Natural Sugar vs.Refined Sugar
The AHA (American Heart Association) recommends 24g of sugar per day for women and 36g per day for men. However, there is no nutritional need or benefit that comes from eating added sugar.
Sugar
Sugar can be found in pretty much everything we eat now. It not only adds an enjoyable flavor, but a sweetness that we can not resist most of the time. It is a comfort food that makes us all feel better. However, some sugars do more to our bodies than just give an enjoyable and satisfying taste. Sugar can actually negatively impact our health especially when we over consume it! Over consumption of sugar is a huge contributing factor to the creation and development of many leading chronic diseases and disorders in America right now. Due to its pleasant smell and taste, many of us ignore the drastic negative health complications that can come with sugar when we consume a lot of it regularly.
Processed/Refined Sugar
Three foremost nutrients supply our body with energy: carbohydrates, protein, and fat. (Sugar is the generic name for carbohydrates). It provides the body with energy (calories) when consumed and metabolized. Now, there are many different sugars. 56 different types to be exact. All of these are used in food manufacturing currently and are not always obviously named ingredients listed on labels. The most common processed/ refined sugar used in food is sucrose or regular table sugar. Table sugar comes from a plant called sugar cane, which is high in sucrose. (Sucrose is a molecule easily broken down in your body that causes spikes in blood sugar levels). Syrups for example have added sugars that have been extracted from carbohydrate rich foods and then dissolved in water at high concentrations, making them very sweet.
Another processed sugar used comes from fruit juice concentrates. They are produced by removing most of the water from a fruit juice, leaving a high amount of concentrated syrup substance that is then used in our foods. It is important for us to know ingredients and understand labels on our food because the food industry likes to market sugars as more natural than processed with uniquely different names. For example, agave nectar, coconut sugar, organic cane sugar, and date sugar are refined sugars of this sneaky selling practice.
Pictured above is the sugar cane plant. Aside from being used for refined sugar, sugar cane can be juiced! It is full of antioxidants and helps strengthen teeth, tooth enamel, and helps the immune system stay healthy. The cultivation of sugar can as been around since ~8000BCE.
Natural Sugar
Naturally occurring sugar comes from foods such as fruits, nuts, and vegetables that have naturally occurring sugars (fructose and glucose). These sugars are considered natural sugars because it is part of the food matrix as it grows in nature. Fructose is the primary source of sugar in fruit that our bodies are able to metabolize correctly and slowly, unlike processed sugar. Studies have found that fructose does not trigger the same release of insulin as glucose does to help remove sugar out of the blood stream, meaning that natural sugar in fruit does not cause your blood glucose levels to spike as high as processed/refined sugars do so the release and production of insulin is not in drastic amounts.
Many believe that over indulging in natural fructose and glucose can lead to weight gain. It can, however weight gain can happen when over eating almost any food. With fructose, weight gain happens due to our bodies turning excessive amounts of it into fat . When this happens, our body stores the fat in fat cells as energy reserves which then gives a person more fat mass that can become visible and identified as weight gain. With fructose being able to cause weight gain, many stay puzzled on how sugar in fruit is healthy for them and they try to avoid fruit all together. This is not a healthy approach!
Natural sugars are found in plants that grow for us to eat and act as medicine for us to consume daily. Research studies have seen that the source of fructose can have a role in how it affects our bodies. For example, a study published showed that sugar from fruit does not have the same detrimental effect on creating out of range blood glucose levels unlike refined sugars. Another study found that due to our bodies slowly metabolizing natural sugars compared to rapidly metabolizing refined sugars, people are less exposed to developing health risk like diabetes, heart disease, and cancers from sugars consumed in their natural form.
In all, sugar in any form should never be over consumed if you want to live a healthy and happy life. With understanding the difference between natural and refined sugars, hopefully you will be able to begin paying attention to the added sugars in the foods you eat and begin to pick up healthier eating habits like fruit everyday instead of fruit flavored snacks packed with sugars.
A cup of sweet cherries is 97 calories and contains vitamin c, potassium, fiber, natural fructose, and many other nutrients that a pack of artificial cherry flavored candy could never offer.
