No more licorice rasps! Sugar is insidious, sugar is poison, but we consume it every day, whether out of boredom, comfort, emotionality or habit. Now let’s put 7 facts on the table that you definitely didn’t know about the sweet sin.
Who does not know it? Just one more move and the foam rubber pack is empty. Sugar is a temptation which, like the snake in Paradise, throws itself at us insidiously and which is difficult to oppose. The sweet poison is everywhere and hides itself, even in the oh-so-healthy tomato passata. But there is a way out of the sugar trap: the more you know about the enemy, the better you can control them! Here are our seven facts about sugar.
Fact # 1: Sugar is everywhere – even in pickles
Sugar is an integral part of our diet; a simple food that doesn’t go bad. According to Statista, Germany put the per capita consumption in 2018 at around 34.8 kilograms – this corresponds to a daily sugar dose of around 95 grams . The World Health Organization recommends a daily sugar intake of around 25 grams .
If we were to ban all sugary foods from the supermarket shelves, only about 20 percent would be left. A look at the nutrient table often reveals terrifying things. Even a Piccoli bottle of sparkling wine contains 22 grams of sugar, in tomato sauce around 25 grams and even in pickled cucumbers around 12 grams of sugar per glass. To make matters worse, there are around 55 sugar substitute terms , such as dextrose, caramel syrup and lactose, which you also have to pay attention to.
Fact # 2: Sugar makes you happy – and addicting
The processing of sugar begins in the mouth. As soon as one of the ten thousand taste buds suspects a single sugar crystal, the body begins to release dopamine ; this happiness hormone is sometimes responsible for insatiable cravings .
In addition, increased sugar consumption triggers an immediate, physical stress reaction, because adrenaline and cortisol flow through our bloodstream – in a sense a “high” state that is addictive. And one more thing: Sugar affects our immune system by preventing white blood cells from working.
Fact # 3: Insulin can attack the liver
In the gastrointestinal tract, sugar is divided into glucose and fructose. Glucose in the blood is called blood sugar, and this is what causes the pancreas to produce the hormone insulin. Insulin acts like a taxi and brings the glucose into the cells of the organs and muscles, where it is also supposed to be burned. So far so good.
But the more sugar is consumed, the more insulin taxis are buzzing around, the more glucose is blocked by the overburdened organs and the more superfluous energy is stored in the fat cells. Only when the insulin level drops are fat deposits used as an energy source. Ideally, at the end of a meal, the satiety hormone leptin signals when we have eaten enough, but insulin can block this message. The result: we overeat.
It doesn’t work entirely without the metabolic hormone insulin, but if we have too much of it, it overloads the liver and it no longer reacts to the hormone – so-called insulin resistance . This is a vicious circle: the pancreas then releases even more hormones, which means that even more fat is stored. Fatty liver and other organs. When the pancreas burns out and can no longer produce insulin, type 2 diabetes occurs.
Many healthy, low-sugar nutrition tips can also be found on Instagram:
Fact # 4: is fructose automatically good sugar? Are you kidding me? Are you serious when you say that
Ordinary table sugar consists of equal parts glucose (grape sugar) and fructose (fruit sugar). Fructose is twice as sweet as glucose, but is on par with four kilocalories per gram. Glucose is the basic building block of most carbohydrates and can be metabolized relatively well in the body; it causes the blood sugar level to rise and thus stimulates the insulin to equalize the level again.
Not so fructose. That sounds like fruit and therefore healthy, but unfortunately this is not an acquittal. Fructose is ignored by the insulin taxis and makes itself and almost immediately on its way to the liver, the only organ that ingests fructose. Unless you’re a high-performance athlete, the excess fructose in the liver turns into fat. The human organism can therefore not do so much with fructose in large quantities and often promotes abdominal pain and flatulence.
However: Don’t be afraid of fresh fruit and the fructose from it. The fiber it contains reduces the conversion of sugar to body fat; only when juicing can this fiber be lost.
Fact # 5: Hidden Sugar in Juices
At first sight completely absurd, but that is the bittersweet truth: Apple juice is just as sweet as cola. The only difference is in the type of sugar. Cola consists of industrial sugar, apple juice of fructose. Now an apple a day is healthy, but one liter of apple juice contains around 1.4 kilograms of apples – a person could hardly eat that much at once.
In general, fruit juices should be the exception rather than the rule in the diet. They promise quick vitamin intake, but they are real calorie bombs. As with apple juice, it takes a lot of fruit to make a small amount of juice. So hands off and rather drink water!
Fact # 6: Brown sugar is no healthier than white sugar
It’s more of a wishful thinking that brown sugar is healthier per se. The color alone has nothing to do with the quality, it is just the precursor to white sugar. Its brown color is due to the fact that the fine crystals have not yet been freed from natural syrup residues or have even been subsequently colored with such.
Unrefined sugar is considered to be containing minerals, but only by one percent. What is actually rated a bit healthier is brown whole cane sugar because it contains most of the minerals.
Fact # 7: Diet and light products don’t help you lose weight
Some diet plans refer to light products , but just because it says “light” does not mean that they contain no sugar. Often sweeteners are used instead, which, like sugar, also stimulates insulin production. An almost equal misconception is that dark chocolate contains less sugar than whole milk chocolate. The bitter taste does not come from less sugar, but rather from bitter cocoa, which is much more noticeable. However, dark chocolate has one advantage: it makes the sweet tooth fade faster.
