Fat has been maligned for years.
But after removing it from our diets we got fatter and sicker.
Why?
Because when the fat was removed, sugar and simple carbohydrates were added.
Fat adds flavor and mouthfeel to foods. It makes them more enjoyable. When fats are removed from foods, much of the flavor and is lost as well, making foods less enjoyable overall.
If you’re a manufacturer and you want people to eat these fat-free products that now taste like nothing, what do you do?
Add sugar.
It’s cheap and people love it.
It adds flavor back into foods. Add a few emulsifiers to emulate the mouthfeel and you’re golden.
But when fats are replaced with sugar and refined carbohydrates it equates to a higher risk of heart disease and cancers, among other problems.
Let’s delve into the science of sweetness and why it’s doing more harm than good in this day and age.
Let’s start with the WHY.
Why do we love sugar so much?
Let’s go back to the very beginning (of humankind)
Because since the very beginning, we have been programmed to love and crave sugar and sweetness.
It kept us alive.
Since the beginning of time, our human brains have been hardwired to want certain things to survive.
One of those things?
Food.
Food provides us with the calories we need to live and survive as a species. Evolution wise it made sense for eating and food to also bring us pleasure.
It was the pleasure part of eating that helped to keep our ancestors alive:
Eat something tasty, feel good.
Start to feel not so good… a little cranky, a little hungry.
How do you fix that?
Eat something tasty and feel good again.
Repeat cycle.
Sweet things had an even bigger appeal and were especially rewarding to our ancestor’s pleasure centers.
Why?
A sweet flavor also indicated a food was good- as opposed to potentially dangerous or not quite ripe yet.
Sweet foods indicated carbohydrates, an important energy source for our hunter-gatherer ancestors.
When our ancestors went scavenging for berries, for example, sour meant “not ripe yet,” while bitter meant “alert – poison!” and sweet meant “just right, dig in!”
It’s the classic story of Goldilocks and the Three Berries.
Sweetness and carbohydrates gave our ancestors the energy they needed to survive.
But their lives were a lot different from ours.
In our modern world, we face a completely different scenario.
We no longer have to taste a berry to know if it’s poisonous or not. We just pop by Costco and trust what they supply is not poison, and fairly ripe.
We no longer desperately need to find energy simply to live.
And sugar is no longer just in the ripe berries.
Sugar is in almost everything we eat.
It is almost impossible to find prepared, packaged or processed foods that don’t have sugar added for flavor, preservation or both.
Sugar is in Everything- and our kids are getting way too much.
These days, added sugars are in everything. While some is fine, our kids are getting way too much. Depending on their age, kids should get anywhere from 3-6 teaspoons, or 12-25g of added sugar per day.
The average 12oz can of soda has 10 teaspoons of added sugar- that’s almost twice the daily limit in one drink.
So it should come as no surprise that kids are blowing these recommendations out of the water. On average, kids eat 19 teaspoons of sugar a day- that’s three times the recommended amount and 1 in 10 Americans get ¼ or more of their calories from added sugar.
While soda is a big chunk of that, sugar is a sneaky devil that crops up in just about everything- bread, spaghetti sauce, salad dressing, smoothies, dried fruit, nut butter, yogurt. It’s everywhere.
In fact, most parents have no idea how much sugar their kids are consuming, and it adds up quickly.
A yogurt parfait for breakfast, chicken nuggets with ketchup, a salad with ranch and applesauce for lunch and spaghetti with garlic bread for dinner.
It sounds innocuous enough, right?
Yogurt and granola alone have 20g of added sugar, then you’ve got sugar in the ketchup and ranch (crazy, right?) and depending on the brand you go with, the applesauce, chicken nuggets and spaghetti sauce can all have added sugars as well. Your kids could end up with double the recommended amount of added sugars by lunch alone.
A few of the other big culprits are baked goods (cookies, cakes, muffins and pastries), ice cream and frozen yogurt, candy and ready-to-eat cereals.
And we haven’t even talked about drinks.
Sugar-sweetened beverages are the biggest sources of added sugars and account for 1/3 of the added sugar kids consume. It’s not just soda, energy drinks, sports drinks, flavored milk, fruit punch and other fruit drinks, and more all pack added sugar.
The problem with too much sugar
So what’s the big problem?
Well, there are several big problems:
Eating too much sugar can lead to cavities, weight gain, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease and inflammation (which leads to other diseases).
Another problem? Sugar exclusively delivers empty calories. Empty calories have no benefits whatsoever- no fiber, no vitamins, no minerals, nothing. Sugar also promotes hedonic eating: instead of eating for hunger (which is what kids should be doing) sugar teaches them to eat for pleasure- another factor in weight gain.
And finally, too much added sugar can crowd healthier foods from a person’s diet.
How?
Sugar is highly addictive.
In fact, it lights up many of the same receptors in the brain as hard drugs like cocaine.
Like other addictive drugs, sugar is capable of hijacking the brain’s reward pathway, making users dependent. As kids’ brains get used to or become tolerant of the amount of sugar they’re currently eating, they need more sugar to create that “sugar high”. Consequently, they eat more and more sugar, often at the expense of other, more nutritious foods.
Here’s a more in-depth look at how it all works:
When kids (or adults) eat sugar the body releases opioids and dopamine into the brain. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is responsible for a multitude of things, one of which is helping control the brain’s reward and pleasure centers.
When they eat something that releases dopamine (like sugar) it makes them feel gooooood (and waaaay back in the day we needed that feeling to survive… now, not so much).
