Publish at March 11 2024 Updated March 13 2024
No, we are not what we eat, otherwise we'd become vegetables by eating broccoli and turnips. However, we do shape our bodies and our longevity through our food choices and options.
Take sugar, for example. It's a food that many of us are fond of, but where a certain amount is acceptable and beneficial, excess can become lethal.
I'm going to refer, as I usually do, only to Wikipedia's definition to open up a few avenues. In this article, we take a look at all the effects, especially the negative ones; but why, when the problem is known, do we continue to eat sugar in excessive quantities?
"In 2001, a study confirmed that consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages was associated with obesity in children. In 2012, 23.9 million (or 31.8%) of US children were overweight, and 12.7 million of these were obese. In this country, in 2012 around $190 billion was spent annually in response to obesity-related problems, or 21% of all healthcare costs in the United States.
In 2013, Lisa Te Morenga and her team carried out a systematic review of studies on the relationship between sugar and body mass. They showed that in adults with no particular diet, a reduction in sugar consumption was associated with weight loss, and an increase in sugar consumption with a similar increase in weight. In children, the test results differ, but this is because requests for lower consumption of sugary foods and beverages have not been followed up properly. Those who consumed the most sugary drinks were, on average, 1.55 times more frequently overweight or obese than those who consumed the least.
However, it is difficult to draw conclusions about the specific effect of sugars compared with other energy sources. The weight gain observed in the studies could stem from an excess of calories, to which sugars and sweetened beverages may contribute".
We need sugar to live, but excess sugar makes us fat. In some countries, such as the USA, this social pathology particularly affects poor families. Food chains associated with our wallet are offered to less well-off families. It's not even a question of whether it's healthy or not; the pain point is on the wallet side. The same problem can be traced in the French overseas territories. There's also an obesity problem with slow sugars. In fact, some families can only afford white bread as a staple diet, and white bread is also fattening.
What can schools do about this problem? For a start, they need to be aware of the problem. A few days ago, I saw a video in which a French mother, relocated with her children to the United States, was making her children's lunches with healthy food - salads, fruit, yoghurt - and she received a letter from the school saying that it would be a good idea to bring her lunches into line with those of her children's classmates to avoid being discriminated against, i.e. to make fried hamburgers her lunch. This case is very interesting, because it talks about normality. Is the normality I am good for my health or bad for my health? Which is more important? Normality or the health of one's children.
Between poverty and normality, if school canteens can set an example, it would be a big step towards re-normalizing meals from a public health perspective. After all, obesity is associated with many of the pathologies we'll be looking at below.
"A vast European epidemiological study based on over 340,000 participants (from the EPIC cohort), published in 2013 in the journal Diabetologia, concluded that one can of soda a day is enough to increase the risk of type 2 (non-insulin-dependent) diabetes by around 20%, whereas nectars and juices if they are 100% fruit, seem to have no effect. The increased risk is not confined to obese people: it remains 18% after taking body mass index (BMI) into account.
According to the ANSES 2016 expert report, studies do not show a reduction in insulin sensitivity or the onset of glucose intolerance linked to sugar consumption. "Only a high fructose intake, of the order of 80 g/d leads to a decrease in the liver's sensitivity to insulin (risk of diabetes), without an increase in fasting glycemia [blood glucose level] (determining diabetes)".
Fructose was once proposed as the ideal sweetener for people with diabetes mellitus, as it does not stimulate insulin secretion. Since then, it has been proven that its consumption indirectly leads to an increase in cases of obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus. Excessive consumption also plays a role in the growing resistance to insulin and in the epidemics of obesity, hypertension, dyslipidemia (abnormally high concentration of lipids in the blood) and type 2 diabetes".
Diabetes is one of the scourges of our century. There are genetic predispositions, the poor diet mentioned above and, above all, the presence of sugar in almost all our packaged beverages. So what are we to think? One can a day of sugary drinks increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 20%. That's already enormous. But how many people and children drink 4 or 5 cans a day? There are a lot of them.
I have my son, who's super-thin, who drinks it. He doesn't drink sugary drinks, he drinks brands of sugary drinks. Why does he do that? Because that's what his friends drink. It's a social must-have. And the danger is that, over time, this social must becomes associated with an addiction to these same drinks. Are the manufacturers aware of this? Yes, they do, and they're counting on addiction to keep their consumers loyal.
