Understanding what makes refined sugar bad for you

Back in 2010 I followed an eating programme that taught me what makes refined sugar bad for me. Hopefully I can help you understand what makes refined sugar bad for you.

Even though I began to learn about the effects of sugar back in 2010 I didn’t really take it all in. I had this information but I didn’t act on it and information without implementation is useless. In a way I was still in denial. I just didn’t want to give it up.

It was only as I began to put the weight back on I realized what I was doing. I was back to eating way too much refined sugar and my weight started to creep up and up again.

I am not a fan of sugary snacks or drinks. My weight gain didn’t come from that type of food. The refined sugar I ate daily was inside the every day food I was eating, the low-fat yoghurts for instance.

This is why I am hoping to explain through this blog post what makes refined sugar bad for you – so let’s get going.

Firstly, how much sugar should we include in our diet? In the UK the recommended amount is 50g (1.7oz) for women and 70g (2.5 oz) for men.

Research on refined sugar

As long ago as 1816 French Physiologist F Magendie published a report, after conducting experiments on dogs (he was not nice to animals) that were fed refined sugar and water. They wasted away and died. What started this research was an incident in 1793. Five shipwrecked sailors, carrying refined sugar and rum on their boat, drank nothing but refined sugar and rum for nine days in an effort to survive. They were found wasted away from starvation.

The truth is we can survive on just fresh water for quite some time, people perform water fasts for 30 days or more, and yet these men who were only shipwrecked for nine days were close to death by the time they were found.

Not a great advert for refined sugar or alcohol as far as I can see.

Trouble is this information and subsequent research on the bad effects of sugar was covered up, because the sugar industry would lose a lot of money if people knew this.

However, since 2009 the war on refined sugar and its effects on obesity have been growing in momentum after a ground-breaking lecture called Sugar: the bitter truth – video below – by Robert Lusting was put on YouTube and started the anti-sugar movement.

Remove refined sugar and wellness occurs

Think about that for a second when considering what makes refined sugar bad for you. When refined sugar is removed from the diet diseases such as diabetes, cancer and heart illnesses get better and in some people are CURED.

My friend, Dr Nkem Ezeilo, teaches this to her patients and to women via her Facebook group Fit Fabulous and Strong Women. A breast cancer survivor herself she teaches that by removing refined sugar from our diet we give our body an opportunity to remove the illness. Powerful stuff.

It was after joining her group in March 2014 that I seriously began to make the link between refined sugar, weight gain and my own journey.

Even though I was taught this back in 2010 it was only after reading about it again through Dr Ezeilo’s group that it really hit home. The lesson finally sunk in and I began to believe that refined sugar is one of the main causes of my weight gain.

I knew that if I could finally kick refined sugar to the curb I might actually have a hope in hell of getting healthy and well again.

My consumption of refined sugar

The truth is I never really ate that much during the day. My portion size in the evening was huge, I will admit that, but overall I didn’t think I was eating alot of food every day.

However, what I was eating contained a large amount of refined sugar. Low-fat foods (especially yoghurt), starchy foods, pizzas, fries (chips) and other foods – although I didn’t eat a lot of it – contained enough refined sugar that when combined it kept me overweight.

This is why I believe vegetable juicing has made such a significant impact on my weight loss and health. Giving up the refined sugar I was eating for breakfast and lunch was enough to start improving my health.

My old eating regime

In the past my breakfast was mainly carbs (bread, croissants) or cereal (high sugar muesli, shreddies, rice krispies and cornflakes).

Lunch would be a sandwich with no salad and usually some ham, a bag of crisps, a chocolate or donut and a cup of tea.

Then a large dinner – let’s say pasta and Bolognese using a pre-made sauce with garlic bread – there is refined sugar in the pasta, bread and pre-made sauce.

Around 10pm I would have a peanut butter and jam sandwich and a cup of tea.

