, (www.ahcenter.com), in New York City. He has practiced hypnosis for many years, successfully helping people with a wide variety of challenges to make important changes in their life and achieve their goals. Mr. Rose is not only a skilled practitioner of the art of hypnosis, but he is very knowledgeable in a wide variety of health-related fields. He has written many articles for health magazines, including being a staff writer for Recover Magazine, and is currently writing a book on weight loss.

Lifeforce (vitality) in food.

Good Food Bad Food.

It is fair to say that pollution of the air, soil and water in the modern industrialised nations has almost got to crisis point as the demand for food and consumable items is continually growing, to such a point nobody (especially the manufacturers) seem to consider or worry about what is happening as long as shareholders dividends are protected and most preferably increased year on year. Even if producers and manufactures, (including the farming community) took an immediate stand to stop polluting the air, water and soil today it would take many years to correct.
As I write the 2008 Olympics is underway, and air quality/pollution is a big problem with some of the athletes as the rapid rise to a major industrial nation has not been undertaken with any reasonable level of controls, and perhaps it is no coincidence that incidence of breast cancer in the major industrial cities of China is on the increase, whilst in the far reaching rural parts of the country where a more simple life is lead and food is largely grown by traditional methods, breast cancer is virtually unknown.
I cannot suggest that we all go and live the life of the very rural Chinese or live high in the north of Pakistan high in the Himalayas as the Hunzas people do, or live the life of Eskimos or even some of the North American Indians to get away from the contamination that we currently live in, because although it is mainly healthy, it’s not the life that many of us would want to endure.

One thing that needs looking at is the lack of vitality in the soil and in the food that we eat, especially processed convenience food, some of it hasn’t a grain of goodness in it, but first let us look at the word “vitality” or to start with “Vitalise” meaning to endow with life, to invigorate, this in the terms that I am looking at means that the food we eat should come from a source that is itself vital (or necessary for the continuation of life) and this is something that you just do not get from mass produced farm process where the main consideration is the bottom line of the bank balance, with no consideration to the land on which crops are grown and animals are fed.

Almost total dependence on the multinational “Agrochemical giants” to pump ton upon ton of there man made “dead” chemicals and artificial fertilisers on overworked and inert land year in year out has left our food almost tasteless and without goodness, coupled with the fact that crops are grown for profit and uniformity (all for the benefit of the farmer) with special breeds have been developed with no consideration of nourishing anything except a bank balance, no wonder we all use too much salt, it’s the only thing that brings out any taste at all in the food we eat, and yes, that is why there is so much salt in processed food, something has to bring out some taste, look at the list of contents in ready made food and see the words, salt, sodium and monosodium glutamate, listed as a “flavour enhancer” I rest my case!

I’m not promoting organics (yet) but try this challenge, next time you buy carrots get them from the organic aisle in the supermarket, or from a local organic source, I guarantee that when you eat them (not too overcooked) you will be delighted at the taste of “real carrot” and not the watery and tasteless slush you get from the mass produced alternative. Now back to the meaning of Vitality : vigour; energy, that which distinguishes the living from the nonliving, the ability to live, grow or develop, and this can’t happen from impoverished force fed land with no life in it, nor can it happen when this same food is highly processed and “interfered” with to such an extent you might just as well eat flavoured cardboard as it will be just as filling and almost at good for you.

So given that nothing much is going to happen to improve the situation, unless you are lucky enough to live “the good life” and produce your own organic food, make your own (wholemeal) bread, drink only purified water, avoid all factory produced (processed) food and live away from pollution, you will almost certainly need to supplement your food with extra vitamins and minerals because the body can only use the food, vitamins and minerals that you feed it for your future health and well being, you are what you eat.

More later.

Arsenic in Baby Food

UK NEWSALERT OVER ARSENIC IN YOUR BABY’S FOOD 

WARNING: The younger the exposure to arsenic, the more dangerous it can be

Wednesday April 30,2008

By Jo Willey

Babies could be eating six times the safe amount of cancer-causing arsenic from rice in their food, research reveals.

The poison is found in common brands of baby rice available in British supermarkets.

Researchers tested pure baby rice from three well-known brands and found that 35 per cent of samples would be illegal in some countries because of their high arsenic level.

