Simple Nutrition Insights

The Real Deal on Sugar and Simple Health Hacks

• Leonila • Episode 55

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What if you've been misled about sugar's role in your diet all along? Join Leonila Campos, a registered dietitian, on the Simple Nutrition Insights Podcast as we uncover the hidden truths about sugar and its profound impact on your health. First, we break down what sugar really is, including its various forms like glucose, fructose, and sucrose, and explain how these sugars naturally occur in foods such as fruits, vegetables, and dairy. We'll help you distinguish between natural sugars, which come packed with essential nutrients, and added sugars often found in processed foods and drinks. Learn why consuming high amounts of added sugars can trigger blood sugar spikes, increase insulin production, and potentially lead to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes over time. Discover how natural sugars and fiber can help stabilize your blood sugar levels, promoting better overall health.

Ever wonder how much added sugar is safe to consume? In the next segment, we'll discuss the American Heart Association's recommendations: just 6 teaspoons for women, 9 for men, and none for children under 2 years old. We'll guide you through the often-overlooked sugars hiding in common foods like sauces, dressings, and peanut butter, sharing practical tips for reducing your intake. From choosing whole foods to swapping sugary drinks for healthier options, we offer realistic strategies to help you manage cravings and make better dietary choices. Understand the impact of high fructose corn syrup on liver health and get empowered to opt for natural sugar sources from fruits, vegetables, and other whole foods. Tune in for actionable insights and take control of your health and well-being today!

Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to this podcast and share with a friend. If you would like to know more about my services, please message at fueledbyleo@gmail.com

My YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0SqBP44jMNYSzlcJjOKJdg

Speaker 1:

Hey, hey, welcome back to another episode in the Simple Nutrition Insights Podcast, where we dive into all things nutrition, fitness and wellness. I'm your host, leonie Lacampos, registered dietitian, and in today's episode, we are going to talk about something that, in almost everything that we eat, is found. This is sugar. Specifically, the truth about sugar and how it impacts our health Is it really as bad as people say? Should we cut it out completely? We're going to answer these questions today, so stick around, because you won't want to miss this one. So let's start with the basics. What is sugar? Sugar is a type of carbohydrate that comes in many forms, such as glucose, fructose and sucrose. It is found naturally in many foods, like fruits, vegetables and dairy, but it is also added to a lot of processed foods and drinks to enhance their flavor. So you not only find it in your naturally occurring food, right, because it's one of those ingredients that enhances the flavor of food and it makes it combined with other ingredients, it makes that specific product taste a lot better, and so it can definitely affect the amount that we eat, right? So it's important to think about how much sugar, how much added sugar, we're consuming, and so when we talk about sugar in our diet, right, and the foods that we consume. It is important to distinguish between the natural sugars, right, natural occurring sugars and the added sugars, because they're completely different, are not only going to give you sugar, right, but those foods are also going to give you fiber, vitamins, minerals, which, when you compare them to just added sugar, right, nothing else. It absolutely makes the food healthier, right, it's a better option for our bodies. And so the added sugar is where you're going to find them, right. So, surprisingly, you're not only going to find them in things that you think about like just sugary foods, like candy or sodas or cookies or cakes. You can also find it in other foods that you would not think that they're there, right, like marinara sauce or pastas or other sauces or dressings. Right, because, again, the combination of flavors makes those foods more desirable. So why do we care, right? Why do we care about the difference between the sugars and why does that matter? So it's specifically right asking ourselves this question what happens when we consume sugar? Well, sugar provides quick energy right for the body, but it can also cause blood sugar spikes, especially when consumed in large amounts. So when your blood sugar spikes, right, your natural response of your body is to release insulin to bring it back down. Right.

Speaker 1:

So let's say you eat something that is going to turn into sugar, right, and I want to make this distinction here. Pretty much everything that we're going to eat, right, with the exception of our fats, with the exception of our proteins right, our animal proteins it's going to turn into sugar. So part of it right, or some of it or all of it is going to turn to sugar or glucose, because that is the form that our body's needed for energy. Right For fuel. Obviously there's differences there in terms of where the sugar is coming from or the glucose. Right For fuel. Obviously there's differences there in terms of where the food is or where the sugar is coming from, or the glucose, right.

