It is true that sugar (glucose) is essential for life. Whenever the body needs energy, glucose provides it. Unfortunately, one need not eat sugar or even large
amounts of carbohydrates to produce it. In order to banish sucrose, fructose, and HFCS reading labels is imperative. Common table sugar (sucrose) breaks down during digestion into the simple sugars glucose and fructose. Research indicates that it is the fructose part of sugar that is the most harmful especially for growing children. When thinking in terms of ingredients to avoid, remember that according to Dr. Robert Lustig, Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, sucrose, fructose, and high fructose corn syrup (hfcs) all affect the body identically, re how they are metabolized and impact satiety. High fructose corn syrup doesn’t cause the pancreas to produce an insulin or leptin response. Leptin is a hormone that comes from fat cells and signals the brain to stop eating. This important response fails to occur because there is no cell receptor for fructose on the beta cell that makes insulin. Thus, if insulin doesn’t go up, leptin doesn’t go up and the brain is not signaled. The point to remember is that only the liver can metabolize fructose because the body sees it as something foreign.
Gary Taubes, award winning science writer and author of Good Calories, Bad Calories, calls HFCS the most “lipogenic” fat procucing carbohydrate for simple reason that it tends to get converted to fat more than any other type of carbohydrate. Food manufacturers are only too happy to comply with the low-fat regime by cutting fat out and adding HFCS in order to make their products palatable. Unfortunately, this dastardly substance is no longer confined to the low-fat aisle, but has proliferated to the majority of products found in the grocery store. The unabated rise of obesity, Type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension has much to do with increased consumption and prevalence of sucrose, fructose, and HFCS.
Reaching for a diet soft drink sweetened with aspartame will not solve the problem either. Interestingly, natural practitioners see it as a poison and traditional ones see it as playing a pivotal role in weight loss, due to its zero calories. Dr. Sandra Cabot, a liver function specialist with over twenty three years of experience, confirms that aspartame causes weight gain. The liver breaks it down to its toxic components which stresses the liver. As a result, the liver cells have less energy for fat burning and resort to fat storing. That is not even the worst of it, Dr. Betty Martini of Mission Possible International (warning the world off aspartame) notes that, “Aspartame destroys the nervous system, the brain and optic nerve, and ravages every organ in the body. This poison is one hundred and eighty times sweeter than common table sugar. Of all the food additives approved by the FDA, aspartame accounts for over eighty percent of all health complaints. In the majority of cases, health can be restored by simply eliminating aspartame from the diet. It masquerades under the names Equal, NutraSweet, and Spoonful. Gradually, begin by eliminating the number of diet sodas consumed, replace with stevia sweetened drinks, add real milk, and kombucha into rotation. Not only does kombucha have many health benefits, but it is a true thirst quencher.
