10 Foods With Hidden Sweet Spots

by | May 6, 2014 | Sugars | 0 comments

Sugar When it comes to sugar, cupcakes and cookies are obvious diet derailers. The real saboteurs of healthy eating however are sneaky sources of the sweet stuff, which in a day of meals and snacks can add up to serious trouble — especially if you’re among the 25.8 million Americans who suffer from diabetes. To address the epidemic, uncover 10 foods with added sugar that may surprise you.

1. Fast-food chicken sandwich
I’ve seen a lot of sneaky sources of sugar, but I was shocked to discover that many of the fried chicken sandwiches offered at popular fast food joints can contain up to 16 grams of the sweet stuff — that’s 4 teaspoons of sugar per sandwich!

2. Packaged bread
Think you’re doing yourself a favor by buying a loaf of honey wheat? Think again. Bread manufacturers add sugar to retain moisture, add softness and lend a mild sweetness to their breads. If you’re having trouble finding a loaf without added sugar, keep in mind that ingredients are listed by weight. The farther down sugar appears on the ingredients list, the less a slice will contain.

3. Coleslaw
A few varieties of the store-bought coleslaw that I found in my grocery store contain up to 3.5 teaspoons of sugar per 1 cup serving. The easiest way to avoid sugar in your slaw is to make the popular cabbage dish at home and leave the white stuff out — some recipes for call for sugar, others don’t. Still, if you’re short on time, and the only option on the shelf contains sugar, mix in some additional shredded cabbage and low-fat Greek yogurt to cut the sugar and fat without losing the creaminess.

4. Tomato sauce
They may not taste overly sweet, but many jarred tomato and sauces are loaded with sugar. Look at the ingredient lists on some of those jars and you might even notice corn syrup in your sauce. The worst offenders I’ve found have 15 grams (nearly 4 teaspoons!) of sugar per half-cup serving. When buying pasta sauce, look for varieties with no added sugar or ones that contain less than 7 grams per serving. Fresh is always best, so if you have ripe tomatoes on hand, roast them in the oven to bring out their natural sweetness. Then blend them with a little water and sautéed garlic to make a delicious homemade sauce.

5. Instant oatmeal
Aside from the oats, sugar is the second most common ingredient in many of those flavored packets of instant oats. Some contain up to 18 grams of the sweetener — more than 4 teaspoons. It’s better to buy plain oatmeal and add fresh fruit or a dollop of honey or maple syrup for a hint of sweetness.

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Sugar-Sweetened Drinks Linked With High Blood Pressure

by | May 1, 2014 | General Health, Sugars | 0 comments

Soda Consuming lots of sugary drinks can expand your waistline, but you may not be aware of what it also might do to your blood pressure.

Sugar is added to many food products, but the largest source of added sugar we consume is in sugar-sweetened drinks.

Drinking sugar-sweetened beverages has been linked to obesity, high blood sugar, heart disease and kidney stones. Recently published researched found it was also associated with increased blood pressure and a greater risk for developing hypertension (high blood pressure).

Aaqib Habib Malik, MD, BSc, MPH, from the Department of Internal and Preventive Medicine at Griffin Hospital and the Connecticut Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center of Derby, Connecticut, and a team of researchers conducted this study.

The researchers analyzed 12 previously published studies that reported on the effects of consuming sugar-sweetened beverages on blood pressure. The studies included 409,707 people aged 12 years and older.

The studies showed a 26 to 70 percent increased risk of developing high blood pressure in people who consumed sugar-sweetened beverages compared to people who did not drink sugar-sweetened beverages.

One of the studies on teenagers found an 87 percent increase in risk of developing high blood pressure in those who drank sugar-sweetened beverages three or more times a day compared to teens who did not drink sugar-sweetened beverages.

High blood pressure was 16 to 60 percent more common in the group of people who consumed greater amounts of sugar-sweetened beverages than in people who did not drink these beverages.

The link between increased consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and hypertension was not dependent on age, and this link became stronger after 18 months of increased sugary beverage consumption.

A limitation of the analysis by Dr. Malik’s team was that it could only show an association between sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and blood pressure and not that sugar-sweetened beverages were the cause of the higher blood pressure.

The researchers explained the significance of small differences in blood pressure by saying that lowering the upper number in a blood pressure reading by two points can reduce stroke deaths by 10 percent. The upper number, called the systolic pressure, in a blood pressure reading measures the pressure in the arteries when the heart beats. A normal systolic pressure reading is less than 120.

“All 12 studies showed positive relation between increased [sugar-sweetened beverage] intake and hypertension,” the study’s authors wrote.

