May 7, 2015 general

As you have probably heard, the World Health Organization and some U.S. government authorities recently recommended a change in the official dietary guidelines. They have backed off of making fats the villain (finally!) and are suggesting that folks cut back on sugar and refined flours (finally!). The studies have been piling up for decades, but changing the establishments’ minds is much slower than turning an aircraft carrier (with its anchor dropped). That is due in part to bureaucratic paralysis of analysis. But, change is also resisted by considerable vested financial interests and by those with a professional reputation at stake. (The guys with the old ideas just do not want to now be wrong.)

I’ve been preaching about the evils of sugar and its first cousin flour since the early 1980’s (shortly after I learned that those cute little maple sugar characters were not health food just because they were sold in a health food store). Sugar raises the risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, liver disease and contributes to Alzheimer’s disease. Sugar hampers our immune system and to make matters worse, tumor cells use proportionately more sugar than normal cells. Therefore, high sugar levels offer a double-barreled way to increase cancer risk. On a happier note, reducing blood sugar can cause tumor cells to die.  Sugar bonds with proteins in our cells (glycation) which basically carmelizes them and acts to prematurely age them. Not enough to worry you yet? Click to read Dr. Nancy Appleton’s 143 ways that sugar ruins our health. (In proofing this document, my husband asked if there is anything good about sugar. It tastes good flavor and has helpful cooking properties, but it is not a nutritional necessity.)

Soft drinks are the poster child of bad dietary choices in part because they are the source of over 1/3 of America’s intake of added sugars. They also lack nutritional benefit and contain phosphoric acid that isn’t good for bones, teeth and our probiotics. Diabetes incidence increases with just one daily soda. High fructose corn syrup is used to sweeten most sodas. It is addictive and (like we need more of the poison) it is a source of mercury (from the processing). At a very basic level, fructose reduces the energy (ATP) inside cells, reduces the repair of genes and generates uric acid (the cause of gout).

Well then, can’t we just switch to diet soft drinks? Unfortunately, no. Pepsi will drop aspartame from some of its beverages this August due to consumer pressure. If they were replacing it with a natural sweetener, I might be a bit more impressed. However, the substitutes will be Splenda and Ace K (acesulfame potassium) which raise their own questions. Artificial sweeteners in general are linked to weight gain and other problems in part because they are hard on our crucial gut microbes—our life-saving probiotics. Also, as our radio guest Kenah Smith described, her tests showed that most of them (except erythritol) feed yeast. Yeast overgrowth can cause all manner of trouble. Please send a link to this post to anyone you know who drinks pop.

It is really hard to beat pure filtered water as our basic beverage and we should use it to make green tea and even coffee which do have health benefits.