When it comes to skipping dessert, I’m no different than most in that it’s generally a calorie cutting tactic. A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips as one of my girlfriends used to say jokingly back when both wore a size two and thought those rules applied to other people. Put me face to face with a slice of passion fruit cheesecake, and my willpower all but evaporates --long term negative consequences be damned.
It’s no big secret that too much sugar falls into the long term negative consequences category. It tastes great, but all those empty calories are standing between me and that size two. Well, let’s be reasonable, a size six is more like it at my age. But I was surprised to find out that the sugar I’m so generously adding to my tea, my cereal, and my dessert is affecting more than the size of my jeans –it’s giving me wrinkles too! It’s true. Apparently too much sugar damages the collagen in our skin, causing it to lose its elasticity, wrinkle and sag. And that’s not all, high sugar levels are linked to impotence in men, cancer, diabetes, heart disease and lots of other problems independent of the way I feel about how I look in a bikini. This woman claims there are 146 reasons why sugar is badfor you. But I haven't investigated all of them, so take that with a grain of salt.
As part of this program, I’ve had to do a lot of thinking about the sort of food I put into my mouth, and whether it’s giving me what I want. That is to say, using food as fuel for energy and good health, rather than immediate gratification. That’s why in addition to cutting out red meat, switching to fat-free dairy, and replacing enriched flour with only whole grains, all Lifestyle 180 participants are encouraged to root out added sugar.
Lifestyle 180 follows a pretty simple rule regarding sugar: Natural sugar in fruits and veggies is good. Added sugar is bad.
And by added sugar I mean: refined sugar, turbinado, raw sugar, honey, molasses, high-fructose corn syrup, maltose, dextrose, glucose, maple syrup … If it is sweet, has calories, and is not naturally occurring in a whole food ---it’s out. The only thing that is allowed is an occasional touch of agave nectar – which looks similar to honey, but I’m told is actually sweeter and has less calories.
Fortunately, I don’t have much of a sweet tooth anyway, so this hasn’t been all that painful. However, I did discover that when you try and eliminate ALL added sugar, you begin to find it almost everywhere. Take cereal for example – even the healthy looking bran ones almost all have added sugar. The other day I went grocery shopping, and I inadvertently bought Kellogg’s All Bran Bran Buds. That stuff looks pretty darn health conscious – but after I got it home, I turned the box over and read the label:
WHEAT BRAN, SUGAR, PSYLLIUM SEED HUSK, OAT FIBER, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, SALT, BAKING SODA, CARAMEL COLOR, SODIUM ASCORBATE AND ASCORBIC ACID (VITAMIN C), NIACINAMIDE, REDUCED IRON, ZINC OXIDE, PYRIDOXINE HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B6), RIBOFLAVIN (VITAMIN B2), FOLIC ACID, THIAMIN HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B1), VITAMIN A PALMITATE, VITAMIN B12, VITAMIN D, BHT (PRESERVATIVE), ANNATTO COLOR.
There’s sugar AND High fructose Corn syrup in the first five ingredients. I may as well have bought lucky charms.
And try finding a fat free yogurt or salad dressing without added sugar. Chances are if it’s fat-free, it’s guaranteed to have sugar in it. Sometimes a lot. The extra sweetness is supposed to make up for the missing fat, but who are they fooling? Do they think I’m eating fat free because I like it, or because I’m trying to cut calories. Hello???
Add to that pasta sauce, marinades, crackers, dried fruit ….. sugar, sugar and more sugar. It’s insane. Now that I am actually reading the labels of everything I buy, I’m exasperated. I can’t believe how much sugar there is in EVERYTHING.
My relationship with sugar in the past was one I always *thought* was fairly healthy. I added a couple packets to my tea. I had an occasional soda, sweetened ice tea or flavored water. My dried fruit and cereal had some sort of added sugar, and I had an occasional slice of cake, a cookie, or dish of ice cream. I didn’t think it made that much of a difference.
But I did a little homework and found this website describing how much sugar is in different foods. It gives the amount in teaspoons – so it’s a much better visual picture for most of us . A soda has 9 teaspoons of sugar. A fruit yogurt has 7 ½. A cupcake has 5. A chocolate bar 4 ¾. Pretty soon it starts adding up.
According to the USDA, the average American consumes an estimated 150 to 170 POUNDS (yes you read that right.. POUNDS) of sugar a year. Divide that by 365 days, and you get roughly a half a pound a day. A half a pound? Are you kidding me? That’s about 1 cup or 48 teaspoons. Sounds like a lot right? Surely, I don’t eat that much you’re thinking!
But let’s look at a typical day. Say you had some sugared cereal and milk, and a glass of orange juice for breakfast. ¾ of a cup of cereal contains 4 teaspoons of sugar, but who eats that? You know you eat at least 1 ½ cups out of those big giant bowls – so that’s 8. A 12 ounce glass of juice has 10 teaspoons. Then mid-morning you have a fat free fruit yogurt. That adds 7 and ½ teaspoons. At lunch you have a soda or a sweetened drink – that’s 9 more teaspoons. A sweet snack like a cupcake or chocolate bar in the afternoon before dinner (5), and another soda or sweetened drink at dinner (9). 8+10+7½+9+5+9 = 49½! And that doesn’t begin to count the sugar that might be in your salad dressing, pasta sauce, or added to some other part of your lunch or dinner.
I don’t know about you, but I have easily consumed that sort of food in a single day and felt GOOD ABOUT IT. OK, so maybe I regretted the cupcake or the chocolate bar, but I figured the cereal and juice wasn’t all that bad. The non-fat yogurt was healthy, and a sweetened iced tea or a soda for lunch and dinner was not the end of the world. Boy was I wrong. I don’t even want to think of the days I had cheesecake. Or seconds on the cheesecake.
And it’s not the cheesecake I regret, but what it’s doing to my body. All those refined sugars are causing rapid blood sugar spikes that put pressure on my pancreas to produce enough insulin to keep up. Sugar in my bloodstream is sticking to the cells that line the blood vessels and damaging them. As Dr. Roizen explained to me, the body’s natural repair mechanism is to cover up the damage by laying down a coating of LDL cholesterol. This cholesterol creates a hardening of the arteries known as atherosclerosis, and is the foundation of heart disease. There is evidence as well that sugar is working on raising my levels of LDL (bad cholesterol) and lowering the HDL (good cholesterol) , depressing my immune system and even feeding potential tumors.
And let’s not forget the wrinkles.