WHAT IS SUGAR?
Sugar is a type of carbohydrate; all carbohydrates are ultimately broken down into sugar, be it glucose, fructose, maltase, galactose, lactose, starches, or fibre. Some forms of sugar like glucose and fructose take less time to digest whereas other forms of sugar like starches and fibre are more complex and take longer.
DOES SUGAR CAUSE OBESITY?
Obesity is caused by energy surplus, which can be due to many reasons — lack of physical activity, increase in the volume of food intake, eating energy-dense foods etc. While many energy-dense foods contain sugar, it is important to note that sugar is just one of the ingredients. Foods like burgers, pizzas, pastries and chocolates are loaded with refined carbohydrates and fats. Hence, the weight gain attributed to sugar is actually due to extra calories eaten and not because of any special property of sugar. Also, sugar makes the food more palatable, which makes it difficult for people to stop eating or encourages overeating.Hence, obesity is influenced by multiple factors, and no single factor, including sugar, can be solely responsible for it.
DOES SUGAR CAUSE DIABETES?
Research on diabetes indicates that the main causes are: Excess body fat Inadequate physical activity Genetic predispositionHaving a significant amount of excess body fat/weight can increase diabetes risk by 90 times. If individuals in the obese category lose approximately 10 per cent of their initial body weight, it can significantly improve their blood glucose control. Therefore, weight management appears to be the most important therapeutic target for most individuals with Type 2 diabetes. Since sugary foods are generally energy dense, removing them from the diet could be a great strategy to manage weight. But this is just one of the ways, others being increasing physical activity, reducing the volume of food, and improving the quality of food etc.
CAN SUGAR, WITHOUT CALORIC EXCESS, STILL HAVE DETRIMENTAL EFFECTS?
Individuals who consume excessive amounts of sugar daily are ingesting a high number of calories without deriving significant benefits for their bodies. They are also building long-term eating habits. There is no inherent issue with sugar as a molecule. When sugar is ingested, it gets into the body and turns into glucose like many other forms of carbohydrates. The big difference here is that even if there is no big detriment to consuming sugar, there are benefits to consuming other carbohydrates. Sugar doesn’t have vitamins and minerals but other forms of carbs — whole grains, fruits, and vegetables contain many phytochemicals. We do not have specific RDAs for different phytochemicals but it is established that they are very important for the body. Even if someone is not necessarily overeating, the choice of having proportionally more sugar in their diet comes at the expense of excluding other foods that could have inherent benefits to them.
HOW MUCH SUGAR IS OKAY TO EAT?
According to the current Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA), the maximum recommended sugar intake is 10 per cent of total daily calories. For a 2,000-calorie diet, this amounts to 200 calories from added sugar, equivalent to approximately 50g of sugar. However, this does not include natural sugar present in fruits, whole grains etc. 50g of sugar in a day is the recommended “limit”. The emphasis is on the word “limit”, which means that we don’t have to aim at consuming this much sugar daily, it means that one should keep it under this threshold. Even though we have this cut-off, if one is looking to maximise their health or get healthier, the lower the number of added sugars, the better.
IS SUGAR A POTENTIALLY ADDICTIVE SUBSTANCE?
Most of the researchers found that there is no addiction to any particular nutrient or sugar compound to be specific. If humans were truly addicted to sugar as a substance, we would expect to observe cases of individuals buying bags of sugar and consuming it in large quantities. Instead, people are overeating things like ice creams, cookies, cakes and other treats. All these foods are indeed laced with sugar.
However, do people eat these foods because they have become chemically addicted to this one substance or is it because the food as a whole is delicious, has hedonic properties and is rewarding to the brain? When we consume sugar, there is a release of dopamine which we know is the neurotransmitter associated with rewards in the brain. This is the same neurotransmitter that is associated with drug abuse.
Although the same pathways are activated, the physiological changes and effects of dopamine release differ between sugar consumption and drug abuse. As per research, when the model rats consume sugar, dopamine levels increase sharply but soon they return to baseline and remain constant even as they consume more sugar. When we look at other studies when animal models are exposed to cocaine, the initial surge of dopamine doesn’t come back to baseline. Instead, it keeps increasing as the animals keep taking more and more of the drug.Therefore, the key term that is often looked at in such research is “tolerance”. Tolerance is the gradual decrease in responsiveness such that more of a substance is needed to give the same effect.
Also, no individual has reported any physiological changes or “withdrawal” type symptoms when the stimulus (sugar) is not there that alcoholics or drug addicts face. Therefore, it is safe to say that people can be compulsive around certain hyperpalatable foods and exert actions that indicate an addiction but neurologically it is not chemical dependence on any particular food ingredient.
TO CONCLUDE:
In the right amounts, sugar is simply a form of energy. The poison is in the dosage of sugar. It is also important to consider that health is multifactorial and depends on the overall lifestyle of an individual. When people are told to cut down on their sugar, it’s important to look at all sources of sugar in the diet. In most cases, complications stemming from excess sugar are due to the overconsumption of processed foods with added sugars such as sweet breakfast cereals, sugary beverages, cookies, muffins, snack bars, candy, and desserts, among others. So when cutting back on sugar, beware not of the banana, but do re-think the packaged foods with added sugars that find themselves in your daily diet.
Nutrimend is a diet consultancy clinic founded by Neha Patodia and Nupur Arya in 2015. They coach people on how to eat right so that they feel confident in their bodies and achieve their desired goals.