It sounds like a no-brainer since both of these commonly found food additives add non-nutritive (read empty) calories to your diet, but there’s more to it than that . . . There’s really a lot to discuss, but I’m going to quickly touch on just a few of the reasons to seriously consider a dramatic reduction of sugar and corn syrup in your diet.
Both sweeteners act in essentially the same way, but the high fructose corn syrup has at least one more thing to be concerned about. It has received a lot of bad press lately and virtually all of it is well deserved. It has been directly linked to pancreatic cancer. Cancer patients often showed significant improvement – to include slowing, stopping or even reversing – in the progression of pancreatic cancer when they removed HFCS from their diet. That alone should make most people sit up and take notice.
I remember very clearly when a girl I was dating many moons ago told me that the Coke plant where she worked was going to begin substituting corn syrup for sugar in their sodas because it was cheaper and nobody could tell the difference. I was told not to let anyone know since Coke didn’t want word getting out that they were changing their recipe. That change was just a part of the huge swing that many companies soon made towards this cheaper product, but the results – and the increase in the incidence of cancer since – has been alarming.
Sugar is a sweetener that has very few redeeming qualities other than its taste. Most Americans get FAR too much of it in their diet. When sugar is a frequent visitor to your plate, it CAN cause type 2 diabetes. The reason is this. The sugar quickly enters your bloodstream and triggers a quick release of insulin by the pancreas to bring down the blood sugar to a reasonable amount. Doing this very frequently can cause the pancreas to “tire out” and stop responding as it should. That’s a big part of why there has been a big increase in diabetes in the past few decades. There are other reasons such as obesity and the trigger numbers used to diagnose the disease have also lowered significantly, but you get the point.
Dramatically reducing your sugar intake will almost always significantly improve your fat loss goals. When the “easy” and first fuel which your body uses for energy needs isn’t available, the body goes to the next available source – stored fat. I have friends and acquaintances who have shown very good weight loss results by vastly reducing their sugar intake.
60 Minutes recently had a segment on sugar in your diet. The test results showed that those who consumed sugar did much worse on nearly every performance test than those who did not. Participants were also tested against themselves by testing with and without sugar. Memory, cognitive ability and intelligence test scores were dramatically lowered when sugar was a part of the equation. Some of the scientists interviewed called sugar a toxin! It is also very interesting that all of the scientists involved in the testing saw enough evidence that led them to reduce or eliminate sugar from their own diets. That should tell you something about sugar’s effects on you.
There are just a couple of the things you should know about sugar and high fructose corn syrup- there is MUCH more to know, but time will not allow at this time. A little research can show you much more on this subject. Suffice it to say that you should strive to lower or eliminate it from your diet if you want the most from your training, diet and performance. Contact me if I can help you get more of the results you want.
Dave – Your Harford County, Maryland Personal Fitness Trainer
Results are what you’ll get when you train with me. I’m conveniently located in Forest Hill near the center of Harford County, Maryland. Clients come to me from Fallston, Jarrettsville, Bel Air, Forest Hill and Baltimore. I’ve got the experience, the ability, the knowledge and the success stories of my students to testify that my training is result driven and result based. Visit my webpage for more information.
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