12/5/19
Sugar just tastes so good. We know this all too well. Our love for it comes in many forms, be it a mid-afternoon craving for that chocolate bar, or the sudden need for dessert despite being stuffed from the meal you just ate. These are hard feelings to escape, especially with the availability, culture, and habits that exist around candy, juices, and treats. After all, something in our brain is telling us we want more. Americans consumes far and away more sugar per day than any other country in the world, and our economy reflects this. The shelves nowadays are stocked with products that have no concern for limiting fructose and glucose. Even some clueless "diet friendly" products, such as low-fat, pump up the sugar concentration to keep us coming back for what we value in some foods -- that sweet, sweet taste. In fact, our buying patterns incentivize this behavior.
Navigating today's dietary landscape can be really challenging. There are thousands upon thousands of diet plans, all coining different strategies and claiming distinctive ideas. In order to build healthy eating habits built around our own, unique genetic makeup, the bottom line is that we need to have a better understanding how foods impact our bodies. Today I want to put the spotlight on sugar, and spoiler alert, it's not going to be pretty.
Sugar is a broad term, and not all sugars are created equal. All sugars are made up of three compounds, fructose, galactose, and glucose. Fructose is the worst of the three. This is because during the first step of its metabolism, fructose requires more ATP (energy) to move along with breaking it down. So, later on down the line, the liver is converting more fat from fructose when compared to the other two. All other sugars are a combination of these three key players. Sucrose is very common, and its breakdown is around 50-50 between fructose and glucose. High Fructose Corn Syrup, as its name suggests, skews more towards a majority of fructose (about 55%). Lactose, which you know from dairy products, is a mix between glucose and galactose. The list goes on and on, so sugar is not just sugar. Some are better, and some are worse, but they are all bad for you.
Sugar changes how you metabolize food. I like to think of metabolism largely through understanding insulin. It's a very key player in governing metabolism, and as I mentioned in my post on fasting, the most common diseases can be traced back to insulin resistance. Sugar raises insulin and increases insulin resistance in the cells. In doing so, this tells the body to no longer prioritize fat burning, but fat storage. You can see how this would lead to obesity and a whole host of other issues. I'll get further into this.
As you may know, one of my main interests is in longevity. I want to live to be 150 at least and be healthy and able the whole way there. Aging seems very complicated but can be thought about easily. Aging is cell damage and disease in our bodies. Lots of things cause cell damage, such as inflammation from hormones like cortisol (stress) or senescent cells (dead cells that release pro-inflammatory chemicals). This damage can lead to things like cancer or wrinkly skin. Insulin resistance is by definition damage to your cells, and is a leading catalyst for diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. At the end of the day, high sugar consumption raises blood sugar, insulin levels, and in turn, insulin resistance... sugar is especially good at this. That's why sugar is so bad, and losing weight comes down to eating less foods that raise insulin.
On the surface, insulin resistance means making your body much less efficient in converting glucose and fat into energy. Instead, each will sit in the cells and the cells become more and more full (check out my article here to see how fasting can be a cure to this). When the liver cells fill with fat, it leads to a myriad of conditions, all under the umbrella of metabolic disease. One of these is a condition called (N)AFLD, non-alcoholic or alcoholic fatty liver disease. NAFLD is caused when fructose overwhelms the mitochondria, as I mentioned above, and the result is something called de novo lipogenesis (just a fancy schmansy term for saying that excess carbs are converted into fat)... You might be wondering why "alcoholic" came out of nowhere in this paragraph. This leads me to my next point, which isn't very exciting, either.
The liver responds very similarly to alcohol as it does to fructose. Ethanol is simply fermented fructose, which explains their intimate similarities. Simply put, the only distinction your metabolic pathway makes between the two is in the nervous system. Alcohol makes you drunk. So quite literally, fructose truly is "alcohol without the buzz."
On another note, the state of the sugar you are consuming matters. Liquids, by its nature, gets further down in your gastrointestinal tract than solids. That means that your fruit juice is not being digested as effectively as the apple or banana itself, again converting more of it into fat than you would like to be. Another danger in many marketed juices is in added sugar, so keep an eye out for that if you're a juice-drinker.
With all of this information known, is it really realistic for us to eliminate alcohol and sugar from our diets on day one? Of course not. It may not be realistic, and it may not be the best plan for you at all. It really just comes down to how much you prioritize immediate satisfaction from food vs. the health benefits that come from nixing sugar and alcohol. If a slice of cheesecake or a few drinks make your Friday night that much better, then by all means keep them, as long as you are also happy with your weight, diet, and risk of disease. Just know there are better things for you, and maybe choose water with lunch rather than a sugary soda.
I hope this opened your eyes to just how complex the world of dieting can be. There is no "one size fits all" answer to your eating and health goals. It's just not that simple. Caloric restriction or low-fat may work for others, but not you, or vice-versa. The real power is in the knowledge of what you're putting into your body and how it affects you. Again, happiness is the North Star.
If you're interested in getting further into the weeds, Dr. Peter Attia has some very detailed articles on dieting. You can check out his website here. He is extremely knowledgeable regarding the biochemistry of food, and much of what I have learned on the topic comes from his podcasts and notes.
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