But they like that feeling- who doesn’t like feeling good? So they keep eating sugar.
And they keep feeling good. For a while anyway.
Eventually, the amount of sugar they are eating isn’t feeling as good as it used to. When they eat these good mood foods often and in large amounts, their dopamine receptors downregulate- meaning there are fewer of them and they don’t stimulate those lovely feelings as much when kids give into their sugar cravings.
The effect is blunted.
Now when they eat one fun-sized candy bar, it’s not enough.
So what do they do?
Eat two fun-sized candy bars and start feeling good again- let the good times roll!
They’ll have to keep eating more and more to get that same reward and good feeling- they crave that feeling and keep eating sugar to get it.
Eventually, sugary foods are taking the place of more highly nutritious foods- all those yummy fruits and vegetables.
Sure, an apple is sweet.
But it’s not that sweet compared to a gummy bear.
So when those sugar cravings hit, which one do you think kids go for?
This may sound like a lot of doom and gloom, but it really can become a serious problem.
One study looked at sugar intake over 15 years- people who took in 25% or more of their daily calories as sugar were more than twice as likely to die from heart disease as those whose diets included less than 10% added sugar.
Think about that number: 25% OR MORE of their calories from sugar.
That is a quarter of everything they eat. Most kids clock in at 17% of their calories from sugar, not too far off of the 25%.
And with the omnipotence of sugar, getting up to 25% is not that unrealistic.
And the more we eat it, the scarier the outcome:
Overall, the odds of dying from heart disease increase as the percentage of sugar in the diet increases.
And it doesn’t matter if someone is young or old, male or female, how physically active they are or even whether or not they’re at a healthy weight.
How can you tell if the foods you eat are high in sugar?
The new labeling laws stipulate that a product list the amount of added sugar. Every 4 grams of sugar is equivalent to 1 teaspoon.
You can also look in the ingredient list.
Remember, sugar hides well in foods- don’t be fooled if the ingredients don’t say “sugar”: maple syrup, agave, honey, rice syrup, invert syrup and almost anything ending in “-ose” (dextrose, maltose, glucose, etc.) are all sugars.
In fact, there are more than 60 different names for sugar. Click here to see the complete list.
So we’ve established that sugar is bad news.
What about artificial sweeteners?
Although it may seem like a no-brainer to replace a sugary soda containing 150 calories from sugar with a diet soda containing 0 calories, it may not help much.
Why not?
Artificial sweeteners are many times sweeter than sugar.
This overpowering sweetness can overstimulate sugar receptors and limit kids’ tolerance for more subtle, complex flavors.
In short, their palates become used to very intensely sweet foods, so when they eat fruit they think “meh” and they find veggies to be downright unappealing.
They start to shun healthy, filling and good for them foods (like those vegetables) in favor of uber-sweet, artificially flavored foods that tend to have lower nutritional value.
And just like sugar, artificial sweeteners are addictive.
In one study rats were exposed to both the artificial sweetener saccharin and cocaine and then the rats allowed to choose between them.
What do you think the rats chose?
The saccharine.
Overwhelmingly- 94% of the rats in the study chose the saccharine.
Ok, so sugar is out.
Artificial sweeteners are out.
What is a parent to do?
Taming The Sweet Tooth
I’ve got a few suggestions to help you tame your kids sweet tooth.
- Try fresh fruit. Fresh fruits provide sweetness with plenty of other benefits from fiber to additional nutrients- no “empty calories” here.
- Frozen bananas or melon pureed in a food processor make great “ice cream”
- Applesauce (the no sugar added kind) can make a good sugar replacement in baked goods- try it in oatmeal cookies
- Overripe bananas work the same but do impart a stronger, banana-y flavor.
- Rehydrate raisins or other dried fruits like dates or dried plums in a little warm water and puree to use them as a sugar substitute in baked goods. You’ll add antioxidants and fiber along with a subtle, caramel sweetness. Try substituting up to 2/3 of your sugar in baked goods.
- Add warm or sweet flavors like cinnamon or vanilla extract to things from smoothies to yogurt and baked goods. Warm flavors mimic sweet flavors without the sugar!
- A glass of warm milk with unsweetened cocoa powder and a splash of vanilla extract can satisfy the sweet tooth without sugar.
- Add a squeeze of lemon juice or grapefruit to sparkling water or tea- it may sound counterintuitive to add something sour, but that tart, tangy flavor will help satisfy a sugar craving.
Instead of plain cane sugar, try these, slightly healthier alternatives:
Molasses- sure it’s a sugar, but blackstrap molasses is also a good source of iron. It does have a strong taste so experiment before going all in.
Unsweetened cocoa powder and cacao nibs give your kids that chocolate fix without the sugar.
Stevia- a plant- is gaining traction as a no-calorie sweetener without the addictive effects of artificial sweeteners, furthermore, it may help lower blood pressure (however, the dose studied was incredibly high), lower blood sugar levels and possibly help with preventing diabetes. It is very potent- 1 teaspoon can be as sweet as a whole cup of sugar (depending on the brand) so it is often hard to swap out the bulk of a cup of sugar in baking but is great in teas, coffee, smoothies, yogurt etc. Just remember a little goes a long way!
The best way to avoid sugar addiction is to avoid having too much sugar to begin with. Avoid using sweet foods as a reward and don’t make dessert an everyday thing. If your kids are already hooked on sugar, wean them off slowly and don’t make it (seem like) a punishment.