Why Sugar is 'White Poison' for Health

Generally, we all love to eat sweets. Whether it's a wedding, a festival, a celebration, or the winter season!! We Indians always find an excuse for our habit and craving for sweets. And what to say about the innumerable sweet dishes and varieties of sweets? For those with a sweet tooth, something new is always being invented in a new style.

But from a health perspective, sweets are considered harmful to health today. Whether it's doctors, dietitians, or health advisors, everyone advises eating sweets in moderation because the sugar used for sweetness is now called "white poison" in the medical world, and it is advised to consume it in limited quantities or avoid it completely. Before the 16th century, sugar was so special that only a few wealthy people used it. The common people depended on jaggery, honey, dates, dried dates, and the juice of sweet fruits or their natural sweetness. But with imperial expansion and growing trade, by the 19th century, sugar became so popular that today it is said to be the root or mother of many diseases. Because today, sugar is used rampantly to enhance the taste of food in processed foods, cold drinks, fruit juices, tea-coffee, ice creams, baked goods, and sauces, in addition to other food items, which we get in the form of added sugar.

According to current guidelines, we should not consume more than about five percent sugar in our daily diet. But sugar from such food sources accumulates in our body as extra sugar, which later accumulates as fat, reducing the effect of insulin and causing fat to accumulate in the liver. This ultimately proves to be harmful to health. As a general rule, sugar is also found in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and unprocessed foods, but this sugar is "natural sugar," which is not harmful to health in any way but is necessary for good health because natural sugar contains protein, vitamins, salts, fiber, and other nutrients that do not harm health in any way.

Before knowing how sugar can be good or bad for our health, it is important to know what sugar is...?

What is sugar? Sugar is actually the simplest form of carbohydrate. When our body digests more complex carbohydrates, it breaks them down into simple glucose. And once digested, sugar is absorbed into our bloodstream in the form of glucose, which is the main fuel for our body, i.e., the source of energy for doing any work. Besides sugar, common carbohydrates like rice or flour also contain sugar. When food enters our body, glucose is separated during food processing, which is used by all the cells of our body.

Types of Sugar Vegetables, fruits, and grains have many natural forms of sugar. Such as fructose found in fruits, vegetables, and honey; lactose found in milk; sucrose in sugarcane and beetroot; and glucose added to other things.

Why does sugar cause harm?

Sugar becomes a problem when we consume too much of it. Because after converting the required amount of sugar into energy, when our body has enough energy, our body converts the extra sugar into fat and stores it for later use. This not only increases obesity in the body but also affects our body's metabolism. The digestive system being affected increases acidity in the body, and many other diseases also start to arise, among which heart disease, blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes are the main ones. But it is also true that if we burn as many calories as we eat, then eating sugar or sweet things does not cause any harm. That means if we want to eat sugar, we will have to improve our lifestyle. By walking daily, using stairs instead of the lift, exercising, doing yoga, and going to the gym, extra calories are not stored in the body. But in our deteriorated lifestyle, eating sugar is like filling the body with more fuel than is spent, which is harmful to the body in every way and presents sugar as a white poison for the body.

Which sweetness is good and which is bad? Due to the increasing problems caused by sugar, we are unable to decide every morning and evening what to eat and what not to eat. According to a simple rule, the natural sweetness found in fruits, vegetables, pulses, whole grains, and unprocessed foods is a good source of sugar. Whereas the extra sugar that we take through our tea-coffee, juices, soups, sauces, sweet dishes, and baked goods, in addition to soft drinks or packed juices, is the bad or harmful sugar because it works to increase extra calories in the body. Besides, extra sugar only contains calories and not relatively any nutrients, whereas the sweetness of fruits, vegetables, and grains has essential nutrients like vitamins, minerals, and fiber along with fewer calories, which are important for our health.

Why is sugar harmful? When our body gets sugar along with natural fruits and vegetables, the presence of fiber in them slows down the absorption of sugar into our bloodstream. But when we use extra sugar or added sugar, the absence of fiber to slow down the sugar absorption process becomes harmful. Besides this, calcium is also required to digest sugar or sweets, and when the calcium necessary for the body and bones starts getting spent on digesting sugar, many problems related to hair, bones, nails, blood, and teeth also start to arise due to calcium deficiency in the body. In growing children, the depletion of tooth calcium causes dental problems. Therefore, young children are often stopped from eating too much sweets by saying that eating sweets will cause tooth decay or cavities. Eating too much sugar is also responsible for type-2 diabetes because when we eat more sugar or sweets along with increased calories in the body, it becomes the cause of diabetes. But it is also true that if we burn as many calories as we take daily, then sugar and extra sugar do not cause harm.

Better alternatives to sugar

Due to health reasons, many people today avoid using sugar, especially those who have diabetes do not use sugar at all. Generally, we all use white sugar at home, which is not at all beneficial from a health point of view.

1. White sugar has a high amount of calories, and the sulfur and other chemicals added to whiten or refine it not only destroy the salts and enzymes present in it but also leave only sucrose, which harms the body's health in every way.
2. Instead of white sugar, people have started using brown sugar, jaggery, and honey, which are certainly better alternatives to sugar for sweetness.
3. Brown sugar is unrefined sugar that has fewer calories and contains several salts like calcium, magnesium, and iron, which is why it does not cause harm like white sugar and protects against many diseases.
4. Besides this, sulfur-free sugar is also available in the market, which has no sulfur at all, making it a better and safer option as sugar for health.
5. Jaggery, honey, dates, figs, desi khand, and the essence of naturally sweet fruits are also excellent alternatives to sugar because they contain fiber and minerals along with nutrients, due to which the sugar level in the blood rises less rapidly compared to sugar. That is, their glycemic index level is low, so the sugar level does not rise. Therefore, they are better and more nutritious options than sugar.
6. Therefore, if you want, you can use jaggery, honey, and desi khand in your tea-coffee instead of white sugar.
7. You can use dates and figs along with sweet fruits for sweetness in your shakes, smoothies, and juices.
8. Similarly, you can use jaggery, desi khand, dates, and figs along with the essence of sweet fruits for sweetness in your dishes, sweets, and baking foods instead of sugar.

Are there any benefits of sugar? Although knowing the harms of eating sugar, we all avoid eating it today, but there are some benefits of eating sugar that we cannot ignore.

1. Since sugar has a high amount of calories, it provides immediate benefit to people who feel weak because it circulates energy in the blood.
2. Besides this, when athletes and gym-goers feel tired, consuming sugar or sweets removes fatigue and instantly circulates new energy in the body.
3. Sugar is also helpful for people with low blood pressure and depression because an increase in the sugar level in the blood not only increases blood flow but also activates the brain due to the increased sweetness in the blood, which removes sadness and cures depression.