What is Sugar? Is it good or bad for you? Where do you find sugar? How much sugar should you eat? Ok in order to understand sugar, you have to understand what a Carbohydrate is. A Carbohydrate is a sugar or long strings of sugars called polymers. But wait I thought we are talking about sugar, yup we are still talking about sugar. See sugar molecules are the smallest molecule that cannot be broken down any further by our bodies. These sugar molecules or carbohydrates are the actual source of our energy like fuel to a car. When our body breaks food down it breaks sugar down to provide energy to our cells. The simplest sugars are glucose (found in your IV and in sports drinks). Your body immediately after eating glucose turns it into energy. Fructose is another simple sugar that is found in fruit. We are still talking about sugar. Now sugar as we know it (table sugar) is actually two sugar molecules stuck together which is called a disaccharide. Table sugar actually is comprised of a glucose molecule hooked up with a fructose molecule. Table sugar is known as Sucrose. Believe it or not Americans mostly consume their sugars through fructose (high fructose corn syrup) and sucrose (table sugar). So you see these simple sugars are essentially empty of any other nutrient that your body needs. If your diet contains a lot of these sugars, you are basically running on cheap fuel. Odds are that store bought processed item has High Fructose Corn Syrup as the first ingredient. Therefore you are giving your body fuel with nothing else to nourish your system vitamins, minerals, amino acids, nothing. It also directly leads to diabetes. Now we have not even gotten to the complex sugars or complex carbohydrates. Opposed to simple sugars as described above, complex carbohydrates are not single sugar molecules (monosaccharides) or double sugar molecules (Disaccharides) but long chains or polymers of sugars. Complex Carbohydrates such as potatoes, wheat, corn and rice are complex carbohydrates, specifically with starch. Starch is an especially long chain of sugars that plants use to store this energy only to be broken down when needed. Well for us humans, Glycogen is our starch and it is just like starch a huge chain of sugars but it is even a bigger chain at that. So when our diet consists of simple sugars found in everything that contains high fructose corn syrup or sucrose and also starch filled foods like bread, rice, and corn our body goes into sugar storage mode which tells our body to store energy (FAT!!!). It all boils down to this, sugar is the fuel that our body uses to create energy! If we eat the sugar which as you can see makes up almost everything, it is the basic molecule that creates our body to run, you should use that energy through exercise. If you do not use that energy your body then will store that energy into fat in your body. Once stored it is very very very hard to break down those huge polymers (chains) of sugar that your body has designed to only use in an absolute emergency (starvation). So don’t purchase processed foods that contain High Fructose Corn Syrup and don’t eat pastries and foods high in sucrose because they almost always contain high levels of saturated fat and do not have anything else to offer your body. Also, make sure that all of the sugar you intake from complex carbohydrates you burn through exercise, that means take the stairs, park far, ride your bike, and go to the gym when possible. This will launch you into a super high efficient machine!!! Fruits, bread, rice, corn are foods that are high in other nutrients that your body also needs. Therefore if you want to cut out something in your diet cut out simple sugars (empty food) and have plenty of the complex carbohydrates and plenty of exercise. Tune in for the next chapter on Protein. What is protein? Hope this helps Mayra!
Posted on: Mon, 28 Oct 2013 05:10:19 +0000
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