Speaker 1:

So when it comes to eating something, right that is going to have let's take an example when we eat an apple right, yes, it's going to have fructose, which is another form of sugar coming from fruits we're not only eating the fructose by itself, we're eating it as an apple, we're eating fiber, we're eating vitamins and minerals, and so the increase in blood sugar is not going to be as significant versus eating candy, because there's absolutely no fiber there no other nutritional value, so your blood sugars are going to spike rapidly. And so then what that does is that it triggers your pancreas, right, which is your organ that produces insulin, and it's going to say, hey, send the insulin. There's a lot of sugar, or there is more sugar than there should be in the blood. We need to get it out of the blood to take it into the cells, right. And so, again, if we have that consistently right, over time, we are overproducing insulin, we are overworking our pancreas, and so it does get to a point where our bodies are like okay, either not going to respond to the insulin we have insulin resistance, okay, either not going to respond to the insulin, we have insulin resistance, again, because we're having this consistent amount of sugar introduced into the blood system, right, or that can lead to type 2 diabetes.

Speaker 1:

But I want to make the distinction that diabetes itself, right, is not caused because you eat sugar. Sometimes it could be caused because of the increase in just in calories in general, that increase in food in general, because we're stimulating our pancreas, we're stimulating our bodies to try to break down all that food that we're consuming at once, to try to take it into the cells. So it's really important to remember that Not necessarily when you eat sugar that you're going to have diabetes, but consuming consistently higher amounts of sugar and this is more of your added sugars, right. Again, we have to remember that added sugars coming from just of your processed foods, right? Soda cookies, cakes, candy packaged foods versus our natural sugars, right, that are going to have again Soda cookies, cakes, candy packaged foods versus our natural sugars, right, that are going to have again the fiber. They're going to have these other vitamins and minerals. The fiber is what helps, right, with that slow increase in blood sugars and that stability of the blood sugars, instead of having like these roller coasters of blood sugars, like these roller coasters of low sugars, and so we definitely want to add more foods that have fiber.

Speaker 1:

So, keeping those things in mind for sure, right, and so what is also important is that a lot of research shows that the increase in added sugar not only impacts our bodies, not only impacts our blood sugars, our risk to develop obesity, heart disease, dental problems, but also it affects our mental health. But also it affects our mental health. So there's research shows that a high sugar intake can increase our risk of developing mood disorders, right, such as depression and anxiety, because of that increase in refined sugars that may trigger the release of inflammatory markers in the body which can affect our brain function. But not only that, right. There's a lot of other research that shows that that higher increase in sugary foods without adding our plant sources, without adding our fiber, it also affects our gut microbiota, and so I did an episode on that specifically, so you can go back to previous episodes and find that one specifically.

Speaker 1:

But our gut microbes live in our digestive system for specific reasons. Right, it's this symbiosis that we have with these microbes to keep us healthy, to keep us alive, essentially by us providing the fuel right, and the fuel is going to come from our fibers, which are going to come from our plant sources. So if we have a diet or our nutrition is mostly processed foods, mostly highly in sugar and refined carbohydrates and fats, hydrogenated oils, and we've not added any fiber, right, that alone is increasing our fiber, that alone is increasing our risk for metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, but also our gut health. Right, we also see a huge impact in those microbes that we have in our digestive system right, to help us from getting sick, to help us from getting constipated, getting gut issues, and so it's important to think about those things, right, because when we think about, oh okay, sugar is you know what's the rule? Right, why do we care? Because it impacts so many parts in our body, right, so many functions in our bodies, so not only our blood sugars, but also our mental health, right, the brain. It needs a high amount of blood, right, circulating obviously through our bodies but also to our brain, and so we're having more of these high sugary foods, right, and not enough. Not these balanced meals that are going to give us nutrients, vitamins, minerals, right, how is our brain going to react to that? Right, our brain also gets affected by those things. So, a preview of that.

Speaker 1:

Now, when we think about and I get this question often how do we know how much sugar to consume? Right, of your added sugar? Or how do we know if we're getting in too much or if just how much we should be getting? So, according to the american heart association, women should limit their intake of added sugars to about 6 teaspoons a day, while men should stick to about 9 teaspoons. The recommendation for children is a lot less, or teens it's a lot less For 2-year-olds and under. No added sugar should be added.

Speaker 1:

So, again, 6 teaspoons a day for women and about nine teaspoons for men. So when you look at the teaspoons right, if you don't, if you would need a visual, grab a teaspoon from your kitchen, right, and you can see it's a very small amount. You know, it would be about like the third of your thumb. So not a lot of added sugar, and it's because we don't need added sugar, right? It's just that these recommendations are provided just as a guide, right, but we can live without any added sugar. We don't need it. We can get them with natural sources, right, coming from our fruits, coming from our vegetables. If we add dairy or plant sources, we can get the sugar that we need from there. You know natural sugar, but added sugars, we don't need them. So this is just a guideline, right, a recommendation to help people stay healthy.

