Sugar
About 12 years ago someone I respected strongly suggested that it would be a good idea for people to give up eating sugar. That it was toxic. This was several years before giving up sugar was popular, or I Quit Sugar was published, or all the ‘sugar is evil’ movies came out.
But something struck a chord in me back then. I was feeling a bit out of control with my eating, and I decided there and then to give up sugar. And for most of the last 12 years I have avoided foods with added sugar, and adding sugar itself to foods. The woman who suggested it lasted a few months before I saw her eating sugar again, but for me it became a way of life. I never stopped eating fruit, but my sugar cravings dropped off pretty quickly and I found it relatively easy to avoid, especially as I was also gluten-free.
However, a few months ago I was reading research around sugar, the difference between fructose and glucose and the way they are processed in the body, and the importance of adequate blood sugar for thyroid health, a good nights sleep, hormones and many other processes.
I realised I had been suffering from hypoglycemia for some time. The liver stores sugar when there is plenty in the bloodstream especially from easy to digest foods, ready for when there isn’t, such as when we sleep or between meals. Unless you aren’t eating much of it, then the liver’s capacity to do that diminishes. A low carb diet, a diet that avoids sugar including fruit, will mean the body has to break down proteins and/or fats to get its sugar, and this is a more complex process that involves hormones also related to stress.
I also remembered that shortly after I gave up sugar, I actually felt my metabolism slow down. Sugar had kept my metabolism going at a fairly high rate, and when I gave it up, I noticed a shift. While this may sound like a good thing, it isn’t really, because it’s a sign of a sluggish thyroid- and I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis soon after.
There are a whole lot of researchers out there who disagree with the low carb approach to eating, which causes the body stress. Sugar helps diminish stress in the body and we tend to crave it when we are stressed. I had not been listening for a long time.
The glycemic index is a rating of how quickly a food increases blood glucose levels. It goes from 1 to over 100 and anything over 60 is considered high GI. Pure glucose is 100+ on the scale. The GI scale is used to help people make good decisions to manage fluctuations in blood sugar levels, such as in diabetes.
Grains tend to be high GI. White bread is 75+, wholemeal bread is 74+, white rice 73+, brown rice is 68+. Boiled potatoes are 78+. Of course, when eaten with other foods including fats, the rate of release of glucose into the bloodstream is slowed down.
Many people who want to restrict sugar, also restrict fruit, yet eat grains. But mango is 51+, dates are 42+, orange juice is 50+, banana is 51+. Apples are 36+. Fructose, the main sugar molecule in fruit, is actually much lower on the GI scale (15+) than starchy foods which are high in glucose.
Ordinary table sugar is made up of a glucose and a fructose molecule. Its GI is 65+. Honey is 61+. When eaten along with proteins and fats- such as with milk, or in a dessert- these are slowed down even further.
So, I decided a few months back now to start eating sugar again. To stop with the stevia. To moderate the starches, although not avoid them altogether. To allow myself honey in my tea, and to eat homemade ice cream, orange juice, and to let go of extreme restriction around sugar.
I feel good. I feel well fed. I feel sweetness has been fully allowed back in my life. I feel nourished and nurtured.
I haven’t even swung back to binging on sugar, as I wondered if I might. I enjoy it, but I am not particularly craving it.
Sugar, and especially fruit, but also honey and normal table sugar, can be part of a balanced diet. Past generations valued these foods without the typical problems we attribute to them today…which might be more accurately blamed on modern processed vegetable oils and a processed food industry containing them.
Sugar is not evil. Demonising single foods rarely takes proper context into consideration, and probably causes plenty of food anxiety for those who are vulnerable to that.
Life is to be enjoyed, and it can be without compromising health.
Another point to be made here is that our ancestors highly valued sugar and honey when they could get it. And children have a natural propensity to enjoy sugar and naturally sweet foods. Are they so out of touch with themselves even when young, or did we perhaps get it wrong somewhere?
As always, everyone is individual, and check in with your own body.
