This information comprises one of the Jackie's Health and Diet Club leaflets
in the "Nutrition News and Review" series.
Obesity!
All foods provide us with energy (measured in calories). White sugar, sweets and carbonated soft drinks provide "empty calories"; they contain no fibre or complex carbohydrates, and won't fill you up. Cakes, biscuits and chocolate are usually high in sugar and fat, which is why it has been thought that sugar could cause obesity. The COMA Report didn't think that any one food could cause obesity; but the report did comment that sugar may contribute to "over-eating" generally.
Did You Know?
...We each eat the equivalent of about nineteen teaspoons of sugar every day...
...The amount of sugar we buy has almost halved in the last ten years,
but the amount we consume has not changed.
The reason is that most of the sugar we now eat is in processed foods and drinks.
Adding sugar to foods and drinks accounts for only a quarter of the sugar we eat...
...Half of the sugar we add to our food is to hot drinks like tea and coffee...
...In the UK we spend £48 million a year on artificial sweeteners...
There are several different types of sugar, of which sucrose (packet sugar), glucose (used in processed foods), fructose (the sugar from fruit) and lactose (the sugar from milk) are among the most common. None of them are bad for you in their natural, unrefined form, but extract any of them from the fruit in which they occur and you run into problems.
In its natural state, any fruit or vegetable contains small amounts of sugar bound up in a great deal of fibre. If you eat whole fruits, or fresh vegetables, you take a long time to digest that little sugar. Refined sugar, however, is pure calories without that buffering fibre. If you eat sugary snacks, a lot of sugar moves into the body as a single 'hit', which overloads the system. The blood sugar level shoots up, and body releases insulin, which tells the liver to store any excess sugar as body fat. The problem is that the insulin system wasn't designed to cope with these sudden surges of sugar, and it over-reacts. The liver 'mops up' most of the sugar, leaving your blood sugar level too low and you feeling hungry, lethargic and irritable. You end up craving for the one thing you shouldn't have - sugar.
Sugar addiction is particularly worrying because refined sugar provides only "empty calories". Whereas a pound of apples will provide around 175 Calories along with plenty of fibre, Vitamin C and potassium, a mere four ounces of boiled sweets contains around 350 Calories - twice the amount - and nothing else. The addiction, which can be mild or severe, weakens the immune system and can lead to adult-onset diabetes.
Artificial sweeteners, such as saccharin and aspartame, are often added to processed food as well as sugar (because so much sugar alone would make the food cloying and syrupy). They have, however, been shown to cause cancer or neural (nerve) problems in laboratory animals. The World Health Organization has recommended a limit for adults of 2.5ml per 1kg of body weight per day.
Children with Behavioural Problems
Children become conditioned to aquire a "sweet tooth", which makes it very difficult to interest them in foods that are healthier and less sweet.
Baverstock grant-maintained school in Birmingham has the first headmaster to understand how much of a problem sugar is in youngsters' diet. Roger Perk is persuading children to give up on junk food and to gradually introduce wholemeal bread, health foods snacks, fresh food and sugar free drinks into their diet. He is also helping the parents to use the same method at home.
Roger found that improving their diet can turn slow leaners and delinquents into budding brainboxes. Only 6% of his pupils used to get GCSE passes; now the school has an A to C GCSE pass of 33% and an A level pass rate of 73% - and 480 children fight for 240 first-year places.
At the age of forteen Stuart was one of his most difficult pupils. He had the reading age of a six-year-old, he would hit the other kids, shout and swear and try his hardest to be thrown out of class. He was addicted to cough sweets, bringing two packs to school each day and buying at least one more on the way home. For breakfast he had cornflakes with four spoonsful of sugar and a sweet orange drink. During morning break he'd eat his cough sweets and for school dinner he'd have chips, beans, jam tart and custard (all hidden sugars) with a glass of squash. For supper there were more chips. Roger adds: "Gradually we've replaced his sugar-loaded meals with healthier options and now he's a different lad."
The Goodness of Grains
(wheat and gluten intolerance)
Jackie's Health & Diet Club Home Page