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- Parent Category: articles
- Category: Dietary Guidelines
- Published: Saturday, 11 March 2017 05:02
Sugar: More harmful to your health then you think
Despite what the mainstream media would like us to believe, sugar is not an innocent substance that gives us pleasure and causes no harm. Quite the contrary, I can think of nothing in the diet that promotes disease and aging more over the long term than excess sugar. The scientific evidence I have seen for the past 20 years has lead me to the inescapable conclusion that sugar is truly a dietary demon. The "sugar is bad for our health" message was lost during the media demonization of fats during the 1980s and early 1990s. But now it's high time to resurrect this important message and understand why eliminating sugar will help keep us young and vital.
Processed sugar is poison
Believe it or not, there are over 60 ailments that have been associated with sugar consumption in the medical literature. They include cancer, asthma, allergies, diabetes, heart disease, and many more.
Have you ever considered the fact that almost all of the degenerative diseases that plague us today were practically nonexistent just 200 years ago? According to a 1912 Journal of the American Medical Association article, cardiovascular disease, for example, was so rare that research wasn't even conducted on it until 1912--and that first study examined only four cases! So what has changed so dramatically between then and now to bring on devastating conditions like cardiovascular disease?
Without a doubt, the biggest change in our diets has been our sugar consumption. Yes, sugar--in the form of the refined white sugar known as sucrose, brown sugar, corn sweeteners, high fructose corn syrup, dextrose, glucose and maltose. Unfortunately, our bodies didn't have a chance to gradually adapt to this relatively new substance in our diets. Over the past two centuries, we have literally shocked our bodily systems with outrageous and ever-growing amounts of nutrient-robbing sugar.
The statistics speak for themselves. According to Dr. James Scala, at the end of the 1700s sugar consumption was less than 20 pounds per person per year. By the end of the 1800s, sugar consumption had risen to 63 pounds annually. Now, 100 years later, the average American eats 152 pounds of sugar each year!
As sugar consumption has risen, so too has the incidence of degenerative health problems. This pattern has been observed not only in the United States but in every society studied. Half a century ago, researcher Weston A. Price observed countless cultures from the Arctic to the tropics and noted that physical degeneration and diseases developed in those societies over a period of a single generation once refined sugary carbohydrates were added to the diets.