Speaker 1:

So to put it in a perspective right, one can of soda has around 10 teaspoons of sugar. So if you consume regular soda right, a can of regular soda you already consume pretty much the entire recommendation of that day in just that one soda. But oftentimes we just don't drink one soda, right, we add maybe another one and then we add some other sugary foods and maybe we cook, let's say, a pasta dish and that pasta sauce has sugar. So these sugar can really add up quickly. So how can we be mindful? Right? How can we have more practical tips in order to be aware of the sugar that we're consuming and to try to limit? So here are some tips.

Speaker 1:

Number one you have to read the label. Right? If you're like, oh, I never read the food labels, that's a waste of time, like, what's the point? Here is the reason why. Right, because if you don't know what's in your food, right, how are you going to know what to change? Right, how are you going to know how to modify things? You have to have the awareness, right? So, number one you have to read your food label, but not only the food label. You also have to read the ingredients list. Right? The new food label now has total sugars and underneath is going to have added sugars. I've done a podcast on how to read a food label, so if you're wanting to learn how to do that, go back to that episode and take a look.

Speaker 1:

But reading the food label is extremely important when you're buying more of these processed foods or more of these packaged foods, right, because, again, you might think that that specific product doesn't have any sugar, but it's not until you read the food label and ingredients list that you can really confirm that it doesn't have it. So it can be hidden again in sauces, dressings, bread and many other things Pastas you even wonder, like, why does this sugar? Like peanut butter, other nut butters? Right, and again, it's because we have gotten so used to eating foods that have hidden sugars that we don't really realize. Oh, that tastes like it has some kind of sugar, right, because we have it in these foods. So, reading your food label, sugar comes in so many forms, right? And so, again, you might find it in glucose, sucrose, fructose, but you might also see it in high fructose corn syrup, which you'll see a lot often. So that's why it's important to read the ingredients list, and that is one of the ingredients that I recommend pretty much all my clients to try to stay away from, because it affects your liver significantly and, again, it increases your liver enzymes, right, but it can also contribute to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. So keep that in mind, read your food label.

Speaker 1:

The other tip is choosing whole foods. So when you think about whole foods, keeping them to their natural source as much as possible. So your fruits, your vegetables, your protein sources, your whole grains right If you do dairy, if you do plant based milks right. Or alternatives, your nuts and your seeds, your avocados, right. You can create this really well-rounded, this really well-balanced meal, right by just choosing those foods, and so you are going to. When you choose more of those foods, naturally you're going to know that there shouldn't be any added sugars because they're wholesome foods. So another tip here would be swapping your sugary drinks for water, carbonated water or a non-sugary beverage right, because that is the easiest way to consume tons of sugar. Right, when we drink something Because and also the fastest way to increase your blood sugars as you're drinking that sugary drink, your blood sugars are increasing.

Speaker 1:

It's not a big deal when you don't have diabetes, because your insulin, right, is going to kick in and it's going to get that high amount of sugar into the cells. However, if there is enough sugar in the cells either the muscle cells, the liver cells then insulin is going to be like okay, we have enough insulin where it needs to go. We have to create fat cells. Right, because we need to store this sugar somewhere. And if the muscle cells have enough, if the liver cells has enough sugar, we have to create fat cells right To store this sugar. Has enough sugar, we have to create fat cells right to store this sugar. So insulin, again, it's not only a hormone that helps to regulate blood sugars, but it's also a hormone that creates fat cells. So keep that in mind as well.

Speaker 1:

So, swapping those sugary drinks and limiting sweet right as much as you can, it doesn't mean that, oh, we can never have a dessert, right, or we can never have a sweet treat, but it's not something that we need to have every single day. Right At the moment, because maybe you're so used to having something sugary every single day, it's going to seem difficult, but slowly practicing that, hey, we don't have to have it every single day, we're going to miss it, we're going to crave it for a period of time maybe two weeks, three weeks but slowly our bodies are going to be able to adjust. Our blood sugars are going to be managed where they're going to be, at the level where they need to be, and we're going to be okay at the level where they need to be and we're going to be okay. The other thing too right, which comes often, is that I can't seem to control my sugary cravings. Now here's the thing Oftentimes it's not so much that we have that we're out of control in terms of the sugar cravings is because there's an underlying reason as to why we have these sugary cravings. So understanding the underlying reason is going to help us to create a plan right To be able to fight those cravings, or not even fight right To be able to manage them, to be able to transform them in a way. So you have to be mindful right Of your body. You have to be mindful of the things that trigger you, the things, events or things that happen that make you want to choose the sugar retreat and then be aware of it and what are you going to do about it.

