Americans are hooked on sugar

When I went Paleo, I started reading labels. With my mom having congestive heart, I was on the lookout for sodium. Apparently, now I am on the lookout for sugar and its other aliases: cane sugar, fructose, glucose, saccharine, aspartame, sorbitol, lactose, turbinado sugar, sorghum syrup, galactose, dextran, dextrose, corn syrup, et al.

I never have been one to have a sweet tooth really or be a choc-o-holic (I know, I am not a typical female). However, sugar is everywhere! It is in food products you wouldn’t necessarily see like salad dressings, tomato sauces, ketchup, etc. We have seen a rise in the amount of sugar in processed foods since the 1980’s when high fructose corn syrup replaced sugar in sodas and other products. Here’s the sad thing as a result: in 1980, roughly one in seven Americans were obese, and almost six million were diabetic, and the obesity rates, at least, hadn’t changed significantly in the 20 years previously. By the early 2000s, when sugar consumption peaked, one in every three Americans was obese, and 14 million were diabetic.
Studies are being done to look at the links between various diseases and sugar. When you start to Google this, it is amazing how much is now linked to sugar. Sugar is linked to all kinds of cancer, dizziness, asthma, headaches, toxemia in pregnancy, cataracts, emphysema, eczema, cardiovascular disease, depression, indigestion, Alzheimer’s, and so on. (For a complete and amazing list of medical reasons to avoid sugar, visit http://www.rheumatic.org/sugar.htm )

Rob found this article the other day about sugar being toxic and asked me to do a post about it. However, it has so much information in it; I do not even know where to begin to paraphrase it. Many of you are following a Paleo Diet to be fit and to lose weight. But, many of you want to follow Paleo for the health benefits and to avoid health issues. This article supports the many reasons to avoid sugar if you want to avoid future health complications, and is a thorough look historically as to why sugar has become so toxic. Don’t take our word on it or even this articles word on it. Do your own research. Choosing a Paleo lifestyle also means becoming informed about the choices you make in what you put in your body (or reasons why you won’t put it in your body).

Here’s the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=magazine
Let us know what you think!