It's the same kind of problem as with cigarettes or alcohol. We know that it's bad for your health, that it's going to lead to serious pathologies, with high hospital and drug costs, but at the same time, it's going to create thousands of jobs and entire industries.
So instead of limiting what should be considered a health hazard, all the decision-makers are letting it happen. What can schools do? Schools can play a role in prevention and awareness-raising. It's far from 100% effective.
If the cost of a bottle of mineral water is higher than the cost of those famous cans, the battle will be lost in advance. If drinking from cans is accessible to young people from poor families and makes them feel equal to others with more means, the problem is deeply rooted in social frustration. But if schools can prevent even 20% of all children at risk, that's already a first step. To do this, we need to inform, educate and set an example, which means no sugary drinks in school canteens.
"Although popular belief has it that the consumption of starchy foods is more important than the consumption of sucrose (a diholoside composed of fructose and glucose) in raising blood glucose levels, studies show that the way food is prepared (raw or cooked) has a major influence on the body's reaction to glucose levels.
Blood sugar problems began a long time ago. At a time when humanity was made up of hunter-gatherers accustomed to being nomads over vast territories. A population genetically programmed to eat fruit, mushrooms and meat. With sedentarization, this population began to stop moving, to settle down and grow cereals. From omnivores with a meat base, populations became omnivores with a cereal base.
While this transition took place over several centuries, let's not forget that our DNA transitions take place on the scale of millennia. Imagine domesticating a wolf and feeding it nothing but cereals? At some point, its metabolism will be in danger because it won't eat what it needs to live. Many of us have had the experience with our dogs and cats of ending up with a sick animal whose diet has to be changed because its body reacts badly to the usual food.
In fact, the same thing happens in some parts of the world where health insurance is not standard for everyone. So, if you can't afford health insurance, it's important to take preventive action. Eating pasta at every meal is not good for your health, it raises blood sugar levels and causes inflammation of the intestines, which can lead to allergic reactions like those caused by gluten. I don't give a very long life expectancy to some children in some poor neighborhoods in some cities of the world if they're allergic to gluten.
Instead of letting people eat whatever they want, we need to define the dosage of foods one by one to ensure positive nutrition and good health. Today, we allow junk food to multiply and we treat its effects with billions of dollars that overload hospital services. Why not reverse the system?
Another important related subject is processed and packaged food products. There are no laws to regulate their benefits or otherwise on the human body. The food industry has repeatedly launched harmful products, such as aspartame, as new food molecules that have seriously disrupted the metabolism of some people who today can no longer digest certain conventional foods because of some of these innovative foods.
A drug is tested for years before it can be marketed. A food, on the other hand, requires no authorization other than conventional health approvals.
For this complex subject, I appeal to research centers and their funders, independent of the food industry, to investigate certain social issues surrounding food products and their packaging, with a view to improving human health.
"In 2007, a research team from the University of Florida (Gainesville, USA), Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, USA), Ewha Women's University (Seoul, South Korea), the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution (Gainesville, USA) and the Instituto Nacional de Cardiologia (es) (Mexico City, Mexico) showed that sugar consumption, and fructose consumption in particular, plays an important role in the epidemic of cardio-renal disease. It seems that this is partly due to the fact that fructose increases uric acid levels (hyperuricemia, which plays a key role in the onset of these diseases)".
Fructose is the natural sugar normally found in fruit. Replacing sugar with fructose doesn't solve problems - on the contrary, it creates new ones, such as cardio-renal disease.
Where is fructose found? The fructose we consume on a daily basis is found in fruit juices, which are sweetened beverages because our standards for fruit juices impose a gigantic sugar content in every bottle. Ingesting an industrial fruit juice will generate glycemic peaks which will activate all the cells in our body, our heart... to the maximum and will induce an over-exploitation of our body over short periods.
It's a bit like driving a car: if you're a good driver, you'll be able to keep your car for a long time. If you speed regularly, you're going to damage your engine, and that can also lead to collateral accidents. It's quite similar.
