One of the fastest-growing causes of death in the world, diabetes is especially prevalent in the United States as about 1 in every 11 people has been diagnosed with the condition. Medical costs for treating the disease are considerable, with worldwide costs reaching 548 billion dollars in 2013. The U.S. is responsible for around 35 percent of that figure, but despite that robust amount of spending, the numbers of those with diabetes are still rising. Traditional disease prevention and management strategies focus on being active, watching your weight, and eating healthy with a particular emphasis on avoiding sugar and paying attention to the glycemic index. But sugar isn’t the only villain in the diabetes narrative. Here are some of the other kinds of foods that can aggravate and contribute to your diabetes.

Artificial Sweeteners

Artificial sweeteners don’t provide any actual health benefit. Instead, they serve as a way for people with diabetes to get a sugar fix. There are five artificial sweeteners approved for use in the United States: saccharin, sucralose, aspartame, neotame and acesulfame K. While most of these are usually used by and marketed towards those with diabetes or people trying to avoid sugar, there is evidence to suggest that consuming artificial sweeteners, specifically saccharine, disrupts the bacteria in your gut. Gut health is especially important for people with diabetes since changes to the bacteria in the gut have been associated with a disposition towards diabetes. Artificial sweeteners frequently pass through the gastrointestinal tract without being digested, allowing the unaltered particles to wreak havoc directly on intestinal bacteria. If you have sugar cravings, do your gut bacteria a favor and check out healthy sugar alternatives before you reach for the artificial sugar packets.

Fructose & High Fructos Corn Syrup

Fructose occurs naturally in fruits, sugars, bread, and cured meat products. It has also found its way into the majority of pre-packaged foods with high fructose corn syrup and other sugars being routinely added to these products. A small amount of fructose, especially from whole food sources that provide other nutrients and enzymes, in of itself isn’t a bad thing, but problems occur with excessive fructose consumption. Fructose is only processed in the liver. Too much fructose causes insulin resistance in the fatty triglycerides in the membranes surrounding the cells of ourperipheral tissue. The more insulin resistant cells you have, the more likely it is that the levels of insulin in the bloodstream are too high since the insulin has nowhere else to go. This is one of the first steps on the way to diabetes.

Fruit is often seen as the biggest contributor to fructose issues, but fruit in moderation has a multitude of health benefits. It makes more sense to avoid manufactured fructose and eat real food, rather than packages of extra calories with potential health problems. The real problem is high fructose corn syrup. There is a direct correlation between the rise of HFCS use and type 2 diabetes.

Refined and Processed Foods

Refined and processed foods like white rice, most of the commercially available breads, and snack foods contain simple carbohydrates and they have had all of their natural nutrients stripped away. This leaves empty calories and easily digestible sugars, spiking insulin and blood sugar levels. People who consume a steady supply of these foods, rather than whole foods with their nutrients intact like brown rice or steel cut oats, are much more likely to be at risk for type 2 diabetes. Processed foods that contain chemicals to enhance their taste can also trigger inflammation, damage tissue, and cause insulin resistance.

Your Diet is Key to Avoiding and Managing Diabetes

Almost ten percent of the population in the United States has diabetes, and that number is on the rise, with even children and young adults developing the disease at alarming rates. Conventional wisdom touts the importance of diet and exercise as ways to manage the risk of diabetes, but the connection between a society facing a growing diabetes epidemic and a society that offers more packaged and fewer whole food options cannot be ignored. Eating a diet rich in fresh, raw, organic produce (mostly vegetables) and with minimal amounts of unhealthy packaged an artificial foods, can make keep you from joining the ranks of those dealing with diabetes.

Recommended Reading:

• How to Improve Blood Sugar Levels and Reverse Diabetes For Good
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• Cinnamon – Ceylon Vs Cassia, Health Benefits, and Other Interesting Facts

Sources:

• Artificial Sugars May Cause Diabetes Risk – MedPageToday
• Healthy Sugar Alternatives – Organic Lifestyle Magazine
• Four Food Choices That Greatly Increase Your Diabetes Risk – Healthline
• How Triglycerides Affect Your Risk of Diabetes – Web MD
• 10 Reasons Why Fructose is Bad –  Paleo Leap
• Diabetes Latest – CDC

No. It’s not. Agave Nectar is no healthier than refined table sugar.

Agave nectar is mostly fructose. This is why agave has a low glycemic index. Many people believe that since the sugar in fruit is fructose that this means fructose is automatically healthy. It is, in small amounts, with fruit fiber, fruit vitamins, fruit minerals, and all of the other nutrition in fruit. When whole fruits are consumed, the fructose is absorbed more slowly.

With agave nectar there is nothing to slow the absorption. Even if you eat agave with foods rich in fiber, all of the fructose separates and is absorbed quickly. Fructose passes into the bloodstream and is taken to the liver, where it is made into glycogen. Glycogen is a product stored in the liver and released to make glucose when the body needs it. But once the liver is stocked with glycogen (again, it doesn’t take much), the remaining fructose makes insulin resistant fatty acids and triglycerides.

