The quick answer: Sugary drinks, with either real or artificial sugars, are a leading cause of chronic disease and premature death. Pure water is the healthiest drink and a big step towards simplifying your life.
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Allied With Angels
The 20th century was a dietary disaster. Food had remained essentially unchanged through the six millennia of recorded history. Then, in one century, the industrial revolution reinvented what God had created. We call what resulted the modern American diet (MAD). MAD caused the rise of chronic disease (diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc.). The food reformation’s goal is to recover the goodness of natural food, taking advantage of modern methods, and prevent chronic disease.
If you read this blog, benefit from the Healthy Changes, and invite your friends and neighbors to join—you are a soldier in the food reformation. In this battle, you’re on the side of the angels.
Seven Deadly Trends
The industrialization of food can be seen in seven trends. We’ll visit these trends in the coming weeks. Trend #1 is the growth of sugar from an occasional treat to the main source of calories in the modern diet.
In the early 1800s sugar was a rare treat; most sweeteners were natural, local, and seasonal—honey in the summer, maple syrup in the winter. You couldn’t overdose on honey; first, because the bees made a fixed amount, and second, because honey is less addictive than sugar. The experts estimate sugar consumption from all sources (honey, maple syrup, molasses, and refined sugar) in that time at 10 lbs. per year, or a couple of teaspoons daily.
Our sugar consumption today, based on USDA data, exceeds 100 pounds annually. This is a ten-fold increase from the early 1800s, and five times what the AHA recommends (6 tsp daily for women; 9 for men). If your sugar intake is average, you get about 25% of your calories from some form of sugar. There’s something terribly wrong when refined sugar is the leading source of calories.
Two Heroes
John Yudkin, PhD, MD (1910-1995), was the first to connect sugar to the modern diseases. In the ‘50s he studied the link between sugar, type 2 diabetes, and coronary heart disease. (If we had followed Yudkin we wouldn’t have wasted a generation trying to solve heart disease by reducing cholesterol.) Yudkin wrote a famous book, published 1972 in England as Pure, White and Deadly, and in the U.S. as Sweet and Dangerous, that remains a classic. Dr. Yudkins is a nutrition hero.
Robert Lustig, PhD, is a UCSF professor and obesity researcher who warns about the danger of refined sugar, especially fructose. For an explanation, see his YouTube video, Sugar: The Bitter Truth. Talking about the fructose naturally present in fruits, Dr. Lustig closes with a comment I never expected to hear from a UC professor: “When God makes a poison (meaning fructose) He wraps it in the antidote.” Skip the soda drinks; eat apples.
Good Calories, Bad Calories
The essential dietary change is to slash sugar intake to below the AHA goal of 6 tsp (25 grams) daily for women and 9 tsp for men. For the average American, this is an 80% reduction! Your blood sugar and insulin levels will decline as you do this, excess fat will slowly disappear, and real food (fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts) will begin to taste better. (Natural food has a hard time competing with food that’s more like candy.)
Gary Taubes wrote a detailed book on the health problems linked to America’s excessive sugar intake. The book, Good Calories, Bad Calories, carefully examines the role of sugar in overweight and obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia, infertility, and aging. It’s a scary book. If you need motivation to curtail your sugar intake you should read it or others, such as:
- Suicide by Sugar by Nancy Appleton.
- Sugar Nation, The Hidden Truth Behind America’s Deadliest Habit and the Simple Way to Beat it, by Jeff O’Connell
- The Blood Sugar Solution: The UltraHealthy Program for Losing Weight, Preventing Disease, and Feeling Great Now!, by Dr. Mark Hyman.
- Sugar Blues, by William Duffy.
Sugary Drinks
Soft drinks are the #1 source of sugar for most of us, so this should be the first place to cut back. There’s a hidden secret behind the limit of one 12 oz. soda per week—it’s hard at first but over time you’ll lose the taste and begin to skip weeks. At some point you may say, "My addiction is cured; I can live without sugary factory drinks."
Non-sugar Sugar?
Artificially sweetened drinks are defined as sugary so also come under this rule. Do you buy diet drinks in the mistaken belief it’s healthier than regular soda? Society made a foolish mistake when we assumed that food scientists could invent a new molecule that would be intensely sweet but not have the ill effects of sugar. The bitter truth is artificial sweeteners seem to reinforce the infantile sugar craving in an addictive way, while adding new problems. See this post for more on the dangers of sugar substitutes.
What to Drink?
When banning an unhealthy product, our policy is to offer a healthy replacement. So what to drink? Water! Drink lots of water. There is no healthier drink that water! (We use a Brita charcoal filter on our water.) Eight glasses daily is a common recommendation. Here’s a good test of your water intake: Fill a pitcher with eight cups of water and drink from it for one day. Measure what’s left at the end of the day. You’ll find it’s hard to drink the recommended eight glasses but you’ll do better with this pitcher method because of the daily feedback.
Occasionally we get bored and seek variety, something besides water. A drink flavored with real fruit, even a slice of lime or lemon, makes a nice change. One flavored drink a day seems enough for our family. Green smoothies are good too.
Please comment on your experience cutting back on sugar drinks, including artificially sweetened diet drinks.
Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change reminder card. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.