From peanut butter to marinara sauce, it’s easy to find sugar in just about everything. There are many hidden sugars in the form of carbohydrates, and unfortunately, many people rely on processed foods for daily snacks. Since most processed food contains a lot of sugar, in some cases the daily calorie intake account for up to 17% of the total calories for adults! Experts argue that consuming too much sugar is a huge cause for people becoming overweight and also suffering from other diseases such as heart disease and diabetes. Eating foods with less sugar is challenging, but it’s certainly doable. We discuss how to transform a diet in the Body Reboot book. In this article, we reveal several reasons why sugar should stay out of a diet for good.

Acne

Even though researchers need to do more studies on how sugar can result in excess acne, a study named Significance of diet in treated and untreated acne vulgaris in 2016 discusses the strong evidence that eating foods that are high in sugar can make acne worse.

The relationship between diet and acne is highly controversial. Several studies during the last decade have led dermatologists to reflect on a potential link between diet and acne. This article presents the latest findings on a potential impact that diet can have on pathogenesis of acne vulgaris. The association between diet and acne can no longer be dismissed. Compelling evidence shows that high glycemic load diets may exacerbate acne. Dairy ingestion appears to be weakly associated with acne and the roles of omega-3 fatty acids, dietary fiber, antioxidants, vitamin A, zinc and iodine remain to be elucidated. The question of what the impact of diet is on the course of acne vulgaris still remains unclear.

Obesity

This one might sound obvious, but many people don’t quite understand just how much of a part sugar plays in obesity. Not only does it make you feel gross, but Healthline discusses how over time it can cause you to gain a lot of weight. If you’re on a low carb diet that’s the last thing you want. Cut out sugar and you will lose weight and feel better!

Rates of obesity are rising worldwide and added sugar, especially from sugar-sweetened beverages, is thought to be one of the main culprits.

Sugar-sweetened drinks like sodas, juices and sweet teas are loaded with fructose, a type of simple sugar.

Consuming fructose increases your hunger and desire for food more than glucose, the main type of sugar found in starchy foods.

Additionally, excessive fructose consumption may cause resistance to leptin, an important hormone that regulates hunger and tells your body to stop eating.

In other words, sugary beverages don’t curb your hunger, making it easy to quickly consume a high number of liquid calories. This can lead to weight gain.

Research has consistently shown that people who drink sugary beverages, such as soda and juice, weigh more than people who don’t.

Also, drinking a lot of sugar-sweetened beverages is linked to an increased amount of visceral fat, a kind of deep belly fat associated with conditions like diabetes and heart disease.

Heart Disease

A 2015 study by The Evidence for Saturated Fat and for Sugar-Related to Coronary Heart Disease discusses how added sugars correlates to bad heart health. It also states the scary truth that a diet that has added sugars has a 3-fold risk of death. In other words, less sugar in your diet is better!

Dietary guidelines continue to recommend restricting intake of saturated fats. This recommendation follows largely from the observation that saturated fats can raise levels of total serum cholesterol (TC), thereby putatively increasing the risk of atherosclerotic coronary heart disease (CHD). However, TC is only modestly associated with CHD, and more important than the total level of cholesterol in the blood may be the number and size of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) particles that contain it. As for saturated fats, these fats are a diverse class of compounds; different fats may have different effects on LDL and on broader CHD risk based on the specific saturated fatty acids (SFAs) they contain. Importantly, though, people eat foods, not isolated fatty acids. Some food sources of SFAs may pose no risk for CHD or possibly even be protective. Thus, advice to reduce saturated fat in the diet without regard to such nuance could actually increase people’s risk of CHD. When saturated fats are replaced with refined carbohydrates, and specifically with added sugars (like sucrose or high fructose corn syrup), the end result is not favorable for heart health. Such replacement leads to changes in LDL, high-density lipoprotein (HDL), and triglycerides that may increase the risk of CHD. Additionally, diets high in sugar may induce many other abnormalities associated with elevated CHD risk, including elevated levels of glucose, insulin, and uric acid, impaired glucose tolerance, insulin and leptin resistance, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and altered platelet function. A diet high in added sugars has been found to cause a 3-fold increased risk of death due to cardiovascular disease. But sugars, like saturated fats, are a diverse class of compounds. The monosaccharide, fructose, and fructose-containing sweeteners (e.g., sucrose) result in greater degrees of metabolic abnormalities than seen with glucose (either isolated as a monomer or in chains as starch) and may present greater risk for CHD. This paper reviews the evidence linking saturated fats and sugars to CHD, and concludes that the latter is more of a problem than the former. Dietary guidelines should shift focus away from reducing saturated fat, and from replacing saturated fat with carbohydrates, specifically when these carbohydrates are refined. To reduce the burden of CHD, guidelines should focus particularly on reducing intake of concentrated sugars, specifically the fructose-containing sugars like sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup in the form of ultra-processed foods and beverages.

Diabetes

In 2014 researchers did a study on diabetes and how eating too much sugar can lead to this horrible disease. The study called Risk factors contributing to type 2 diabetes and recent advances in the treatment and prevention revealed that it’s essential to develop new therapeutic strategies and prevent diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes is a serious and common chronic disease resulting from a complex inheritance-environment interaction along with other risk factors such as obesity and sedentary lifestyle. Type 2 diabetes and its complications constitute a major worldwide public health problem, affecting almost all populations in both developed and developing countries with high rates of diabetes-related morbidity and mortality. The prevalence of type 2 diabetes has been increasing exponentially, and a high prevalence rate has been observed in developing countries and in populations undergoing “westernization” or modernization. Multiple risk factors of diabetes, delayed diagnosis until micro- and macro-vascular complications arise, life-threatening complications, failure of the current therapies, and financial costs for the treatment of this disease, make it necessary to develop new efficient therapy strategies and appropriate prevention measures for the control of type 2 diabetes. Herein, we summarize our current understanding about the epidemiology of type 2 diabetes, the roles of genes, lifestyle and other factors contributing to rapid increase in the incidence of type 2 diabetes. The core aims are to bring forward the new therapy strategies and cost-effective intervention trials of type 2 diabetes.

T2DM and its related complications impose heavy health burdens worldwide and there have been not effective measures to fully cope with the diseases. The main cause of the diabetes epidemic is the interaction between genetic and environmental risk. A number of other factors are also attributable to the diseases. Whereas most antidiabetic agents have shown beneficial effects when used as monotherapy or combination therapy, they are also associated with negative effects, such as weight gain, hypoglycemia, gastrointestinal effects or cardiovascular disease. With increasing incidence of T2DM, searching an ideal therapy becomes one of the top priorities in combating this disease. To date, several therapeutic strategies have been developed, such as the use of SGLT2 inhibitors, DPP-4 inhibitors and GPR40 agonists.

By now you know why sugar is so bad for your body, and hopefully, you’re inspired to make a change and get back on track. It’s not easy to stay away from sugar, but having a high-fat, low carb diet help eliminate most of the sugar cravings. You can learn more about the ketogenic diet in our book, which we just so happen to be giving away free copies of the Body Reboot book! Help us cover the cost of shipping and we’ll send you a free book. Check out this page to find out if there are any copies of the book left before it’s too late.

Sources: NCBI: The Evidence for Saturated Fat and for Sugar Related to Coronary Heart Disease, Prog Cardiovasc Dis. 2015, NCBI: Significance of diet in treated and untreated acne vulgaris. Postepy Dermatol Alergol. 2016, NCBI: Risk factors contributing to type 2 diabetes and recent advances in the treatment and prevention. Int J Med Sci. 2014, Healthine