Excessive fructose consumption (and it doesn’t take much) can lead to liver disease, insulin resistance which leads to diabetes, raised LDL cholesterol, elevated triglycerides in the body, and weight gain due to multiple factors. And if that wasn’t enough, fructose does not trigger the release of two hormones (insulin and leptin) in your blood. These hormones tell your body it’s no longer hungry. And excessive fructose elevates uric acid level, which can lead to gout and/or metabolic syndrome including hypertension and glucose intolerance. The increase in fructose consumption in America directly correlates to the rise in diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. While this is mostly attributed to high fructose corn syrup, if agave was the sweetener used in soda, our health as a nation would not be much better off.

If you’re looking for alternative sweeteners to use, check out our Healthy Sugar Alternatives article. But keep this in mind: in nature, sweets are hard to come by, they are seasonal, and they come with fiber and other nutrition. There is no healthy way to consume sweets on a regular basis. If you are trying to eat healthy, instead of looking for the magical sugar that doesn’t have any negative repercussions, learn to develop a healthier palate – a taste for raw fresh vegetables.

Understanding both healthy & not so healthy sugars with their Glycemic Index & Load

Is there such a thing as healthy sugar?

Our body needs sugar to survive. But what we don’t need is refined sugars. Anyone suffering from an overabundance of Candida should limit their fruits, choose them wisely, and forget about sweets in general until the Candida is under control. This goes for those suffering from diabetes and any fungal, viral, or bacterial infection as well. If you do suffer from Candida problems we recommend Thorne SF722. It kills Candida better than anything we know of. A good probiotic to help rebuild the healthy gut flora is recommended too.

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In nature, we didn’t eat a lot of sugar, and none of it was refined. In fact, just to get an idea of how easy it is for us to ingest more sugar than we would have ever done in nature, consider the fact that our fruit has grown in size and has become sweeter and easier to eat. One good example is the banana. Just google “wild banana.” Check out the pictures.

Sugar is wrecking havoc on our bodies in a few different ways. It’s hard on the pancreas, the liver, and it feeds fungus, bacteria, viruses, and other parasites that stress the whole body. Consuming refined sugars radically lowers the body’s immune system and leads to allergies, both seasonal and food allergies.

Note: If you’ve been eating too much sugar (and this includes those known as “healthier sugars,” check out How to Kill Candida and Balance the Inner Ecosystem. For a better understanding of how sugar interacts with the body, check out Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases.

Many people consider themselves healthy but suffer from certain ailments due to their sugar intake. In many cases, these people do not realize that the alternative healthier sugar choices they make still contribute to health problems. Sugars like brown rice syrup, honey, coconut palm sugar, and apple juice are still refined sugars and should be used sparingly. Maple syrup and dates are other sweeteners that, depending on your definition are not necessarily refined, but still are sugars none the less and need to be limited as well. If you or someone you know suffers from seasonal allergies or chronic Candida overgrowth, give up the honey, the brown rice syrup, the agave, and any other sweetener, save stevia, completely for a week and see what happens. We bet the results will surprise you.

The reality is that junk food, whether made with healthier sugar substitutes or high fructose corn syrup is still junk food. Healthy foods are whole foods, and whole foods should be the foundation of anyone’s diet.

Glucose

Glucose is the simple sugar made by the body through digestion of carbohydrates. It is the body’s chief source of energy. Sometimes glucose is called dextrose.

Sucrose

Sucrose is what we commonly refer to as table sugar. It is made from highly processed sugar cane or sugar beets. The composition of sucrose is a combination of glucose and fructose, which separates during digestion. Pure sucrose is devoid of any nutrients.

Fructose

Fructose, commonly called fruit sugar, is a simple sugar found in honey, tree fruits, berries, and melons. But don’t be fooled into thinking fructose on a label means you are eating fruit sugar. Pure crystalline fructose comes from two sources: corn or sucrose (table sugar). Corn starch is processed to release fructose. Sucrose (table sugar) is enzymatically hydrolyzed to separate into glucose and fructose. Crystalline fructose is pure fructose from one of these two sources.

High Fructose Syrups

High Fructose Corn Syrup is made from starches like corn, wheat, and rice. High fructose syrups contain nearly equal amounts of glucose and fructose, a composition nearly identical to sucrose (table sugar). The reason high fructose corn syrup is so abundant in our processed food is simple-it’s cheaper than sugar. Because we highly subsidize corn and place tariffs on sugar imports, high fructose corn syrup is much less expensive.

Pure fructose is 1.2-1.8 times sweeter than sucrose so less is needed for the same level of sweetness. It is low on the glycemic index, therefore it does not lead to peaks and dips in the body’s glucose levels. But fructose is processed in the liver. When too much fructose enters the liver at once, the liver can’t process fructose as a sugar. Instead, the liver turns excess fructose into fats-triglycerides. When you incorporate these fats into our bodies cells (the cell membranes) triglycerides cause these cells to be insulin resistant. This is the reason that high fructose corn syrup leads to diabetes. Fructose is linked to significant increases of both cholesterol and triglycerides. And remember-fructose, like sucrose-is a highly refined processed sugar devoid of any nutrition.

