Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Processed Sugar

Now, let's have an in depth discussion about sugars.Americans eat too many processed sugars. In fact the average American eats more than double the maximum recommended intake of sugar everyday . Processed sugar is found in high amounts in many of the packaged foods we eat. Even foods considered healthy by most standards such as commercial yogurt,some bran cereals,and boxed granola bars, often have large amounts of processed sugars in them.Sugar in Processed food goes by a variety of different names, often making it difficult to identify on nutrition labels and ingredient lists. A few of the more common names that sugars go by are high fructose com syrup, sucrose, and sorghum syrup.So what's the problem with processed sugar?Many of the accusations regarding sugar, including the idea that it causes hyperactivity in children or Type 2 diabetes in adults, have not panned out in scientific studies.The main problem with America's love of processed sugars is that sugar is one of the few foods that provides calories but has little nutritional value. It's not to say that all sugars are bad. Sugars found in fruit, honey, and molasses do provide some nutrients as well as energy over time.After all,sugar is a carbohydrate that the body turns into glucose, which we talked about in Lesson 1. But when people fill up on processed sugar they may fail to eat the nutrient containing foods their bodies need to function correctly, resulting in one or more nutrient deficiencies.

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