"A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down in a most delightful way!" I love Mary Poppins! It's actually my favorite movie! Seriously! And I love sugar! Who doesn't right? Yummy! It's because we love sugar that we have various substitutes for it. We may hope we can get all the sweetness and taste of sugar without it's harmful effects, even though the substitutes are not sugar at all--which is weird it you think about it!
Most people think that they only "harmful" thing about sugar is what it does to our waistlines. Yeah, it makes us fat! That's not news. But most people do not know other effects of too much sugar.
The following information comes from www.smoothie-handbook.com/sugar-side-effects.html
"...sugar ages your skin, depresses the immune system, and is the preferred fuel of cancer cells. In Dr. Nancy Appelton's book, " Lick the Sugar Habit," she lists 76 ways it can ruin your health. I'm not going to list all 76, but let me highlight the top 10 that stood out to me."
"1. It feeds cancer cells and has been connected with the development of cancer of the breast, ovaries, prostate, rectum, pancreas, lung, gallbladder, and stomach.
2. It can cause autoimmune diseases such as, arthritis, asthma, and multiple sclerosis.
3. It greatly assists the uncontrolled growth of candida yeast infections.
4. It can increase the size of your liver by making your liver cells divide, and it can increase the amount of liver fat.
5. It can increase kidney size and produce pathological changes in the kidney such as the formation of kidney stones.
6. It can increase your risk of Alzheimer's disease.
7. It can cause hormonal imbalances such as increasing estrogen in men, exacerbating PMS, and decreasing growth hormone.
8. Your body changes it into 2 to 5 times more fat in the bloodstream than it does starch.
9. It has the potential of inducing abnormal metabolic processes in a normal healthy individual and to promote chronic degenerative diseases.
10. It upsets the mineral relationships in your body causing chromium and copper deficiencies and interferes with absorption of calcium and magnesium."
Bummer. So, what are sugar-loving people like you and me to do? Well, I do ingest sugar in moderation. I do check the amount of sugar in products at the grocery store. I also don't ADD sugar to anything. In other words, in baking, smoothies, or whatever I'd prefer to use something else. But I'll get to that later.
So, what's the big deal with a spoonful of sugar? Well, if it's just a spoonful of sugar, it isn't really a big deal, but most people ingest much, much more than that from desserts and from food bought at the store that don't even taste sweet, and therefore, are at risk of the above ailments.
Thus, many people choose to use artificial sweeteners...
