Eating too much sugar is dangerous to your health for many reasons. People in North America consume an average of twenty teaspoons of it each day. This sugar is hidden in breakfast cereal, yogurt, and fruit juice, as well as spaghetti sauce and pork and beans. All of that sweetness is hard on the body. Here are some reasons why this is true.
- We should only be eating about ten percent of our total daily calories in the form of sugar. It will cause you to gain weight and has very little nutritional usefulness after the 10% mark is passed. This means that if you are consuming 2,500 calories a day, only 250 of them should come from sugar.
- High fructose corn syrup makes changes to the body that may not be able to be reversed. It tricks the body into dulling the hormones insulin and leptin that usually tell you when you are full. That way you eat too much and still can feel very hungry. High fructose corn syrup, found in many prepared food items, is more dangerous than white sugar.
- Eating too much sugar can cause cavities, especially in younger children. Good oral health can have long lasting effects on overall health.
- Triglyceride levels can also be raised significantly by eating too much sugar. Triglycerides are fats in the bloodstream that can cause clogs in the arteries and may lead to heart disease.
Look for foods that are lower in sugar. It is still not known if sugars found naturally in fruits are treated differently by the body than processed sugar, but be sure to steer clear of anything made with high fructose corn syrup.