If babies had three 20 gram sachets a day, plus rice in other products such as biscuits and puddings, they could easily be getting six times the recommended safe dose of arsenic.

There is no EU standard for arsenic in food, so researchers used limits on arsenic in drinking water.

But last night parents were told not to panic. Only if rice was eaten in excessive quantities without other foodstuffs would it cause any problems, the experts said.

Aberdeen University’s Professor Andrew Meharg, who carried out the study, refused to name the three brands tested. He said the findings could apply to all brands and it would be unfair to name the three.

Arsenic occurs in a deadlier form, and in high concentrations, in rice because it is grown in flooded fields.

Arsenic that is naturally present in the soil seeps into irrigation water and is absorbed by the plants.

   

Long-term exposure to arsenic substantially increases the risk of lung, bladder and skin cancer.

Prof Meharg said the younger the exposure to arsenic, the more dangerous it could be.

The levels in the brands tested ranged from 0.06 micrograms of arsenic per kilogram to 0.16 mg/kg. In China, anything above 0.15 mg/kg is illegal, which would rule out 35 per cent of the tested samples.

Because of the lack of EU rules, old food standards are invoked in Britain. They were set in 1959, before it was accepted that arsenic was a carcinogen. Yet while the EU and US do not have limits, expert opinion is that anything above 0.1 mg/kg is “high”.

Prof Meharg, reporting in the journal Environmental Pollution, said: “We are talking about a carcinogen that could be reduced in baby foods. From the results presented here, it is apparent that inorganic arsenic levels in baby rice should be of concern.”

A wide range of other rice-based products are fed to babies, like crackers, biscuits, crisped and puffed rice cereals, pasta, noodles and puddings.

In California and the Seville area of Spain, low-level arsenic rice is grown. In parts of India, rice contains no arsenic at all.

But other parts of Asia, Europe and America grow rice with much higher arsenic levels.

Yet Prof Meharg said that pure baby rice on sale in Britain was only labelled as manufactured in the UK.

Nutritionist Angela Dowden said: “I think manufacturers are going to have to start letting people know what levels of arsenic are in their products.”

Sugar the bitter truth

 

Sugar – The Bitter Facts

 

Fast releasing concentrated sugars including white and brown, honey, malt, syrup and glucose cause very rapid increase in your blood sugar levels and if this is not required for your energy needs at that time by your body it will automatically be put into storage and that means it will emerge as fat!

It is also important to understand that unlike natural sources such as fruit most concentrated forms of sugar have no vitamins and minerals in them, so basically they are no good to the human body at all in fact it is quite the opposite there is much damage to the body other than weight gain.

Too much sugar in the blood can mean that your body cannot make enough insulin, the hormone responsible for carrying glucose from the blood and into cells, so that can mean that the blood retains too much glucose and there is not enough going into the cells, if the body takes in too much Glucose as found in quick release carbohydrates the Pancreas will reach overload point and will not be able to produce enough insulin, even on a normal day to day basis and that is when Diabetes is recognised and patients are put onto a low sugar diet and medication to try and control it, so no cakes, no desserts, no white bread, no sugary drinks- no lots of things!

 

Slow release carbohydrates including, beans, lentils, vegetables*. Porridge oats, butter beans kidney beans, milk, yogurt, peas etc. Care should be taken when eating dried fruits as most of the water has been removed so the sugar becomes concentrated! And it is very easy to eat a couple of handfuls without realising its equivalent as whole fruits for instance a pond of grapes when turned into raisins is about one handful, and a handful of dried apricots is about 8-10 whole fruit, but even so as a snack the apricots are streets ahead to a Mars bar or its equivalent.

In his book The Optimum Nutrition Bible Patrick Holford call Alcohol the “Chemical cousin of sugar” and also upsets blood sugar levels. To control blood sugar levels (and lose weight) avoid all forms of concentrated sweetness such as sugar of any type, sweet desserts dried fruits, undiluted fruit juice and sweet snack bars etc, and start to eat foods that help to keep blood sugar levels even. So the advise to control blood sugar levels has remarkable similarities to the G.I. diet and the High fibre diet** and many other “unique” diets

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