Maltose

Maltose, also known as malt sugar, is half as sweet as sucrose (table sugar). It is produced from starch (barley, wheat, rice or other grains). It has been produced in China since 200 B.C. We use it in making beer and as an additive to some processed foods.

In our bodies, maltose is formed as the first step in digestion of starchy foods. It is then broken down into glucose.

Lactose

Lactose is the sugar found naturally in milk.

Date Sugar

Date sugar is 100% dehydrated dates ground into small pieces. It is a whole food, high in fiber, vitamins, and minerals. Date sugar can be substituted for granulated sugar or brown sugar cup for cup, but it does not dissolve in liquids. Most alternative health practitioners consider Date Sugar to be a healthy sugar alternative.

Sugar Alcohols or Polyols

Maltitol, maltitol syrup, sorbitol, mannitol, xylitol, lactitol, lakanto, erythritol, and isomalt are examples of sugar alcohols. They occur naturally in plants but are usually manufactured from sugars and starches. Sugar alcohols have fewer calories than sugars because they are not completely absorbed by the body. They can ferment in the intestines and cause gas, bloating, and diarrhea.

Information on Xylitol from Natural News:

Health Claims

It is obvious to me, as it might be to you, that xylitol, in addition to killing bacteria, will probably kill just about anything. This clearly explains why it is only recommended to be used in small doses. Yet if you go to a health food store, you will see larger sized bags of xylitol on the shelf, promoting its many health uses.

Health Concerns

In lab tests, xylitol will kill a rat 50% of the time in a dosage of 16.5 grams of xylitol for every 1000 grams of rat. Medium rats weigh 100-120 grams, or say .25 pounds. That means, to kill a 100-gram rat, you need only to get the rat to consume, 1.65 grams of xylitol.

A typical xylitol piece of gum contains .7 – 1 gram of xylitol. About half the amount needed to kill a rat. I read of a study stating that humans consumed up to 400 grams of xylitol per day without any ill health effects. I find that hard to believe that such a study is accurate in comparison to the lab tests done as indicated on the material safety data sheets. If 1.65 grams can kill a rat, consuming 400 grams would be highly toxic to humans.

Glycemic Index

When carbohydrates are digested, glucose is released into the bloodstream. The glycemic index is a comparative measurement of the amount of glucose released by a particular food over a two to three-hour period.

Foods that rapidly release glucose rate high on the glycemic index (GI). Foods that slowly release glucose are low on the glycemic index. Mixing high and low GI foods can result in a moderate glucose release.

But the GI rating alone does not give you all of the information you need to determine a food’s effect on your blood sugar. It only tells you how quickly the carbs in a food should turn into sugar in your blood. The glycemic load or GL tells you how much of that carb the food contains. And of course the amount you eat of that particular food is also a huge factor in the rise of your blood sugar.

Foods ranked low on the GI scale release glucose slowly and steadily without a sudden spike of glucose in the blood.  A spike in glucose results in a large insulin release, which is more likely to store glucose as fat rather than use it as fuel. Plus a high release of insulin often results in a rapid drop in blood sugar, causing hunger. So you eat candy. Your blood sugar spikes. Insulin is released. Your blood sugar drops. You eat more candy. The sugar rollercoaster ride begins.

It is important to remember that the GI scale is simply a comparative scale; it compares one food’s blood glucose response to another. There are many other factors to consider when choosing your food. Start with the basic question. Is this food dense with nutrients?

The Best Sugars

When baking, or for coffee and teas, honey would not be used since the heat destroys the natural benefits. Stevia does not bake well and it has a funny aftertaste to most people, but we love it in lemonade and cranberry juice, as well as many teas. If forced to a favorite, sugar cane juice, maple syrup, and coconut palm sugar are our top choices when used sparingly. While we are not a fan of agave, sugar alcohols, or using very much of any refined sugars, a mix of them can be a healthier choice for baking and other recipes that call for sweeteners. Using a little bit of agave, some lactitol, some stevia, and sugar cane juice or coconut palm sugar can be a great way to lessen the adverse effects of any one type of surer while still getting a very nice, well-rounded sweet taste.

Please note that the glycemic index numbers here are estimates. There are many variables that help determine how quickly a sugar is absorbed. These numbers represent an average of many different respected studies. In addition, it is very important to note that the glycemic index and the glycemic load do not define what is a healthy sugar and what is an unhealthy sugar. There are many other variables.

If you’ve been eating too much sugar (and this includes those known as “healthier sugars,” check out How to Kill Candida and Balance the Inner Ecosystem. For a better understanding of how sugar interacts with the body, check out Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases.

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