Whether you need to lose weight or not, eating too much sugar is not good.
However, sugar is everywhere in our life. The impact of sugar on health is even worse than expected.
It’s time to talk about it seriously.
An Australian director and actor Damon Gameau did an interesting and brave experiment to understand the effects of sugar on health:
He treated himself as a mouse and ate 40 spoons of sugar (about 160 g) a day for 60 consecutive days. He also invited a team of experts to monitor the body changes during the whole experiment.
60 Days of Sugar Eating Experiment
For 60 consecutive days, Damon did not eat junk food such as candy and soda. All 40 spoons of sugar came from recognized healthy food.
Why 40 spoons?
Because this is the average sugar intake of Australians.
You think it’s incredible? Can’t there be so many?
Let’s look at a breakfast during Damon’s experiment:
- Sweet breakfast cereal: Sugar 7.5 tablespoons low-fat yogurt: Sugar 4 tablespoons apple juice: Sugar 9 tablespoons
For just one breakfast, I ate 20 spoons (about 80 g) of sugar.
Now you understand that even if you don’t eat any junk food, you can easily eat 40 tablespoons of sugar.
What changes will occur in the body?
During these 60 days, Damon maintained the same calorie intake (2,300 calories per day) and exercise as before, only distributing some calories to sugar.
In order to make the experiment more intuitive, Damon directly replaced the sugary sauce with the same amount of white granulated sugar and ate it with roasted chicken.
After the experiment, the changes in his body were shocking:
Step 1: Get fat
2. Illness
In the physical examination after the experiment, Damon’s glutamic pyruvic transaminase (ALT) has exceeded the safe range, and fatty liver is also found, which is likely to lead to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.
The level of triglyceride, that is, the fat content in blood, has also reached a dangerous level, which may induce heart disease.
3. Being depressed and moody
During the two months of eating sugar, Damon’s mood became unstable and it was difficult to concentrate.
Often fall into a moody mood: after eating sweets, the mood is good, not eating depression.
4. Skin, teeth
Damon began to develop acne, and the doctor told him that it was probably a liver function problem.
In the documentary, Damon also interviewed residents of some high-sugar diet areas.
Eating sugar may make you addicted.
When we see sweets, such as a milkshake, the brain releases dopamine, a chemical that makes people have strong desires:
The brain will say to us: Drink it quickly!
Then we drink obediently and feel the wonderful sweet taste, the brain will release endorphins, and we will feel extremely happy and satisfied.
Although there is no clear evidence that eating sugar is addictive, some studies on mice show that sudden increase in sweetness changes the reward system in the brain of mice, a mechanism similar to nicotine.
The difference is that drug abuse is illegal, but high-sugar foods are readily available.
One cup of mixed juice in a fast food restaurant has 134 g of sugar: including 4 peaches + 9 oranges + 30 lemons + 30 strawberries.
Eat less sugar from now on
Of course, this movie is only a sample of the director. Of course, it is not strict enough in terms of scientific methods. However, it makes us intuitively feel the harm of sugar to the body.
There is already very sufficient evidence-based medical evidence that eating too much polysaccharide not only tends to gain weight, but also increases the risks of diabetes, kidney stones, gout, heart disease and even various cancers.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends limiting the intake of free sugar to less than 10% of the total energy per day, which is about 45 ~ 50 g of sugar for adults with light physical activity.
What is free sugar?
Free sugar refers to various sugars (including sugars in honey and fruit juice) added by human beings when making food.
But it does not include sugar in natural foods, such as sugar in fresh fruits, lactose in milk, starch in grains and potatoes.
At the end of the documentary, Damon began to quit sugar after the experiment, and his body indexes gradually returned to normal.
Therefore, it should not be too late for us to change our eating habits from now on.