Secondary Sugar: The Addictive But Secret Poison
I have quite recently become aware that
sugar is dangerous for my health, but I never really knew much about it.
So this warning, delivered by Laurent Adamowicz (a French-American
founder and chairman of EChO - Eradicate Childhood Obesity Foundation)
really came in handy for me. Adamowicz lays out a startling and shocking
picture of just how sneaky certain food companies are when it comes to
concealing the amount of unnecessary sugar they add to their products
with bogus health claims.
Read on to learn about the key difference between primary and secondary
sugar, that will help you distinguish between good and bad sugar, then
have a look at Laurent's eye-opening video.
What is primary sugar?
Many of our favorite, wonderful and natural
foods contain sugar. Vegetables, fruit, honey, dairy - you name it -
just about all the things you are supposed to eat a lot of contain a
significant, but low, percentage of lactose, which Laurent characterizes
as primary sugar. It's primary because it's natural, a fundamental part
of the kind of foods that our bodies really appreciate. This primary
sugar is certainly beneficial. Including it in your daily diet can help
your memory and even improve your mood; it gives you energy and can
benefit your skin and blood.
What is secondary sugar?
Secondary sugar is added to something
non-natural. Thus, as a simple example, a standard fizzy drink can
contains around 7 teaspoons of sugar alone. However, this illustration
does not give a full picture of the scale of hidden secondary sugar,
which is added not only to obviously sweet and treaty products, but also
to savory and purportedly healthy products. A very careful analysis of
your product's packaging will reveal an alarming amount of sugar in such
un-sweet items as bread, hamburgers, and mayonnaise.
The volume of secondary sugar is, even more, worrying in certain types
of 'healthy' foods. For example, a fat-free salad dressing will contain
more sugar than a regular bottle, while a gluten-free product contains
30-40% more secondary sugar. So, although we think that we are making a
smart, healthy choice, we're probably not.
When we consider secondary sugar as perhaps the biggest health problem
of our age, the level of deception appears very sinister indeed. So much
so that it is very easily comparable to the conduct of tobacco and
cigarette companies in previous decades.
How do we get addicted to secondary sugar - and what are the
consequences?
Around half of mothers today choose, for
one reason or another, not to breastfeed their infants, but to use
widely available baby formula. Mothers' milk contains sugar: primary
sugar at a reasonable level of around 7%. Yet standard made-up formula
contains 16% secondary sugar, which is far more than the body needs.
Worryingly, so-called 'organic versions' contain up to 37%, which is
reckless and astonishing.
Furthermore, many 'toddlers' drinks' contain around 6 teaspoons of added
sugar per bottle. Meaning, a child that has been weaned from one sugary
drink can go straight to another, without his or her parents even
realizing that the drinks contain an unnatural level of sugar. This
process continues throughout childhood, causing a dangerous cycle.
The extra sugar in our system becomes glycogen or fat - which is stored
for later use. However, with a regular habit, the fat stays within us
and is very difficult to remove. If this process continues, the risk of
obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease grows. This can happen quite
easily, and some have spoken about a 'sugar addiction'. Scans have
shown that the dopamine in our brains that lights up when we reward
ourselves (for example with sugar) does not light up in an addict,
impelling them to repeat the process to get their fix.
What is the solution? Laurent explains
Laurent proposes we put extreme pressure on
the authorities to make sugar content as clear as possible in order to
inform customers what they are really buying. He is not satisfied with
nutritional labels on the back of most products, since they have had no
effect. He instead prefers to compare the situation to the warnings
plastered on cigarette packaging.
He inspires us by showing that by applying pressure we too can make a
difference to this ongoing and accelerating epidemic.