🍯 Gimme some sugar

You may be consuming more sugar than you realize!

Author

Drew Howerton
May 10, 2023

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Hope you’re having a lovely week, friends.

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When talking about our diet, I typically prefer to discuss what to add rather than what to remove (e.g. protein, whole foods, fruits & veggies, etc.).

However, today, we’re highlighting the impact of removing or reducing one thing: sugar.

Coming from a guy with a Willy Wonka-level sweet tooth, this is a hard post to write, but one that must be done nevertheless đŸ«

If you’re interested and have the time, read the below “history” and “science” lessons. If you wanna skip to the action, scroll down past these boxes to the “What do we do?” section. I won’t hold it against you 💞

A brief history lesson

In the beginning, God created carbohydrates (among other things). These were found in foods such as fruits, vegetables, grains, and natural sweeteners like honey and maple syrup.

For countless generations, humans only knew the real sweetness of sugar when they came upon a bush of berries or beehive. Sweetness in nature was relatively rare. Plants have always had carbohydrates in them, but with low levels of sweetness.

Eventually, humans found and farmed sugarcane and began growing it as a crop to harvest its sweet goodness. This revolutionized the way food was made and how humans consumed sugar. Over the centuries, we started baking and making recipes and adding it to things. More sweetness than previous generations were used to, but still relatively rare and always accompanied by an array of other fresh, whole foods.

A bit further down the line (like just ~50 years ago), humans introduced high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) into our diets. This cheap way of processing corn down into its most basic components of glucose and fructose checked every box the food industry was looking for: cheap, easy, highly palatable, addictive, flavorful.

But HFCS also checked every box our body craves. And we got addicted.

Never before have humans had access to such intense, concentrated sweetness for so cheap. There were sweets and desserts prior to the mid-1900s, but not nearly to today’s scale or degree. HFCS basically unlocked our bodies’ addictive triggers.

You may have heard that sugar is as addicting as cocaine. That’s no joke. Ever seen a kid who’s grown accustomed to candy when they can’t have it? Like a drug addict! And they won’t rest until the craving is satisfied.

A little science lesson

There are three “macronutrients” in food from which we get calories: fat, carbohydrates, and protein. Carbs can be categorized into starches and sugars, though once broken down in the body, they’re all nearly the same. What we refer to as “sugar” is typically glucose, fructose, sucrose, lactose, or some combination of the above. Whatever form they come in, our body digests and breaks them down until they’re in the form of glucose so our muscles and organs can use the sugars for energy.

Thus, your “blood sugar” is the level of glucose circulating in your blood at a given moment. At high levels (hyperglycemia), sugar in our blood is poison and causes damage all around our body. At low levels (hypoglycemia), we also experience issues with function and cognition.

Our body produces hormones to regulate blood sugar. Put simply, the body releases insulin when blood sugar is too high, to send glucose into muscles or convert and store it as fat. If blood sugar is too low, we release glucagon to break down stored glucose (called glycogen) or tap into fat cells to access more fuel. That’s an oversimplification, but represents the big picture.

All that to say: MANY of today’s health ills are due to excess sugar consumption. It can lead to impaired insulin responses, systemic inflammation, and increases our risk of a whole host of diseases, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, some cancers, Alzheimers and dementia, hypertension, and more.

Dietary fat got a very bad rap over the past several decades, and wrongfully so. Thanks to questionable science, biased researchers, studies funded by specific companies in the food industry, and more, the general public received the message that consuming fat was bad and consuming copious amounts of carbs was healthy. So we followed that advice. And obesity in the US has quadrupled since the mid-20th century. Many of the top killer diseases in the US today (heart disease, stroke, diabetes, etc.) have only increased in prevalence as our sugar consumption has skyrocketed.

We now know that excess sugar and carbohydrates are responsible for so many of our health problems today, including high blood lipids (cholesterol, triglycerides). Yes, sugar consumption leads to increased harmful fats in our blood. This isn’t sugar from apples and blueberries and carrots and sweet potatoes. It’s the sugar in sodas, juices, candy, cereals, sweets, and other ultraprocessed foods that line the majority of our grocery shelves and pantries.

What do we do? How much can we eat?

