Debunking Outrageous Sugar Myths: You will be Shocked at what you will Discover. – Bangers & Balls

The myth: Sugar is evil, it should be avoided at all costs and replaced with natural sweeteners.

Imagine a caveman.  A stone aged hunter gatherer,  struggling to survive after a long hard winter.  It’s early spring and although there are plenty of flowers and blossoms, we are well and truly in the hunger gap and there is barely anything for our poor nomad to eat. 

He emerges from a thicket and his eyes widen with delight and anticipation. They fall upon the most amazing sight of pure golden sunshine, growing from a bush.  He has stumbled upon honey berries.  Before he knows it his face is covered as sugary, unrefined juices gush from his lips, his mouth full to bursting.

Soon a wave of satisfaction flows through him as he gets a dopamine hit.  For the moment he is content and already feeling a surge of energy that brings with it confidence and optimism.  This is a natural sugar rush which will last long enough for him to catch and cook dinner, set up  shelter and settle down for the night.

Just now I ate a jam donut.  It was sickly sweet, and like the caveman I was soon covered in sugary juice.  Like the caveman, my eyes lit up in delight and anticipation at the sight of the sweet treat and I soon devoured it.  

Unlike the caveman, my sugary juice had been refined and processed in a factory.  But did this mean it was any worse for me?  If the myth is correct, and all sugar is bad then it doesn’t matter if it’s in a donut or honeyberries, if I eat too much I will get ill.

As we can see from the caveman analogy, sugar is obviously an essential part of our diet. It gives us a quick, instant burst of energy when we most need it and it can be stored as glycogen or fat for use later.  But what exactly is sugar and why has it been so vilified?

A quick read of wikipedia will tell you that Sugar is a generic term for sweet tasting soluble carbohydrates and that table sugar refers to sucrose which is composed of fructose and glucose.  It goes on to explain that sugars are found in almost all plant tissue and that honey and fruit are abundant sources of free flowing simple sugars.  But what does all this mean and why would something so natural and essential be so bad for you?

What Wikipedia fails to tell you is that sugars are miracles of nature.  Each berry that the caveman ate was a capsule of sunshine in biochemical form.  When the caveman eats the berries he is consuming simple sugars entwined in fiber that not only fill him up, meaning that he is less likely to overeat, but also slow down his metabolism as energy is released slowly.

When I ate my donut the refined sugar had no fiber to cling to and was therefore absorbed very quickly.  My blood sugar level skyrocketed and my insulin surged.  I experienced a sugar rush, quickly followed by a crash as the fuel burns out (I can really feel it, maybe I should have had an apple instead).  

If my blood sugar levels remain high and I consume more sugar it can be turned to fat which in time will lead to obesity;  which, according to the NHS, is putting me at risk of heart disease, diabetes and cancer amongst others.

So, unrefined sugar (sugars that have gone through minimal processing, i.e. raw cane sugar, molasses, honey or those found naturally in fruit and veg) is fine, eat as much as you like, and refined sugar is bad.  Not quite.  Once the sugar reaches your bloodstream it doesn’t matter it’s origin.  If there is too much of it it will be stored as fat.

But what about sugar alternatives?  Natural and artificial sweeteners.  What are they and are they better for you than refined cane or beet sugar?  To understand this we need to understand a bit about how sugar is made.  Conventional ‘table’ sugar is made from one of two plants. 

Sugarcane is grown in tropical and subtropical regions such as the caribbean, Southern USA and Africa, whilst sugar beet favours a temperate climate such as the UK and Northern USA.  Both are sliced or pulped, juiced, purified/filtered and concentrated into a syrup before being refined further into sugar.