Amanda's Wellbeing Podcast - Sugar

In today’s Five Minute Food Facts episode, I discuss that sticky subject, sugar. I’ll walk you through what sugar is, what it does in the body, and where we obtain it in food. I’ll discuss how sugar can be “hidden” in manufactured foods with all the confusing-sounding names it can go by. I look at the negative health impacts of excess sugar consumption, including metabolic diseases like obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Transcript

Hello,

Welcome to Amanda's Wellbeing Podcast.

This is my five minute food facts series.

I'm Amanda Hayes,

Your host,

A nutritionist with a passion for wellbeing.

I decided to do this series because there is so much conflicting information available about food and various diets.

Some of it is credible and some of it is not.

It can be time consuming,

Not to mention confusing,

To try and sift through the noise and get to the heart of the matter.

In this series,

I will do all of that for you and present factual,

Reliable information in a concise and easy to understand way.

The content of my five minute food facts series is for information purposes only and it is not intended to replace the advice of your health professional.

Today I am going to discuss sugar.

Numerous books have been written about the history of sugar.

If you search history plus sugar on Amazon,

You will see.

If you simply search sugar,

Some more colourful titles pop up.

One website even claims,

Western history cannot be understood without understanding sugar.

Suffice to say,

It is one of the oldest known commodities with references dating back to 510 BC.

The history of sugar cannot be divorced from politics.

As we know,

The sugar industry was responsible for the enslavement of millions of Africans and it has been implicated in the Napoleonic Wars.

In Australia,

The big players in the sugar industry apparently have a seat at the table where policy that shapes sugar consumption is made.

If that is indeed true,

Can anyone smell a conflict of interest?

It is a politically charged issue and one I will not delve into here as I don't know all of the facts.

So,

What is sugar?

In terms of macronutrients,

That is carbohydrates,

Protein and fat,

Sugars belong in the carbohydrate family.

Simple carbohydrates are sugars and complex carbohydrates are starches and fibres.

Those descriptors relate to their chemical structures.

So simple carbohydrates are broken down into two types,

Monosaccharides,

That is single sugars and disaccharides,

Which is sugars composed of a pair of monosaccharides.

There are three monosaccharides,

Glucose,

Known as blood sugar,

Fructose,

Which is the sugar found in fruit and honey and is the sweetest of the sugars and galactose.

There are three disaccharides,

Maltose,

Which is a glucose molecule plus another glucose molecule,

Sucrose,

Also known as table sugar,

Is glucose plus fructose and lactose,

Which is milk sugar,

Is glucose plus galactose.

A quick lesson on the chemistry of sugar.

All three monosaccharides are made up of the same atoms,

That's six carbons,

Twelve hydrogens and six oxygen,

But they have different chemical structures which accounts for their different levels of sweetness.

So what happens to sugar in your body when you eat it?

So one to four hours post meal,

All sugars and most starches have been digested,

That is broken down into monosaccharides.

So once they're broken down into monosaccharides,

Where do they go?

The glucose molecules are transported via the blood to peripheral tissues where insulin facilitates its uptake by the cells for use as energy.

The glucose that is not needed for immediate energy supply is converted to glycogen,

Which is the storage form of glucose.

The body typically contains four to five hundred grams of glycogen stored in the muscles and a hundred grams in the liver.

When the body needs that stored energy to maintain blood glucose levels between meals,

Enzymes break down the glycogen.

So each glucose molecule is bound up with three molecules of water in glycogen.

So incidentally,

That is why when you go on a restrictive diet,

You initially lose weight rapidly.

Sadly,

It's the body using your stored glucose for energy and releasing the water.

So the initial rapid weight loss is typically just fluid and not fat loss.

So just quickly,

Fructose has a different method of absorption in the body from glucose and galactose,

Which means it takes longer to absorb and produces a smaller increase in blood sugar than glucose.

Fructose and galactose go to the liver where they are converted to other metabolites like glucose or glycogen.

So excess carbohydrate that cannot be used immediately for energy or is stored in the muscles and liver becomes fat.

In fact,

Consuming more energy than we need from any source,

Carbohydrate protein or fat results in the storage of that excess energy as body fat.

Just a little aside,

Dietary fiber,

Which is a carbohydrate and the structural part of plants,

Unlike starch,

Cannot be broken down by the digestive enzymes and instead it is fermented by bacteria in the colon.

So where is sugar obtained in the diet?

A better question these days might be,

Where is it not obtained?

It is confusing when on one hand we are told to consume less sugar,

But on the other to eat more fruit because fruit contains sugar right?

To add to the confusion,

Sugar is sugar.

All types of sugar,

Whether in fruit or soft drink,

Contain the same number of calories,

But there are important differences.

Fruit contains natural sugars,

Packaged with nutrients including antioxidants and dietary fiber and it is actually difficult to over consume fruit.

Free sugars have been extracted from their naturally occurring source and are added to products like juices,

Soft drink,

Biscuits,

Lollies etc.

Free sugars contain little nutritional value and are easier consumed to consume in excess,

Especially I think soft drink.

It is estimated that Australians get around 60% of their sugar intake from free sugars,

So advice to cut down on sugars is really referring to free sugars.

As I mentioned sugar is sugar,

Raw,

Brown,

Castor,

White,

Icing sugar etc.

Is refined from cane sugar or sugar beets.

