What I’ve learned: White sugar

Ok, here we go! Quiet time now, so let’s see how much I can write down. The food posts are starting today, and I’ll attempt to hit the big one; refined white sugar.

Before July of this year, I had no idea about the ‘poisonous effects’ of this stuff below, this stuff that we all love to eat, including me, especially at lots of activities at my church. You guys remember all the sweet recipes I would post on FB. Now, I’m going back to some of my white sugar recipes, and tweaking them to be processed free.

I studied about refined sugar from a lot of health sites, Livestrong, organic food blogs, but the most detailed and accurate source of knowledge I found came from Dee Mcaffrey, and organic chemist and nutritionist, who lost 100 pounds from eating processed free foods, and kept if off for 20 years. She is a former sugar addict, and went back to school to learn about the body’s chemistry relating to food. She has a great website, Processed Free America. 

I'm going to share some tidbits from her book, ‘The Science of Skinny. Start understanding your body’s chemistry, and stop dieting forever.’ I like that last line. It seems we live in a nation that is full of dieting, all sorts of diets. Wouldn’t it be nice to not diet to lose weight and be healthier? Totally possible.

Chapter 4 is a super chapter of information! Here goes:

“Seductive and sweet, refined sugar is more a drug than it is a food, it is a poison. Aside from quickly adding pounds of fat to our belly, butt, and thighs, sugar interferes with many body functions and slowly and deleteriously robs us of important nutrients. The result is a myriad of complications and degenerative diseases such as allergies, arthritis, gallstones, colitis, depression, gout, diabetes, hypoglycemia, heart disease, osteoporosis, obesity, and cancer (particularly breast cancer and colon cancer) to name just a few!” Page 49

How sugar starts out:

Before sugar becomes the white sugar we all know, it starts out as Sugarcane, a plant similar to bamboo.

“Sugarcane is brimming with vitamins, minerals, fibers, enzymes, and phytonutrients. If you walked into a field of sugarcane and cut off a piece to chew on, not only would you experience a yummy, sweet, yet dark flavored treat, but you would also get nourished. Sugarcane is rich in the minerals calcium, copper, and zinc. In addition to vitamins and minerals, sugarcane contains a high concentration of phytonutrients, antioxidants, and numerous other health-supportive compounds. The refinement of sugarcane removes all of these wonderful nutrients, leaving a nutritionally empty substance.” P. 49

Dee then goes into great detail of the steps of refining the sugar. I’ll let you read the book on that, because it’s a lot to write down.

Sugar depletes calcium:

“Although most people don’t understand their body’s nutritional or digestive requirements, our body knows what it needs. That’s why raw sugar cane is brimming with enzymes and nutrients. By contrast, refined sugar is devoid of nutrients and the built in enzyme systems that exist in raw sugarcane. So when you eat a cookie made with refined sugar, your body freaks out. It knows that to properly digest the sugar, it needs these missing nutrients and the corresponding enzymes. Therefore, your body is forced to adapt by pulling stored nutrients (especially calcium) from your bones, tissues, and teeth, just to digest the sugar you just ate. This is called leaching. The depletion of calcium leads to a whole host of health problems, including obesity.” p. 58

Sugar and cancer:

Dee talks a lot about insulin and the job it does in your body, fructose that goes directly to your liver to be stored as fat, and about insulin resistance leading to the development of heart disease. Lots of details to read, but here’s a snippet:

“In his April 13, 2011 New York Times article, “Is Sugar Toxic?”, Gary Taubes writes, ‘One of the diseases that increases with obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome is cancer. The connection between obesity, diabetes and cancer was first reported in 2004 in large population studies by researchers from the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer. It is not controversial. What is means is that your are more likely to get cancer if you’re obese or diabetic than if you’re not, and you’re more likely to get cancer if you have metabolic syndrome than if you don’t.. Cancer researchers now consider that the problem with insulin resistance is that it leads us to secrete more insulin, and insulin (as well as a related hormone known as insulin-like growth factor) actually promotes tumor growth.’”

“In 1920, Otto Warburg, a German biochemist and Nobel Prize winning doctor, discovered that normal cells get their energy for reproduction from oxygen, while cancer cells reproduce by fermenting glucose (sugar). In other words, cancer cells require sugar to perpetuate their growth. When you eat sugar, you are actually feeding cancer cells. Additionally, if your don’t eat enough Life Force Energy foods loaded with cancer-fighting phytochemicals, it is almost certain that the stage is being set for cancer to develop in your body.” p 61

Learning this really made me go ‘wow.’ I don’t want cancer in my life. No one does. It’s a heartbreaking, horrible way to die. My mom had it, Shaun’s mom passed away from it, and just about everyone has a loved one who has had cancer. It’s awful. I thought to myself, “I don’t want to see Shaun getting chemo some day, or me. I just don’t want that. Let’s see if I can reduce the cancer buildup in our eating.” So, I challenged myself to see how we could eat sweets that wouldn’t damage our bodies, these wonderful bodies that Heavenly Father gave us that we only get once.

How to get the sugar out of your life:

I became a food label detective, constantly checking the ingredients for sugar. Sadly, it’s in nearly all processed foods. Here’s a list of other types of sugar on ingredient labels to watch out for:

• Agave
• Barley malt
• Beet sugar
• Maltodextrin
• Brown sugar
• Cane sugar
• Cornstarch
• Corn Syrup
• Corn Syrup solids
• Crystalline fructose
• Dextrose
• Fructose
• Glucose
• High Fructose Corn Syrup
• Maltose
• Organic Cane Sugar

P.64

To name a few!

Once I learned the damaging effects of refined sugar, I wondered “What can I use for sweeteners?” I still love sweets, but no longer had the desire to eat refined sweets. Here’s good alternatives:

• Stevia
• Raw honey
• Pure Maple Syrup
• Unsulfured Blackstrap Molasses
• Brown Rice Syrup
• Organic Whole Cane Sugar
• Coconut Nectar and Coconut Crystals

p. 65-71

We’ve been happily using Grade B maple syrup from Fresh and Easy and Trader Joes, Raw honey, and my main straight swap for white sugar is this:

I get it from Fresh and Easy, but go to Azure Standards online to see bulk deals on ