I’m assuming you mean table sugar, sugar in drinks, candy, chocolate, cakes, Ice cream and so on.
But for the purpose of furthering your understanding, I need you to start thinking of pasta, any kind of bread, potatoes, rice, and similar starchy foods as exactly the same. All carbs are converted to sugar in the stomach, it’s just a question of how fast.
Clearly, candy bars will rot your teeth into the bargain, but that’s not the real evil in sugar, or for your answer, carbohydrates in general.
Let’s place vegetables to one side since although technically they’re carbs, they’re quite safe from the sugar standpoint. And also, let’s leave out fruit since the fruit sugar ‘fructose’ is particularly good, and yet by complete contrast, High Fructose Corn Syrup, can liken to the Devils snot.
That said, let’s focus on your specific sugar question.
Hormones are powerful things, and there’s none more potent than insulin.
Mess with this baby, and according to most experts, you’re pretty much guaranteed obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, brain fog, and mood disorders.
Strong words you say!
Well, they would be if they were true, but since we at BluntCoach aren’t as convinced as the experts about sugar being ‘Pure, White and Deadly’, there may be more to this sugar is evil campaign we’ve seen in recent years.
In 1770 when sugar was a rich man’s treat, the average yearly amount consumed was just 4 pounds.
This was probably already a fair bit more than any of our ancestors would have eaten, but probably still safe today, as it’d be only about 1% of daily calories.
By 1900 however, that figure had risen to 90 pounds per person.
In 2012, the typical western diet provides a massive 150 pounds, although the Americans have to be the best of course, with a gargantuan 168 pounds.
How do we go from 4 to 168 lbs per year, of anything?
Three words; Slavery, Sales, and Money!
The current opinion of the dangers of our current attitude towards sugar, that’s often portrayed as an innocent, simple, and necessary form of energy, is in what it does to our blood sugar.
At any given time, you have no more than 2 teaspoons of sugar in your blood, you may have heard of this referred to as glucose, or blood glucose.
Double or treble that amount, so 4 or 6 teaspoons (20-30 grams), and you could die!
Yet a tin of cola contains 39 grams (8 teaspoons) all by itself, so how come more people aren’t dropping dead if glucose is as toxic as I say it is?
Because you’re amazing body converts it from toxic glucose, to non-toxic glycogen, and stores some of it away in your muscles for energy.
Assuming you use your muscles much of course, and if they’re not hungry for glycogen, then the liver also acts as a storage vessel.
However, there’s only so much room in your liver, and any excess glycogen gets converted to fat and stored on your arse or gut, where there’s always plenty of space for storage.
When you drink that tin of coke, and whatever other sugar (carbs) you consume with it, the pancreas releases a huge shot of insulin.
You can think of insulin as a clean-up crew, that must urgently restore your blood sugar to normal levels to save your life.
So the next time some dietitian or nutrition idiot suggests to you that your body needs sugar, and prefers to run on it, you can explain to the spaz, that far from being the body’s ‘Preferred’ fuel, its actually ‘Prioritized’, to be dealt with before it kills you!
Big difference between ‘Preferred’ and ‘Prioritized’, isn’t there?
Please be sure to mention of course, that you got this knowledge from a self educated guy, who hasn’t been through ‘Quackademia’ and received their coveted degree, because they will most certainly mention it.
Protein also affects insulin, but only in a tiny, more manageable way, and dietary fat doesn’t influence it at all, but sugar (carbs), can send it through the roof.
Your body’s cells can create energy from either fat or glycogen, so imagine each of your cells as having a door through which only fat can enter, and another door exclusively for sugar.
These doors are called receptor sites, each a bit like a lock that will only accept a certain shape of key.
The moment insulin is released in response to a big sugar (carb) intake, it signals every cell in your body to ‘close’ its fat doors, and exclusively use sugar for energy.
When that happens, you now officially become a ‘sugar burner’, as any fat stored in or on your body will stay put, or float around the bloodstream as triglycerides.
Forever.
Or at least until you run out of glycogen, insulin clears your system, and the fat doorways are re-opened for business (energy use).
You’ve been lied to, and led to believe that dangerously high triglycerides come from consuming too much fat, when in fact its sugar (carbs) that’s the culprit.
You simply can’t use fat as an energy source, in any way shape or form, until insulin has cleared your system, and for most people that’s never.
For some people, perhaps who exercise, finish their last meal at 8, and walk the dog before bed, they may run out of carbs in the wee hours of the morning, and the body will once again begin to burn some of its preferred fuel (fat) for a few hours.
Yes, that’s right, your body and brain runs more efficiently on fat (ketones), than sugar.
But even then, most people will soon fuck that up by eating toast or cereals (any carbs) at breakfast, and from the moment you take your first bite of bullshit healthy whole grain toast, or cereal, you start the insulin process all over again, and can say goodbye to fat burning till insulin clears the system yet again, by which time you’ll ruin it with carbs for lunch, and so on, as day becomes night.
The perfect breakfast for an overweight person therefore, would be 4 scrambled eggs, or 2 eggs 2 bacon.
2 slices of what you may think is the healthiest multi grain bread, will push your blood sugar up higher, and faster than a snickers bar, and totally ‘derail’ your fat burning efforts!
The idea that whole grain cereals, wheat breads, crackers, pasta, or spaghetti is a healthy option, for either health concerns or weight management, is a fucking joke.
Sweet!
Imagine 300 years ago, when people were none the wiser, sugar tasted great, gave you high energy, plus you could only get your hands on 4 lbs a year.
Then 200 years ago, the average amount consumed had risen 4 times, was super cheap to produce (thanks to slavery), easy to store, and a piece of cake to sell.
Then 100 years ago, medical science caught up with sugar, and it was discovered by the French, English, and German scientists, that sugar, and all of its derivatives, was not what it seemed.
But by that time consumption had risen 20 times from the original 4 to 90 lbs, plantation owners were filthy rich, as was anyone involved in the sugar refining, importing, or sales business.
No way was that financial freight train going to stop in a hurry, even if it killed its passengers!
Finally, 40 years ago, to cover the mess up further, we were sold the idea that ‘fat’, and in particular animal fat, was the reason for the heart disease, obesity, and diabetes epidemics, that could be observed anywhere this crap diet showed up.
Something had to be blamed, and since fat yields 9 calories per gram, against protein and carbs at only 4 calories, it was the obvious candidate for sacrifice.
Couple that with the calories in v calories out bullshit, as the reason for all ills being fed to the public, plus dead bodies galore on slabs everywhere with fat clogged arteries, and it was an easy sale to make to the great unwashed (us), that fat was the enemy.
Meat, fish, eggs, and dairy, are expensive to produce compared with wheat, soy, rice and pasta, and have a limited shelf life, therefore the profits on the shit carbs are astronomical, while the mark up on the proper food is only around 50%.
The box itself, of a box of cornflakes or pasta, costs more to produce and print than the fucking contents does to make! For real.
So, if you were a supermarket, or food manufacturer that didn’t give a fuck about public health, what would you rather be selling more of?
Thankfully your question was ‘what does sugar do to my body’ rather than how does it do it, so I don’t need to go into the detailed how’s, of why it will also age you quicker, and give you Alzheimer’s to look forward too, if you make it that far!
All the best,
Blunt Coach Andy
