Weight Loss and Sugar Drinks
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One of simplest and most impact weight loss, weight management and longevity supporting behaviors you can do is simply to not consume sugar drinks.
Most of us are probably aware that sugar-laden liquids do not help with weight loss. Knowing sugar drinks are the enemy of weight loss, we still drink them anyway. They simply taste good and the flavor can be habit forming
Our aim with this article is to up the ante for your motivation to get off of sugar drinks.
In this article, we will look at the true impact on your body resulting from consuming sugar drinks.
The damage to your body from drinking liquids that concentrate sugar goes far beyond a weight loss issue. Let’s look at what they are, and then dive into the detail behind each of the following points.
In addition to the issues sugar drinks present with weight loss, here are the top 6 things consuming sugar drinks will do to you.
- Sugar drinks accelerate the aging process
- Sugar drinks concentrate fat storage in the abdominal region
- Sugar drinks promote lepton resistance
- Sugar drinks promote insulin resistance
- Sugar drinks promote inflammation
- Carbonated sugar drinks promote osteoporosis
Before we dive into why all of this occurs from regular consumption of sugar drinks, let’s first define what I mean by sugar drinks. Unfortunately, we don’t limit the discussion to soda pop. By sugar drinks, I refer to drinks that do 1 or all of 4 things.
1. Concentrate corn syrup, or high fructose corn syrup
2. Concentrate fructose
3. Concentrate sucrose, or table sugar
4. Have a very high glycemic load –
(Glycemic load measures the total impact on your blood sugar from what you eat, where glycemic index measures the rate at which different types of foods increase your blood sugar.)
We have to expand the list of what constitutes sugar drinks beyond soda pop to include sports drinks, many ‘energy’ drinks and even fruit juice! But fruit juice is natural, right? Why should that be considered a sugar drink? The answer is that fruit juice concentrates sugar in the form of fructose. In fact, one set of studies attributes the obesity intake in the U.S. to consumption of liquid fructose1, i.e. fruit juice!
In order to understand why sugar drinks impact our bodies in such a harmful way, we first need to consider that what we think of as sugar is really a processed food. What you get in nature is the sugar cane stalk. Try eating one. Not easy. What you get on your table is something that goes through a tremendous amount of processing that strips out all of the fiber and concentrates the glycemic load of the sucrose that was once in the cane sugar.
The central problem related to processing natural sugar bound to fiber into pure sucrose, concentrated fructose or corn syrup, and then stripping out fiber is it alters the rate of absorption and the caloric density.
Rate of absorption refers simply to how FAST sugar gets dumped into our blood. Processed sugars, without fiber to slow digestion, get dumped into our blood VERY FAST.
Caloric density refers to how much energy we can pack into a given volume of food. Think of oranges versus concentrated orange juice. It takes 7 or 8 oranges to equal the caloric density of a single glass of orange juice.
Rate of absorption combined with caloric density = glycemic load. Sugar drinks deliver a very high glycemic load.
How Sugar Drinks Accelerate Aging.
Chronic intake of sugar drinks is linked to developing insulin resistance. With insulin resistance, you have chronically elevated levels of glucose in your blood. Recent research into aging, diabetes, and oxidative stress shows that chronically elevated levels of glucose in your blood creates an environment where 2 things happen
1. A study out of UC San Francisco in 2003 established that chronically high levels of glucose are associated with increased production of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Elevated ROS production is a fundamental cause of accelerated cellular damage and decay.
2. Chronically high levels of glucose are associated with inflammation, specifically increases in C-reactive protein, and a key inflammation marker. Inflammation is associated with accelerated cellular aging.
In short, regular consumption of sugar drinks exposes your body to doses of sugar that promote inflammation and oxidative stress. Inflammation and oxidative stress hasten aging at a cellular level.
Part 2 tomorrow...How Sugar Drinks Wreck Your Metabolism
Reference:
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Jean Mayer US Department of Agriculture Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging
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