What can the school do? The simple thing to do is to do what we do with babies: cut the orange juice with water. But it doesn't taste the same, so you have to get the pupils used to the different taste. Another solution is to create your own fruit juices as an educational activity, or buy from local producers who don't add sugar or make fruit juice concentrates. Banning fruit juices also means depriving yourself of vitamins. The important thing is to find the right balance. Fruit juice as an exception or reward should be promoted rather than made a dietary norm, at least in its sweetened version.
A vast "NutriNet-Santé" cohort study concludes that sweetened beverages are a factor in cancer, particularly breast cancer. All sweetened beverages have this effect, including 100% fruit juices. "An increase of 100 ml per day on average in the consumption of sweetened beverages, which corresponds to a small glass or nearly a third of a standard can [330 ml in Europe and 355 ml in North America], is associated with an 18% increase in the risk of cancer."
A third of a can and it's the great cancer obstacle course for 20% of consumers. It's gigantic. It's a major public health problem.
For a long time now, investigative journalists have been making the famous observation that food groups are interrelated with pharmaceutical groups. This means that the side-effects of unhealthy food, sugary drinks and the like benefit the other side of the equation, which is the pharmaceutical industry.
In the same way, here we're up against economic lobbies. If we ban sugary drink production lines, thousands of people will be out of work, and on the other hand, the pharmaceutical industry will lose out. Public health may improve, but it will actually harm the development of the pharmaceutical industry, which also generates billions in profits for shareholders and investors.
This kind of mutation can only be achieved gently. It takes 50 years to ban an industry. This was the case with asbestos, between the first observations, the ban and the compensation. We're just beginning the process for tobacco. But there are plenty of industries that know they'll have to shut down in the next few decades if they don't evolve.
But this way of doing things is a world turned upside down. The most ethical and useful solution would be to look at what's good and exclude what's bad.
The most effective thing is to inform families through schoolchildren, and to train future leaders who are more aware of the public good than of making gigantic profits on the back of public health.
"Some studies show a link between regular sugar consumption and an increase in certain markers of oxidative stress and inflammatory markers, including in children, according to several studies".
This is a subject in the making. We have some leads, some disease models such as celiac disease, but many of these are driven by the wellness community rather than the scientific community. Why is this? Because research is funded by industry. Because documentary films are financed by media sponsors, including the food giants.
As a result, very few studies have been carried out on milk and its inflammatory effects, for example, or on aluminum and why Alzheimer's patients all have high levels of aluminum in their brains.
"Hyperuricemia is a precursor to gout, the most common form of inflammatory arthritis in adult white American males, whose prevalence and incidence have doubled in the U.S. in recent decades at the same rate as the increase in consumption of sugary soft drinks (+61% in adults from 1977 to 1997). Gout can be triggered by the ingestion of purine and alcohol, weakly present in certain sweetened soft drinks, but also by certain sugars including fructose (the only carbohydrate known to increase uric acid levels).
More than a century ago, in 1893, Osler was already recommending a low-fructose diet as a means of preventing gout. More recently (2007), a study based on a panel of 14,761 North American adults confirmed that the risk of hyperuricemia increases with consumption of sweetened soft drinks, but not with unsweetened soft drinks or those sweetened with a sweetener (...).
In addition, fructose increases insulin levels, insulin resistance and adiposity. The increased risk in humans could be explained by the role of certain female hormones (estrogens) in protecting against hyperinsulinemia on a high-fructose diet. Orange juice, a common source of natural fructose, may also raise serum uric acid levels, according to this study".
Gout is one of the most painful diseases. It is genetic in many cases, and may be amplified by the ingestion of certain foods. In this case, fructose and the alcohol mentioned earlier. Men and women are not equal. It's better to be a woman, as female hormones protect against the onset of gout.
Orange juice, sold as a source of vitamins. In fact, as with sugary drinks, consumed in excess, it is a significant source of several pathologies, including gout.
"A study carried out in the USA and published in 2018 highlighted an unfavourable correlation between excessive consumption of sweetened beverages during pregnancy or early childhood and children's cognitive abilities (according to the KBIT-II test). Maternal and infant consumption of sweetened soft drinks shows the same trend. Conversely, maternal or infant consumption of fruit is correlated with better cognitive skills in infants and young children".
However, a distinction must be made between fruit juices and sweetened drinks. The cognitive abilities of the fetus will develop favorably or unfavorably depending on whether the mother drinks fruit juice or sweetened beverages. So, if we take a few points from the previous ones, it's not good to be poor in our society.
