Re: Is Sugar the bad boy it's made out to be?
Originally Posted by
OldGreyFox
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I had been reading about how sugar ends up being a negative addition to the energy levels of the body;
i.e. It takes more energy for the body to process it, than the energy received from it.
If this is true, how on earth will you get fat from eating it?
Hi OGF !
Your observations are good and so are the questions.
To wonder is to begin to understand
The answers concern how sugar is metabolised and how long the process takes.
When you eat sugar more or less on its own or without any kind of fibre, it is absorbed extremely quickly and sets up the chain of processes where it is converted into glucose, then insulin is released.
When insulin is raised, even slightly, it activates the enzyme LSL, which in turn tells glucose and fatty acids to enter the fat cell where they are joined together to form a triglyceride (fat). This newly formed fat molecule is too big to escape through the fat cells outer membrane. This is why our bodies go into fat storage mode when we eat carbohydrates, it is our bodies way of lowering blood sugar levels so we don't become hyperglycemic
When you eat an apple you are eating the equivalent of 5 teaspoons of sugar, which sounds horrendous, but turns out not to be because the fact that you are eating the whole apple, means you are eating fibre to and that slows down the digestion process giving the body more time to deal with the sugar properly.
When carbohydrates are eaten with a protein, or a fat (also fiber), it slows down how quickly the glucose is converted to blood sugars, this lessens the amount of insulin needed to combat the increase in blood sugar
The quotes above are from the following useful article:
http://www.mynormalweight.com/blog/2...r-metabolized/
The upshot of this for me has been to recognise and understand that I CAN eat sugars that are fond naturally in food provided I eat the whole item as nature created it.
Therefore eating an apple is ok.
Conversely drinking apple juice imo is not ok because the manufacturer has taken away all the fibre and other stuff and left you with just the juice and sugars. Same for orange juice.
Sugar in its raw form (i.e. white refined table sugar) I never touch at all and deem it to effectively be poisonous to my body.
It follows that eating cakes and biscuits is equally bad because again you are not taking in proteins or fibre along with the sugars, tho I confess I still eat some !
This was a complete mind set change for me.
I used to by cartons and tins of simple chopped tomatoes to use in things like pastas and chilli. Then I looked on the packet and saw how many teaspoons of sugars were in there.
The product is processed in some way imo so now I have stopped buying them. Instead I now make my own tomato base sauces very simply by chopping up ENTIRE tomatoes, heating them in a saucepan with a bit of garlic and a few basil leaves thrown in, nothing else. The whole thing quickly breaks down into a nice mush which I then throw into a blender.
The result is a lovely natural healthy tomato base which can then be frozen in portions.