Speaker 1:

So, for example and this happens often I see that trend like when my clients are stressed they want to eat something sugary. So it's not so much because they are actually hungry for the thing, but it's because the action of eating that it's helping them to feel relaxed, it's helping them to feel more like I feel better. So it's not so much that the sugary food right is I mean, I'm trying to think of the word, but like essentially we're using food and it doesn't have to be a sugary treat, it could be any food. We're using food to cope, right? So once we know that, then we can be like okay, yes, you're going to have the sugary cravings when you have these strong emotions, but what we want to do is, number one, acknowledge that right. Okay, I'm really stressed and that is why I want to have this sugary treat. So what I need to do is take a moment for myself, right, take a moment to take a few deep breaths, to go for a walk, to write something, to listen to something, and when I come back, if I feel that I still want to have it, then I'm going to have it.

Speaker 1:

But now my brain is not thinking like okay, every time you're stressed, you need to choose that chocolate that you always choose right Now, it's because we actually want it, right? So it takes a lot of practicing. It's not going to happen right away. It's not going to even happen when you're in that emotional stage, because that critical thinking part of the brain almost goes out the window. So you have to practice these things on a daily basis to be able to make those choices and for your body and brain to almost subconsciously do those things for you. So don't get settled right by feeling like this is out of control. It's sometimes it's because there's an underlying reason for it, right, and it's not going to be easy, but you're aware of it. So now we can work on trying to figure out ways to help you manage that, help you transform that. So take a deep breath, my friend. There is hope there.

Speaker 1:

We can also make our own healthier versions of sweets. Right. At first it might seem like, okay, this is not what I want to eat. Right. At first, it might seem like okay, this is not what I want to eat right. But if it's like the flavors together and maybe less sugar, or you're also using substitutions for just added sugar, it's worth giving it a try. So how about artificial sweeteners? And I think I need to do an episode in just artificial sweeteners, so I'm not going to spend so much time on that specifically. I'll probably do that episode next week.

Speaker 1:

But some people turn to artificial sweeteners to avoid the added sugar, and so the question is is that a healthier alternative? And it depends In the sense of that it's not going to increase your blood sugars. It is potentially true, and if that is one of the ways to help you manage your sugar intake, that is a great step right. But we have to also keep in mind that there is some research right out there that has been released that talks about how aspartame and sucralose could affect our gut health and even our appetite. So if you're looking into more of that research, let me know. I can link it in the show notes or I can send it to you. But again, if it's to help you right as a first step, to help you manage and control those sugary cravings, it's a great step right.

Speaker 1:

Then we can work on adding more natural sources, because when you think about and this is all I am going to say about the artificial sweeteners for now there are oftentimes four times or higher sweeter than actual sugar, are oftentimes four times or higher sweeter than actual sugar, and so, yes, we might not be using a lot in comparison to regular sugar, or it might not be increasing the raw sugars per se, but the intensity of how much, how sweeter it is, it can affect our taste buds right. So we're not really giving our bodies, our taste buds, a break of how sweet something you know we consume or when we like something super sweet, because we're still doing that, right, by adding these artificial sweeteners. Often we're still, in a way, expecting, right to taste things sweeter. So we have to train our bodies, we have to train our taste buds right to be okay, but not having super sugary foods. And the same goes with super salty foods or foods that are higher in fat. Right, it coats our tongue and that's what makes them in terms of fat, right, that's what makes those foods more palatable, more desirable, right, but yeah, I'll do that episode next week on artificial sweeteners.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so we talked about different things, right. We talked about what sugar is, the two essentially different categories of sugar added sugar and natural sugar. The role of insulin right, when it comes to managing our blood sugars and creating fat cells. We talked about reading the food label, right. Choosing more of your wholesome foods, trying to reduce the amount of sugar that we consume, just in general, right. So what are the takeaways here? Sugar itself isn't the evil, right, an evil ingredient, but too much of it, right, just like anything else of added sugar specifically, can have serious consequences for our health. So the key here is to be mindful of where our sugar is coming from, where it's found, where we think that maybe it's not there right which that's where the label reading comes in and in trying to lower the amount right To a level where we feel that we don't need to add those added sugars. Okay, my friend.

Speaker 1:

So if you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, share this episode with a friend and leave a review. I'd love to hear your thoughts, so specifically, on how you manage your sugar in your diet or your sugary cravings. Let me know on my Instagram page at nutrition. What is it called? Yeah, nutrition underscore, with underscore Leonila. Or you can send me a message when you go you go to to the podcast um, I want to say apple podcast. It says send us a text. So send me a text there too. But that is it for today, my friend. Um, until next time, take care of yourself and keep fueling your life with the best nutrition. All right, until then. Bye, bye, for now.