Access to low-quality food leads to obesity, diabetes, heart problems, blood problems, cancer, inflammation, premature aging, gout and cognitive weakness.
A study published in 2002 in the journal Neuroscience concluded that a diet high in fat and refined sugar reduces neuronal plasticity and learning capacity. However, according to another study published in 2008 in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, lipids, particularly unsaturated and omega-3, have a beneficial effect on cognitive function and neuronal plasticity".
Neuronal plasticity is linked to our ability to learn and regenerate the brain. As we age, this plasticity diminishes throughout our lives. But if this state of affairs is natural, problems with neural plasticity at age 4, 10 or 15 are not normal at all, especially during school periods.
Perhaps school restaurants, in addition to reducing sugar intake, can help their pupils' failing brains by cooking with unsaturated fats and omega-3s. It would be interesting to research all the foods that can boost neuronal plasticity and turn them into recipe books.
The brain, a dense and active network of neurons, constantly needs glucose (of which sugar is one source), but is unable to store it. Its supply must be continuous, thanks to the body's glycemic regulation system. Studies linking sugar and mental performance have mainly focused on glucose.
It has been shown that glucose administration can improve cognitive functioning, particularly short-term memory and attention. However, such administration leads to a peak in available glucose, with deleterious effects on long-term cognitive capacity. Conversely, available glucose peaks and troughs should be avoided, which can be achieved with a diet low in saturated fatty acids and low on the glycemic index".
Having a balanced diet, made with the right nutrients, and eating regularly are the basic rules for avoiding hyperglycemia or hypoglycemia. That's the basics, but there's also work to be done within families, and in terms of family budgets and the supply of the right foods to poor families.
A few weeks ago, Geneva voted in favor of the right to food for all. This marks the beginning of new ways of doing things and thinking about population management. Rather than treating the effects, the idea is to treat the source of the problems. It's an interesting idea to follow.
A study published in November 2001 shows that excess sugar consumption in rats induces addictive behavior similar to that of drug use. Other studies show parallels and overlaps between sugar consumption in animals and drug consumption, both from a cerebral and behavioral point of view. These include effects such as craving, tolerance, withdrawal and dependence. A 2007 study on rats shows that sugar has a higher addictive potential than cocaine. Some researchers warn against extrapolating these findings to humans".
We must remain cautious on these subjects, but everyone around us has witnessed the more or less violent fits of children who were refused sweetened drinks. When there's no more orange juice in your fridge, you feel a lack. It's an experience many of us have had. We need to dig deeper. Just as we need to explore the hypothesis that some people have more favorable conditions than others for the development of addictions.
Studies always take a long time, but if the results are confirmed, then we'll have to make important and radical decisions about these nutrients.
Some of the studies also show the involvement of highly sweetened drinks and preparations in cases of oxidative and inflammatory stress."
In effect, this means that ingesting sweetened beverages prematurely ages every cell in our body, and will therefore limit our longevity.
"An overwhelming majority of scientists associate sugar consumption with the onset of dental caries.
Three nationwide studies have compared the development of tooth decay in a population receiving less than 5% of daily caloric intake in sugar and a population receiving between 5 and 10%. These studies were carried out at the end of the Second World War, when sugar consumption fell from 15 kg per person per year before the war to 0.2 kg in 1946. This led to a reduction in dental caries".
Sugar and tooth decay have a long and toxic love affair. In fact, in many schools, oral hygiene checks are carried out as a matter of course as part of public health. The overall figures confirm this correlation, even if we are not all equal when it comes to tooth decay. In the same sibling with the same diet, one child may have all his teeth decayed, while his brother and sister may not.
Although sugar softens certain foods on the palate, its industrialization in the 19th century made it a common, inexpensive foodstuff which, when consumed in excess, keeps the medical services running at full speed.
Consuming sugar in moderation is part of our healthy lifestyle, which needs to find allies in canteens, schools, education, the reshaping of social models, as well as cheaper access to healthy foods that could replace this worldwide over-consumption of sugar.
Source Wikipedia - Health effects of sugar
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effets_du_sucre_sur_la_sant%C3%A9
Source Image - Pixabay - intheworld87
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