Cutting Sugar Improves Children's Health in Just 10 Days

Without any other dietary change, cutting sugar improves children's health in just ten days, according to a new study.

Although it may sound like a bad infomercial, a study financed by the National Institutes of Health has shown that cutting added sugar in children’s diets can improve their overall health incredibly quickly. Read more

The Bitter Truth About Sugar

Sugar is addictive, potentially harmful, and absolutely everywhere, but is sugar really a poison that should be kept out of vulnerable hands?

Recently an American doctor called Robert Lustig has been calling for laws that restrict sugar as if it were alcohol or tobacco. Like many people, I suspect, my initial reaction upon hearing this was: give me a break. Lustig, who thinks sugar is a dangerous poison, has considered several strategies. For instance, we could double the price of fizzy drinks, so children can’t afford them. We could get sweet shops to close in the afternoons, when children are going home from school. We could restrict the advertising of foods with added sugar.

We could even set an age limit for fizzy drinks, possibly 17, so younger kids can’t buy cans of Coke.

Dear me. Whatever next? It’s easy to understand the reasons for controlling tobacco and alcohol — these things are toxic and costly for everyone. If you smoke or get drunk, I end up paying your hospital bills; if you don’t smoke or drink, I pay less tax. So of course alcohol and tobacco should be restricted. Tobacco causes an array of diseases; alcohol can destroy your liver, and it also makes people shout and fight and vomit in the street. Both are addictive. Read more

Sugar Can Make You Dumb, Study Shows

According to a new study, eating too much sugar can make you dumb.

Eating too much sugar can eat away at your brainpower, according to US scientists who published a study Tuesday showing how a steady diet of high-fructose corn syrup sapped lab rats' memories.

Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) fed two groups of rats a solution containing high-fructose corn syrup—a common ingredient in processed foods—as drinking water for six weeks. Read more

12 Ways Sugar Consumption Accelerates Aging

It's sad but true: sugar consumption accelerates aging. Find out why.

The largest source of calories for individuals living in industrialized nations comes from sugar. Sugar increases insulin levels which promote fat accumulation and inflammation throughout the body. Sugar consumption and elevated insulin accelerate the aging process and create an environment conducive to degenerative disease.

The chemistry of sugar is based on the number of carbohydrates and includes monosaccharides, disaccharides and oligosaccharides. The most important monosaccharides are glucose, dextrose, and fructose. The primary difference in these deals with the way they are digested and metabolized. Glucose and dextrose are basically the same form of sugar. Many sugars can be identified by their characteristic "ose" ending.

Many of these sugars also combine to form complex sugars such as sucrose. Sucrose, typical table sugar, is a disaccharide (2 sugar forms) that is half glucose and half fructose. Meanwhile, high fructose corn syrup is 55% fructose and 45% glucose. Read more

Worried about Wrinkles? Then Stop Eating Sugar

Can sugar give you wrinkles? It seems that it can because high blood sugar levels react with collagen in the skin - in a bad way.

... Some skin experts believe that sugar is one of the worst culprits when it comes to ageing. The top part of our skin, the epidermis, is made up of four to five layers of cells, the outermost two of which are flattened and dead, and below it is a hive of activity packed with arteries, veins, lymph vessels and nerve fibres, oil-producing glands, sweat glands and two protein structures known as collagen and elastin, which act a bit like a body stocking, holding the skin together.

Collagen consists of bundles of interlacing protein fibres, which tend to run lengthways in the skin of the face and neck. White in colour, collagen has a great ability to absorb shock, giving the skin strength, resilience and firmness.

The view is that when blood-sugar levels are high — eg, when you have just eaten those mid-morning biscuits — a process called “glycation” takes place in the skin, which involves the blood sugar binding to the collagen fibres, making them harden. Read more