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Sugar | Public enemy No.1 or neutral energy source

If you look at mainstream media and public interest in the health sector, a certain fear carousel quickly becomes apparent, which rotates every few years. Saturated fatty acids, sweeteners, alcohol, salt, sugar. Well, we've been back to sugar for a few years now. It causes cancer, makes you stupid, overweight anyway, creates addictions comparable to cocaine, damages cells and is overall just a tool for the Illuminati to finally bring their plan of world domination to completion. Reason enough, given the accompanying hysteria, to look at the situation from a more reflective perspective. You can find out here whether sugar is really responsible for the murder of John Lennon, the financial crisis and the Brexit crisis.

The stumbling block

First, a closer look at the subject of the dispute: “Sugar” in common usage usually refers to white household sugar, which is obtained from sugar beets. It consists mostly of sucrose, a disaccharide. For the sake of simplicity, the word “sugar” in this article refers to that type of sugar. It provides 4.0 kcal per gram.

The accusations

With regard to the detrimental properties that this substance is accused of, the claims go far-reaching. The following theses are the most popular: 

Sugar causes obesity

Probably the leader is the claim that high sugar consumption inevitably causes overweight and obesity because, unlike other carbohydrates, the carbohydrates from sugar are converted directly into fat. The absolute amount of kilocalories consumed as such does not matter, only their composition. However, what is ignored here is the fact that the laws of thermodynamics also apply to the human body. Accordingly, the obesity that often correlates with high sugar consumption can only be attributed to the fact that the high, easily consumable energy content of sugar, often in combination with fats and a sedentary lifestyle, results in an energy intake that far exceeds requirements. As a result, the body reacts by building triglycerides from excess food energy in lipogenesis and storing them in the adipocytes. However, the only decisive factor here is the calorie surplus as such, regardless of whether this is caused by an excess of fats or carbohydrates. This has been proven by numerous metabolic ward studies. 

Sugar causes cancer

This claim has its origins in the so-called Warburg hypothesis. It originates from the work of the German physiologist Otto Warburg, which he carried out in the 1920s. Normal cells metabolize pyruvate via acetyl-CoA and oxygen. However, if there is a lack of oxygen, this step is no longer necessary and the cell converts the pyruvate into lactic acid, which it then excretes. This process is significantly less efficient and requires far more glucose. If the oxygen supply increases again, the cell produces less lactate and returns to normal energy production via the citrate cycle. However, Warburg observed in his studies that cancer cells only carry out this so-called lactic acid fermentation even when they have sufficient oxygen available. This causes their high glucose consumption. Building on this, however, Warburg developed the theory that this observed disruption of cellular respiration was the sole cause of the development of cancer. However, this thesis has now been clearly refuted. On the one hand, just as not all sugar is the same, cancer is not all the same. Depending on the type of tumor, these differ in many different criteria, including metabolism. Not all cancer cells have this altered glucose metabolism. In addition, the Warburg hypothesis ignores findings about genetic changes as the actual pathogenic cause. 

Sugar makes you tired and damages your thinking skills

You often hear that for mentally demanding activities it is better to rely on long-chain, “slow-digesting” carbohydrates rather than foods with a high sugar content. The latter would cause a short increase, but then induce a real crash in the performance curve. However, is that really the case? Interestingly, the myth of the “sugar rush” was already dismissed in the scientific community in 1995 with the note “non-existent” when an extensive meta-analysis failed to demonstrate any effects of sugar on behavior and cognitive performance in children. Various theories are used to explain the “sugar rush”. Thus, the serotonin hypothesis postulates that consumption of sugar results in higher intracerebral levels of the “feel-good” transmitter serotonin (a, it should be noted, extremely poorly coined term that ignores the actual function of serotonin) due to its greater availability of tryptophan. This has never been proven scientifically. 

Take home message

As you can see, much of the scaremongering surrounding “soft cocaine” is nothing more than unfounded scaremongering, as well as exaggeration by the media, which is often unable to even correctly interpret the mere abstract of a study, as well as enriched by countless self-proclaimed “experts” and “health gurus” who use the general hysteria as an opportunity to sell their (at best ineffective to severely health-damaging) nutritional program. However, even after the demystification, there is one point that you should keep in mind: sugar is not a toxic substance, but a very “neutral” carbohydrate. And precisely in this neutrality lies a certain danger, which often causes the correlation of high sugar consumption with all the various evils attributed to it. In order to survive and function effectively, the human body not only needs the macronutrients proteins, fats and carbohydrates, but also numerous vitamins and minerals. A diet that derives most of its carbohydrates from neutral sugar, which does not contain any of these, quickly causes a deficiency and thus indirectly causes numerous problems to arise. In addition, sugar in combination with fat, which is often found in many foods, has an extremely high palatability, i.e. tastiness. They are extremely easy to consume, which often results in significantly more calories being consumed than needed. 

What you can take from all of this: There is absolutely no reason to eliminate sugar from your diet as long as you are meeting your micronutrient requirements and within your caloric needs. The practical and proven rule of thumb here is the 80/20 ratio. 80% of your calories should come from foods that are as unprocessed as possible, as well as at least 800g of fruit and vegetables per day. As for the rest: Do as it pleases you!.

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