Every food item we eat gets converted into glucose, a form of sugar. The human body requires glucose to perform all the minor to major functions, including digestion, blood circulation and even respiration (breathing). However, excessive consumption of sugary foods can cause this extra sugar to circulate in the bloodstream, resulting in numerous health problems. But how much sugar is too much? A recent study has discovered that consuming more than 6 teaspoons of sugar can have a severe impact on your health. In this article, we are going to discuss how added sugars can affect your body, the ways you can cut them down and their alternatives.

The Study

A review was recently conducted to evaluate the health outcomes of consuming dietary sugars. The review included 73 meta-analyses and over 8500 articles. A specific area of interest was the consumption of sugary beverages which are a major source of added sugar. The results of the study showed: 

• Excessive consumption of sugary drinks leads to increased body weight.
• Drinking sugary beverages increases the risk of gout, coronary heart disease and all-cause mortality.
• Dietary sugar increases the risk of acquiring certain cancers including pancreatic, prostate and breast cancer.
• Consuming added sugar also leads to poor cardiovascular outcomes including hypertension, coronary heart disease, heart attack and stroke.

How Do You Subtract Sugar From Your Diet?

Now that we know the health effects of added sugar, let’s know how to reduce its consumption. Two easy ways of subtracting sugar from your diet include:

1. Reading product labels

Reading food labels is an easy way of monitoring the compounds that your body would have to process once you consume the product. Look for ‘sugars’ or ‘added sugars’ mentioned on the labels. The total amount of sugar is often mentioned in grams. Watch out if the sugar content has been mentioned on a per-serving basis or the overall package. For eg. if the product has 5g of sugar per serving then 4 servings of it can easily amount to 20g of sugar. Here are the types of sugar that you should look out for:

• Molasses
• Corn syrup
• Invert sugar
• Malt sugar
• Fruit juice concentrates
• Corn sweetener
• Sugar syrup molecules ending in ‘ose’ such as fructose, lactose, sucrose etc.

2. Switch to alternatives

There are plenty of alternatives to refined sugar that would give you the exact sweetness without any health complications. Some of the most popular sugar substitutes include:

• Raw honey
• Dates
• Banana puree
• Monk fruit 

Fruits are also a healthy source of glucose and can provide your body with added nutrients. However, one must remember, sugar (in any form) must be consumed in moderation.

Reducing the consumption of added sugars to the minimum and replacing them with natural substitutes can help reduce your risk of developing the aforementioned health issues. For more information,

Consult An Apollo Diabetologist

 

Medically reviewed by Dr Sonia Bhatt.