Friday, January 2, 2015

Food Lie #10, Sugar is Bad Because it Contains “Empty” Calories

12. Sugar is Bad Because it Contains “Empty” Calories

Many think that sugar is unhealthy just because it contains “empty” calories.
This is true… sugar contains a lot of calories, with no essential nutrients.
But this is really just the tip of the iceberg.
Sugar, mainly due to its high content of fructose, can have severe adverse effects on metabolism and set us up for rapid weight gain and metabolic disease (102).
When we eat large amounts of fructose, it gets turned into fat in the liver and is either shipped out as VLDL particles, or lodges in the liver to cause non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (103, 104).
Studies in humans show that excess fructose can lead to insulin resistance, elevated blood sugars, elevated triglycerides, increased small, dense LDL and increased abdominal obesity in as little as 10 weeks (105).
Fructose also doesn’t lower the hunger hormone ghrelin and doesn’t affect satiety in the brain in the same way as glucose. This way, sugar causes a biochemical drive in the brain to eat more and get fat (106, 107, 108).
This applies to fructose from added sugars, NOT the natural sugars found in fruits.
When consumed in excess, added sugar is associated with multiple diseases, including obesity, heart disease, type II diabetes and even cancer (109, 110, 111, 112, 113).
Sugar is probably the single worst ingredient in the modern diet.

Bottom Line: The harmful effects of excess sugar go way beyond empty calories. Sugar can have severe adverse effects on metabolism, leading to weight gain and many serious diseases.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/13-nutrition-lies-that-made-the-world-sick-and-fat-2013-10?op=1#ixzz3NhZ2NaD7

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