Are you sugar smart? Linked to heart attacks, kidney disease, diabetes and other diseases, sugar is to the '90s what cholesterol was to the '80s - includes 9 ways to cope with sugar cravings

American Fitness, March-April, 1991 by Frances Sheridan Goulart

Sugar in high enough doses on a regular basis shares responsibility with other refined carbohydrates and proteins for causing myopia. According to optometrist Ben C. Lane of the Optical Society, there is a link between nearsightedness and chromium and calcium levels, which are lowered by sugar and protein consumption. Excessive intake of sugar and overcooked proteins exhaust the body's supplies of chromium and B vitamins. Fluid pressure in the eye, a contributing factor of nearsightedness, is regulated by the B vitamins.

Deficiencies

Substituting sugar, which has no nutrients, for starch, which contains vitamins, minerals and fiber, depresses the growth rate in animals even when the same number of calories is taken in. Sugar also interferes with protein utilization and depletes large amounts of vitamin B, which is needed for growth, repair and energy.

Magnesium activates many enzyme systems in the body that control carbohydrate, fat and mineral balance, as well as the production of nucleic acid and protein--essential for every body cell. High intakes of sugar appear to increase the need for magnesium and deficiency can cause heart and circulatory damage. Like alcohol and coffee, sugar increases the loss of potassium because it causes the urine to become alkaline.

What Is Sugar?

There are more than a hundred sweet substances chemists classify as sugars. Sucrose, or table sugar, is the most common and abundant of them.

Although the main sugars in fruits are usually fructose and glucose, many fruits and even some vegetables contain traces of sucrose (3% to 7%), which is chemically identical to table sugar.

Is sugar necessary for energy? Yes and no. "All nutritional needs can be met in full without ever having to take a single teaspoon of white or brown sugar," says Dr. Yudkin. "There isn't even a need for so-called quick energy, to fuel a morning tennis game, skiing, or the like. Unless you fast for more than a day or two, your body has sizable reserves of liver glycogen to call upon."

Why do we like sweets so much? The commonly held theory is in primitive times sweetness served as nature's guide to what foods were safe to eat. Generally, the fruits and vegetables that tasted sweet were healthful. Foods that tasted bitter were often poisonous. It is suggested our instinct for sweetness evolved out of the process of natural selection, insuring animals preferring sweet foods would obtain the nutrients necessary to survive.

But sweetness and sugar aren't synonymous. The control of blood sugar (glucose) levels is the result of a specially balanced mechanism influenced by the combined neuroendocrine (brain-gland) systems. It was not designed to cope with sudden, rapid changes in sugar levels. The total sugar circulating in the blood of the average person is approximately two teaspoons. One piece of fruit pie a la mode has 18 teaspoons! So a disruption in the body's equilibrium produces a stress that overworks the adrenal glands, pancreas, liver and heart.