Sometime things look simple and harmless but in reality, they might be the opposite of what you think, they could be extremely dangerous and life threatening. Same is the case for sugar, although it is a common part of many diets and might seem harmless in moderation, but excess of it might have some adverse effect on your health. Overindulgence in sugary food might lead to some serious health problems like obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases as well. Because of these consequences, some experts often refer sugar as “White poison”. Let’s understand why they say so.
When we consume excess of sugar directly or indirectly through packaged food items, it needs to be metabolized but, the problem is in order to get metabolized, it draws our vitamin and mineral reserves leading to the depletion of vitamin and mineral reserves in your body, which itself creates a lot of health problems. Some of them are:
- Excess Sugar intake affects muscle protein:
It leads to increase in Glucose 6-phosphate which affects the muscle protein of your heart and this might lead to heart failure.
- Affects immune system:
Excess of sugar slows down your immunity.
- Excess sugar intake might lead to high blood pressure:
It can result in serious inflammation of heart and blood vessels which leads to high blood pressure and increases the risk of heart diseases.
- Increases the risk of Type 2 Diabetes:
Although sugar doesn’t directly cause type 2 diabetes but, taking excess of empty calories through sugary foods leads to obesity and also contributes in increasing the blood sugar level, which increases the risk of getting affected by ‘Type 2 diabetes’.
- Causes unhealthy weight gain:
Sugar does not have any nutritional value nor it helps your body. So, it is nothing but the empty calories you are taking which will make you obese over time, which in itself brings a lot of problems along with it.
Now after seeing all these, you might be wondering, “what does excess sugar mean?” or “how much sugar is safe?” The answer is quite simple, as per reports, the safe limit is not more than 5% to 10% of your daily calorie intake. Which means if your daily calorie intake is 2000 kcal then, your safe limit will be around 100 kcal to 200 kcal maximum.
Consuming sugar, more than safer limit, does no good to your body nor are of any nutritional values, they are just some extra empty calories which are of no use. A lot of studies have shown that taking too much sugar also affects your brain functioning resulting in worst performance of memory.
See our body requires a very little amount of sugar which can be easily fulfilled through the natural sources like fruits, honey and other complex carbohydrates like brown rice, whole wheat breads etc. So, we should avoid taking those extra sugar from processed and packaged foods.