These authors put forth several theories of how sugar-sweetened beverages might increase blood pressure. Sugar-sweetened beverages can lower nitric oxide in the body, causing blood vessels to constrict and blood pressure to rise. Sugar-sweetened beverages can contain extra salt, and studies have also shown that people with increased sugar consumption also tend to eat more salt. Salt can cause changes in the body that raise blood pressure.

Carolyn Dean, MD, ND, from the Medical Advisory Board Member of the non-profit Nutritional Magnesium Association, commented, “A fascinating and little-known fact about sugar metabolism is that 28 molecules of magnesium are required to metabolize one molecule of sucrose (table sugar) and 56 molecules of magnesium are used up to metabolize one molecule of fructose (fruit sugar).

“When magnesium is diminished to that extent, the resulting magnesium deficiency can contribute to raising the blood pressure because magnesium is required to relax the muscles of the body, including the smooth muscles of the blood vessels. If there is tension in the smooth muscles of the blood vessels, then blood pressure rises,” Dr. Dean explained.

“Studies have shown that diets deficient in magnesium will produce hypertension — sugary drinks contribute to creating a magnesium deficiency in the body and and a corresponding rise in blood pressure. And 75 percent of Americans do not get nearly the [recommended daily allowance] of magnesium from their diets,” she said.

“Other studies have shown that increased levels of minerals such as potassium and magnesium in the diet have a suppressive effect on calcium-regulating hormones, which helps lower blood pressure,” she explained.

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Sugary Drinks May Increase Stroke Risk

by | Apr 22, 2014 | Sugars | 0 comments

Softdrink A new study from researchers at the prestigious Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden looked at whether sugary drinks increase the risk of a stroke. For those not familiar with the institute, Karolinska is currently ranked among the top 10 medical universities in world.

Previous studies have shown that consumption of sugary beverages increases the risk of Type 2 diabetes and heart disease by about 20 percent. Given the close relationship between diabetes, heart disease and stroke, the researchers hypothesized that sugary drinks would increase stroke risk. They were right.

Nearly 70,000 healthy Swedish men and women were followed for over 10 years. Those who drank two servings of sugary drinks a day had a 20 percent increase in risk of suffering a stroke.

The study was published on April 9, 2014 the same day that the Health Committee of the California State Senate passed Senate Bill 1000, the Soda Warning Label Bill by a vote of 5-2.

I was present at the Health Committee hearing and heard the testimony of Mr. Bob Ackermann of the California and Nevada Soft Drink Association and Ms. Lisa Katic, a registered dietician testifying on behalf of the soft drink association. They both maintained that sugary drinks had no special link to chronic diseases despite overwhelming medical evidence to the contrary. Now we need to add stroke to the list of diseases linked to sugary beverage consumption.

That list now includes: Type 2 diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, hypertension, fatty liver disease, cancer, obesity, and deaths from heart disease.

If an infectious agent was responsible for such a widespread national epidemic, the Centers for Disease Control would be working overtime on a vaccine.

We need no new research, no new vaccines, nor quarantines to control this epidemic. We simply need to drastically reduce the amount of sugar in our diets, and the very worst culprit is the liquid sugar found in sodas and other sugary beverages.

The science is slowly making its way into the mainstream, and soda sales are beginning to fall. Big Soda is responding by increasing their misleading advertising.

Health activists, and all people who care about their own personal health and that of their families, have a vital role to play in curbing this epidemic of chronic illness related to sugar consumption.

Here are some simple things we all can do: Read more

Your Sugary Schools

by | Mar 27, 2014 | Nutrition, Sugars | 0 comments

Sweets

Dear American School Principals,

I am a pediatric registered dietitian in Laguna Beach, California, and have spent my professional life teaching parents what and how to feed their children. I am not a nutrition extremist; I believe in birthday cakes on birthdays, candy on Halloween and dessert on occasion.

The last several years have felt like a steep uphill battle because much of the good work I do to build healthy eating habits in the home is sabotaged by unhealthy food being given to children everywhere they turn. The banks offer lollipops. The grocery stores hand out cookies. And parents and coaches now bring sugary snacks to soccer and baseball games, as I reported in “Soccer Snack Insanity.”

But the most disheartening trend I have seen is in our American schools. Kids are given food for every conceivable occasion. Every week, parents from all over our country flood my inbox with concerns about their schools giving their kids sugary foods in the classroom. Foods like ice cream, candy and cookies are showing up for every birthday and holiday imaginable. Let’s do some math. If there are an average of 25 students in an American classroom, that is a lot of celebratory cupcake parties throughout the school year. And let’s face it, most of your students are having birthday parties outside of school with plenty of sugar.