Looking at that I can see just how much refined sugar I was getting through. To me it didn’t seem like I ate a lot as I didn’t snack very much and I didn’t eat take away foods very often but still I was heavily overweight.

My new eating regime

I gave up the 10pm meal, stopped eating after 7pm until 11am, ate a high protein breakfast (e.g. sardines, spinach, and mushrooms), or made a vegetable juice (green) adding Spirlina in to it for the protein, drinking two of those over the morning.

I would then make another two vegetable juices to cover lunch time that include carrot and beetroot.

If I found myself feeling hungry I would snack on almond nuts and berries/fruit.

I cut out a whole lot of refined sugar from my regular eating regime and the weight loss began and is still going strong – even though I was not exercising at all.

Why is refined sugar bad for you?

Refined sugar has been found to be toxic to the body because all the natural goodness (vitamins and minerals) that the body needs within sugar to process it has been removed.

What is left is a refined carbohydrate that the body finds difficult to process. Known as an empty calorie refined sugar provides our body with nothing nutritious.

It is this refined carbohydrate and the resulting toxins that it produces that interfere with our red blood cells (it kills them), and accumulates in our brain and nervous system.

This is why you need to understand what makes refined sugar bad for you. You need to appreciate what refined sugar does to your body and why obesity is such a major issue in most of the world.

Why else, when you perform a juice cleanse, do you suffer from headaches and muscle pain?

Because your poor body is doing its best to get rid of all the years of crap refined sugar inside of it. Our body will perform a natural detox itself, but the amount of refined sugar we eat means we are in overload and we need to help ourselves “drain” our body of this crap.

This is what I use a juice cleanse for and this is why I still eat real food during my juice cleanse – because none of what I consume contains refined sugar.

Read about the many ways sugar is bad for you – sugar dangers

Not ALL SUGAR IS CREATED EQUAL

Quote: “Sir Frederick Banting, the codiscoverer of insulin, noticed in 1929 in Panama that, among sugar plantation owners who ate large amounts of their refined stuff, diabetes was common. Among native cane-cutters, who only got to chew the raw cane, he saw no diabetes.”

Source : Refined Sugar – The Sweetest Poison

Natural sugar still possesses the minerals and vitamins within it that the body needs to help break it down. It is in its natural state. Sugar from beetroot (beets) and sugar cane are two examples.

It is only when natural sugar from sugar cane is taken and manufactured into refined sugar that it becomes a toxin inside our body.

Is refined sugar bad for you if you have cancer?

There have been links made between the amount of refined sugar in our diet and cancer but nothing scientifically conclusive. Still, in my mind it is still worth avoiding as much refined sugar as possible, and here is why…

You may be familiar with information on the foods that cause acid and alkaline in our body.

Refined sugar is an acid and it alters our pH levels producing a more acidic body. This imbalance causes our body to withdraw essential minerals from our bones and teeth to help fight the toxins within. This is what causes other parts of our body structure to weaken. An acidic body has been linked to cancer.

Vegetable juicing, especially when making green juices, provides an essential alkaline effect. It helps us to help our body heal itself. This is why when people go on long-term vegetable juicing juice cleanse, say for 60 or 90 days, they find that many of their illnesses disappear.

However, not even long-term vegetable juicing is good for us because it misses out fibre, protein and fats. These are the things you obtain when you eat real food on a juice cleanse. Eating wild salmon, eating foods like avocado and broccoli; these are all alkaline and help our body to be well.

Do your own research on acid and alkaline to find out why this is important and the part that refined sugar plays in it.

Quote: “Pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate, according to a study that challenges the notion that all sugars are the same.”

SOURCE:  Fructose feeds cancer cells

Is refined sugar bad for you when dieting?

I am sure you can answer that question for yourself now. If you have been eating low-fat food take a look at the sugar content of it. You may be surprised.

Even foods you buy in the health food shop might surprise you. I went in looking for a drink and picked up what looked like a lovely natural, healthy drink of green tea and some other ingredients. Ready to drink and delicious. A quick look at the sugar content showed me that it contained over 26% of sugar. Just as bad as a fizzy drink.