The general recommendation is to consume no more than 50 grams of added sugar a day. Stated another way, it’s advised that we get no more than 10% of our daily calories from added sugar. There are 4 calories per gram of sugar, so 50g is ~200 calories.

Of course, ideally we’d all be eating no added sugars, but this recommendation at least gives us a concrete target to try to stay under. Keep in mind that “added sugar” doesn’t include the sugar naturally found in the produce you love. 🍉

You can find added sugars on every nutrition label below the Total Carbohydrates number.

For everyday reference, here are a few different common sweet treats and the amount of sugar they contain per serving or container. It’s
 more than a little. 😬

  • Coca-Cola (16 oz. bottle): 44g

  • Skittles (share size): 84g (21g per 1oz. “serving”)

  • Orange juice (8 oz.): 21g

  • Honey Nut Cheerios (1 cup): 12g (most people do not eat just one serving size)

  • Hershey’s Milk Chocolate (1 bar): 24g

  • Starbucks Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino (grande): 55g

As you can see, most things we consider sweet already have at least half, if not the full amount or more, of our maximum recommended daily added sugar.

What to eat instead?

Don’t fret, fellow sweet teeth đŸŠ·. I feel your pain. There are plenty of ways to get your sweet fix without going overboard on added sugar. Here are a few of my favorite suggestions for when you’re craving it:

  • Berries

  • Apple (with peanut butter? 👀)

  • Dark chocolate

  • Honey or maple syrup (in small amounts. I love a little maple syrup in my homemade coffee)

  • Stevia (use this liquid or powdered natural sweetener in place of sugar)

  • Chewing gum

  • Greek yogurt (with minimal added sugar. Can add berries/honey)

  • Dates

  • PROTEIN

On that last bullet point
 why protein when you’re craving sweets? Something I recently learned that changed my perspective on sweet cravings is this:

Often when we’re craving sweets, particularly at night, it’s because we didn’t get enough protein and other nourishment during the day. Our body really only has one “hunger” signal we can perceive, so we reach for the treats when we’re undernourished. If you frontload your protein during the day (at least 30–40 grams at breakfast and other meals), you’re much less likely to experience sugar cravings at night! For more info about protein, read this post I shared a while back.

We also know that stress can increase sugar cravings. A healthy outlet instead of reaching for the cake? Physical activity! Hydrate and move your body if you’d rather not go for the ice cream for the fourth night in a row 😉 

And if you do get that bread (with Nutella on top)?

Look, I totally get it. Sometimes, you just gotta TREAT YO SELF!

If you do go for the sugary treat, don’t beat yourself up. Enjoy it. Savor it. Don’t feel guilty about it. Life’s too short to shame ourselves and feel like {Hershey’s kiss emoji đŸ’©} every time we indulge.

If you want a little hack to blunt the insulin spike and subsequent crash, take a walk after eating! Just 10 minutes of walking after a meal or high-carb snack can significantly reduce those negative effects, because your muscles are able to immediately use the glucose that’s dumped in your bloodstream.

One other tip is to eat protein, fat, and/or fiber alongside the carbs. This also greatly reduces the blood sugar spike. SCIENCE! đŸ§Ș

Stay sweet, but not too sweet. That’s reserved for Ted Lasso. What a guy.

✅ Take Action

Every newsletter's Take Action section will invite you to take small steps to improve your health. Recognizing that we all have different capabilities, I'll offer three different levels of action you can choose to take.

Level 1: Start to look at the added sugar on ingredient labels. Knowledge is power!

Level 2: Every so often, replace one of your go-to sweets with a lower-sugar alternative.

Level 3: Keep your added sugars under 50g every day. If you eat a primarily whole foods diet, you really only have to mentally keep an eye on the amount of sugar in any treats you have. Might be easier than you think!

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Thanks for reading, sweeties :) I’ll do us all a favor and try to keep it shorter next week.

(famous last words)

Keep moving,

Drew

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The content in Move to Improve is meant to be informative in nature, but it should not be taken as medical advice. It is always a good idea to consult with a trusted health professional before making any major lifestyle changes that could have a significant impact on your health. This is not a medical resource, and any opinions and articles are not intended for use as diagnosis, prevention, and/or treatment of health problems. They are not substitutes for consulting a qualified medical professional. Please think critically and take what I say with a grain of salt (aka don’t sue me).