What’s wrong with gluten, dairy, and sugar? Part 3 – sugar.

You know that scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory -- the original, not the creepy Johnny Depp remake -- where the doors open and all of the children frolic into a land where everything is made of sugary deliciousness, including a chocolate river?  That is my fantasy!  I would drink from the chocolate river, just as Augustus did and I wouldn’t care if I fell in.  In fact, I would jump in and drink my way out.  Oh sugar, how I love thee.

It breaks my heart to have to utter ill words about my sweet sugar, but here goes.  In my last post about dairy, we discussed how when insulin levels are constantly elevated, sugar finds its way into your fat cells where it is stored as fat.  EEEK!  Wait, it’s sugar that is stored in my fat cells not fat?!  Yes.  “Sugar promotes fat storage and weight gain,” according to Mark Sisson of Mark’s Daily Apple (1). Why?  When you eat something that prompts an insulin response, insulin removes sugar from the blood stream and stores it.  First, it shuttles it into your muscles and liver.  Once those areas are full, it shuttles it into your fat cells.  When you have constantly elevated insulin levels from eating too much sugar, the only place left for the sugar to go is into your fat cells where it is stored as F-A-T.  Additionally, it decreases your body’s production of a hormone critical for appetite regulation (leptin).  Have you ever noticed how hungry you are 20 minutes after you’ve gulped down your venti mocha?  

Gary Taubes, author of Good Calories, Bad Calories and Why We Get Fat: And What To Do About It, wrote an article in the New York Times entitled “Is Sugar Toxic?”  In it, he discusses a lecture given by Dr. Robert Lustig, a specialist on pediatric hormone disorders and the leading expert in childhood obesity at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine.  According to Taubes, “if Lustig is right, then our excessive consumption of sugar is the primary reason that the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans have skyrocketed in the past 30 years.”  Further, “if Lustig is right, it would mean that sugar is also the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles -- heart disease, hypertension, and many common cancers among them.”  Taubes explains that Dr. Lustig’s use of the word “sugar” includes BOTH cane sugar (white or brown) and high fructose corn syrup.  This is an important distinction, because most people view cane sugar and corn sugar as two separate sugars.  If you have time, and want to hear Dr. Lustig’s compelling argument, watch “Sugar: The Bitter Truth.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

That post made me die a little inside. 

(1) – http://www.marksdailyapple.com/the-definitive-guide-to-sugar/#axzz22RGZIeQP

(2) – http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?pagewanted=all