Clean Eating: How Sugar Can Affect Your Body

SOURCE: https://offcampus.umich.edu 

Everyone loves sugar. They love sugar in their cake, in their coffee, in their cereal. The sweet, addictive taste of sugar keeps people coming back for more. As clean eating has become more and more popular in recent years, people are discovering that sugar is affecting more than your waistline. According to the Clean Eating Blog, http://www.cleaneatingmag.com/blog/how-sugar-affects-your-body/, the average American consumes, “47 pounds of cane sugar and 37 pounds of high fructose corn sugar in a year,”. That is a lot of sugar. But, according to recent studies done by the American Council of Exercise, sugar negatively causes a myriad of health problems.

Most people believe that sugar strictly affects your weight and the circumference of your waistline. Unfortunately this is not the case. Too much sugar in one’s diet can slow connections to the brain, subsequently causing memory to become impaired. Along with memory effects in your brain, sugar also leaves you fuller for shorter periods of time. The high fructose intake actually tricks your body into having more of an appetite and subsequently, consuming more calories. If you start to eat a “cleaner” diet and remove excess sugar from your everyday life, you will notice that your are staying fuller longer. According to the Clean Eating Blog, “over the years, saturated fat has earned notoriety as a cause of heart disease, but recent studies are showing that sugar can have a big effect on heart health as well.” Certain levels of sugar in one’s diet can actually significantly increase a person’s chances of getting the disease.

Everyone loves the taste of sugar when it hits their tongue. Some people even say that they have a “sweet tooth”, but unfortunately, too much sugar in your diet increases the level of acidity in your mouth, creating a perfect habitat for bacteria to grow and thrive. This causes weaken enamel and possible gingivitis. The article also mentions joint inflammation and overall low energy levels for those people with too much sugar incorporation within their diets. From all of these negatives, you would think that it would be easier for people to turn away from the doughnut and instead say yes to the carrots. The problem in the initial change. From personal experience, I knew how bad I wanted to start to eat better and reap the benefits that were going to come with time. What makes the transition so hard is the convenience of food. In order to eat “better” food, you need to find it and make it. You cannot just pull it out of your pantry. If people found it easier to transition, they could see how much better they would feel while eating clean.


FUTURE RESEARCH: Are there certain ingredients in processed foods that people can be allergic or sensitive to?