One of the things that can be confusing about sugar is that it masquerades under many names,

For example beet sugar,

Cane sugar,

Confectioners sugar,

Date sugar,

Evaporated cane juice,

Fruit juice concentrate,

Invert sugar,

Corn syrup,

Dextrose,

Malt syrup,

Maltodextrin,

You get the picture.

Well known culinary nutritionist and author Catherine Saxelby makes an excellent point.

In packaged foods,

Ingredients are listed in descending order by weight.

Manufacturers can effectively manipulate the amount of sugar a product appears to contain by breaking down sugar into its various different forms or using different forms of sugar I should say and listing them separately,

So listing fructose,

Dextrose,

Barley malt extract for example as different ingredients and so they come further down the list because smaller quantities are used and it looks like the food contains less sugar than it actually does.

But if all the forms of sugar were added together it would feature much higher up on the ingredient list.

Then there are all sorts of sugar substitutes like agave syrup,

Coconut sugar,

Rice malt syrup which are often marketed as healthy substitutes.

Hmm this is really a topic of another episode but I'll just mention a couple.

Rapadura sugar is made from sugar cane and it is less processed than refined sugar,

Leading to claims that it is better for you because it has more minerals than refined sugar.

Well this is factually true in terms of the minerals.

The amounts of minerals it contains are so minimal that at the small intake levels of the rapadura sugar that you would typically have they would have very little impact on your overall mineral intake and because it is still an added sugar consumption should be limited.

Another one is high fructose corn syrup.

This is a sweetener made from corn.

It is sweeter than sugar because it has a higher percentage of fructose than table sugar.

It extends the shelf life of food.

It is cheaper than sugar and it is obviously very highly processed.

It is used extensively in the US but luckily for us it is not so common in Australia.

So we know what sugar is,

Where it goes in the body and where we find it in food but what are the issues with sugar?

The main one is that we eat too much of it.

One of the best illustrations of this is in a 2010 TED talk by Jamie Oliver called Teach Every Child About Food.

I still remember what an impact that talk had on me at the time.

For some people certain sugars induce digestive issues.

Most people have heard of lactose intolerance which is usually caused by a deficiency of an enzyme called lactase.

Lactase breaks down lactose,

Milk sugar.

So symptoms can include abdominal cramps,

Bloating and diarrhoea.

Treatment focuses on avoiding dairy products and the use of lactose free products like Xymil which is a lactose free milk.

Around about 4.

5% of the Australian population reports being lactose intolerant.

Certain sugars are poorly absorbed in the small intestines.

These are fermentable oligosaccharides,

Disaccharides,

Monosaccharides and polyols known more commonly as FODMAPs which you've probably heard of.

In some people FODMAPs can trigger symptoms like diarrhea,

Abdominal bloating,

Pain and nausea and other symptoms and it makes them feel uncomfortable and sometimes obviously stressed.

So low FODMAP diets reduces or removes certain everyday foods that are high in FODMAPs to manage the symptoms and these foods include some grains,

Some vegetables,

Some fruits and some dairy products.

Back to too much sugar and why it is bad for your health.

Excess sugar consumption has been associated with metabolically based diseases like obesity,

Cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

It has also been implicated in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease,

Cognitive decline,

High blood pressure which damages blood vessels,

Inflammation and some cancers.

The mechanisms continue to be debated but it is pretty clear from this list that there is no discernible upside from eating too much sugar.

So the next question is how much sugar is too much?

The World Health Organisation strongly recommends that we reduce our intake of free sugars.

It also strongly recommends that adults and children should reduce the intake of free sugars to less than 10% of total energy intake.

But really,

Who on earth knows how to accurately measure and apply that to their daily diet?

The Australian dietary guidelines are a little bit more helpful.

They say limit the intake of foods and drinks containing added sugars such as confectionary,

Sugar sweetened soft drink and cordials,

Fruit drinks,

Vitamin waters,

Energy and sports drinks.

Again that is not entirely helpful but in practical terms what those bodies are saying is try and eat less than 6 teaspoons of free sugar per day.

So 1 teaspoon is around about 6 grams.

So for an illustration a standard 375ml can of Coke contains just under 40 grams of sugar.

So that is around about 6 and a half teaspoons of sugar in just one can.

So one can sort of gets you over your daily limit.

So where does this leave us?

I could happily say eat 2 to 3 serves of fruit per day and avoid all free sugar.

But this is extremely hard to do.

Even with all the nutritional knowledge I have I love to eat chocolate from time to time.

I'm a sucker for marmalade on toast and the occasional slice of birthday cake.

It's probably more realistic to allow yourself a treat containing sugar maybe 1 or 2 times a week.

And don't drink any sugar sweetened beverages.

Unless you're an endurance athlete of course.

Also sugar is often linked to social events like having a slice of birthday cake at a gathering and enjoying a dessert with family and friends.

And we all know that is a really important part of life.

Thank you very much.

Eat well.

Move well.

Think well.

Reviews

So much important information in a nutshell. Thank you 🙏

I feel I need to write a review on this short talk about sugar to direct some attention to it.
It is incredibly useful information, delivered in a straightforward, easy to understand talk about the role and consequences of sugar in our diet. (I don’t have a scientific background, and Amanda explains the chemical composition of the different forms of sugar and its action in our body, and she makes sense out of a very confusing topic.)
Thank you, Amanda!!
You have motivated me to do some additional research to learn more about how to actually apply this to my daily diet.
I highly recommend this wellbeing podcast to everyone!