And are you aware that candy is sometimes used as a teaching tool? I have heard from many parents that if students answer a question correctly, they are rewarded with gummy candy or chocolate pieces. How can schools teach and promote a nutrition and health curriculum and then turn around and use food so inappropriately? This is sending the wrong message to the exact audience at the exact age where we have an opportunity to establish a lifetime’s worth of healthy eating habits.

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Sugar Kills! How Do We Decrease Consumption?

by | Mar 21, 2014 | Sugars | 0 comments

Sugar That was the question 12 of us pondered for three hours. We were from the public health, medical, research, academic, advertising and philanthropic communities and had come together to brainstorm.

Each of us was convinced by the accumulating science that sugar was bad, really bad. A change in our thinking had occurred. The old paradigm was that sugar could be bad if you didn’t burn off the excess calories. You would become fat, and being fat would make you prone to a host of medical illnesses like diabetes, and heart disease.

We now know that consumption of sugar can kill by causing heart attacks, diabetes,high blood pressure, and cancer. Sugar has also been implicated in fatty liver disease,obesity and dementia. You don’t need to get fat to be adversely impacted. Forty per cent of normal weight individuals are metabolically abnormal and at risk. Sugar can kill without us being forewarned by the accumulation of fat around our waistlines.

This is a major paradigm change, in essence, a scientific revolution. I spent thirty years working as a cardiologist without ever once wondering what impact sugar had on the heart. I wasn’t alone in that.

How do we prevent the future deluge of chronic diseases? What are the best strategies for lowering sugar consumption? What models are there to learn from?

Our group came up with an impressive list of strategies to reduce sugar consumption. We considered policy changes, like soda taxes, to increase the cost of sugar and sugary products. We discussed strategies to decrease the sugar content in foods and beverages as well as strategies to decrease the availability of sugary products. We spoke about the importance of restricting the marketing of sugary foods and beverages.

We also focused attention on how research and public education can play an important role in decreasing sugar consumption by demonizing sugar and sugary products as well as the industries that market and advertise them. The ultimate goal being to change our norms around sugar intake, in much the same way, as we have changed our norms about tobacco.

While I wholeheartedly support the comprehensive list of strategies our group came up with to decrease sugar consumption, I also began to wonder if we were taking too timid an approach. Is it really a viable strategy to get the major food and beverage manufacturers, transnational conglomerates all, to decrease the amount of sugar in their beverages, soups, sauces, cereals, baked goods, and the almost endless supply of food and food-like material that comes packaged in one form or another at our grocery stores?

These packaged foods and beverages, the result of decades of research and experimentation by the food giants, have encouraged us to swap convenience for nutrition. Everyday I drive by the United Stated Department of Agriculture Laboratory in Albany, California. The lab’s main claim to fame is that the research leading to the TV dinner was done there, a major part of the packaged convenient food revolution.

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Even Sugar Is More Harmful Than Marijuana, Americans Say

by | Mar 14, 2014 | Sugars | 0 comments

Sugar Of all the vices a person can indulge in, which is the least bad for your health? According to a new survey from NBC News/The Wall Street Journal, Americans believe that marijuana is the most benign — in fact, many believe it’s even less harmful than sugar.

Those surveyed were asked which substance “is the most harmful to a person’s overall health”: marijuana, sugar, tobacco or alcohol?

Forty-nine percent of respondents said that tobacco was the most dangerous. Alcohol came in at 24 percent, followed by sugar at 15 percent. Only 8 percent of those surveyed said marijuana was the most dangerous.

High alcohol consumption is indeed linked with a number of grave health problems, including heart disease, liver disease, a weakened immune system and elevated risks of developing cancer. There are also about 88,000 deaths attributable to excessive alcohol use each year in the United States.

Similarly, there’s a laundry list of well-documented adverse health effects related to tobacco use, which harms nearly every organ in the body and causes the deaths ofnearly 480,000 people in the U.S. annually.

But perhaps what’s most surprising is that Americans think sugar poses a greater health risk than a drug that the federal government classifies among “the most dangerous” substances available, alongside heroin and LSD.

On the other hand, considering the health effects associated with, say, drinking a lot of soda — which can lead to obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and ultimately heart disease, stroke and even death — Americans may be onto something here.

Sugar, an additive to many kinds of food and drink, is difficult to avoid. The American Heart Association recommends that women get no more than 100 of their daily calories from added sugars, while for men the upper limit is 150 calories. However, for many people around the world, added sugars are contributing an additional 500 calories a day.

Sugary sodas can be so dangerous, doctors say that soda intake should be limited to less than one can of soda per day.

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