You probably know this already but the sugar content of food is given other names including:

• corn syrup
• dextrose
• sorbitol
• sucrose
• processed fructose
• amazake
• maltose
• lactose (sugar in milk)

These are just a few of the names given to the different types of sugar added to food to make it taste nice. Usually, if it ends with ‘ose’ chances are that is a sugar ingredient.

Sometimes you may find that a meal has two or three different types of sugar in it and that is the type of thing you need to watch for, especially when dieting.

Refined sugar – the addictive drug

Here is something else that really scared me and put a nail in the coffin of refined sugar for me.

Rats, some already addicted to cocaine, were given an option. Have cocaine or have sugar. Eventually 94% ofl the rats left the cocaine and wanted the sugar. Isn’t that scary? Does that help you understand what makes refined sugar bad for you?

Quote:  “Here we report that when rats were allowed to choose mutually-exclusively between water sweetened with saccharin–an intense calorie-free sweetener–and intravenous cocaine–a highly addictive and harmful substance–the large majority of animals (94%) preferred the sweet taste of saccharin.”  

Source:  Intense Sweetness Surpasses Cocaine Reward

When I went to give up things like bread back in 2010 I went through one hell of a mental battle. As long as I knew there was food containing refined sugar in the house I wanted to eat it. I had to literally argue out loud with myself for the pros and cons of eating it. At the time I didn’t know as much as I knew now.

In the end I gave up. I let food win because I was so sick of the constant craving for it and my internal battles. I just wanted peace and I decided to just eat it. The result was growing as large as over 22 stones (308 LBS or 139 KGS).

When I started back on my path towards health and total wellness in March 2014 I was mentally stronger. I had read and found out more about sugar over the passing years so I was ready to give it up. I battled through the cravings and thanks to vegetable juicing and almond nuts (I ate them to help my craving for bread) I won.

I don’t crave food as badly as I did in the past. I could never say no to food in the past and now, for the first time in my life, I am saying no to foods that I know contain refined sugar.

John Yudkin

A British Professor called John Yudkin tried to warn us about the dangers of refined sugar back in 1972. The book ended his career and his work was discredited by “experts” wanting to protect that sugar industry.

Now though his work is being seen as prophetic. Take 90 minutes out of your day and watch this  video called Sugar: The Bitter Truth

Also take the time to visit the University of California video series called The Skinny on Obesity

and this one called Sugar: Pure, white, addictive and deadly

Understanding what makes refined sugar bad for you

This is all my research because of my interest in the subject of diabetes and my family history. Granddad and mother died from diabetes related illnesses. My eldest sister and older sister both have diabetes and I am next in line.

I am not a professional and I am not making claims about what makes refined sugar bad for you that you can’t find online. In an effort to transform my health and avoid illness in middle age and beyond I had to ask is refined sugar bad for me? After asking myself that question I went on to read and research the subject and the answer is a resounding YES.

I only wish I had learnt enough about this stuff to have helped my mum. In her mind she had the disease and it is hereditary. There was almost a kind of passive acceptance about the fact that nothing can be done to beat it and it was passed down through blood.

I believe diabetes is passed down through bad eating habits. We are all a product of what our parents taught us. They did the best they could do at the time and now we are learning something different, something better, and something that can help heal our children and have them grow into healthy adults.

We are also learning something we can use to heal ourselves and it is always better to lead by example. My example to my children has not been that great up until this moment. Now, they will see me get healthy and transform the way I look. They will see me do that based on filling my body with alkaline vegetable juice and removing toxic refined sugar.

I hope this went some way towards helping you understand what makes sugar bad for you and that you too are excited and inspired enough to throw out your refined sugar and take a different path.

DOWNLOAD THE PDF – this was a long post so I put it into PDF format

Understanding-what-makes-refined-sugar-bad-for-you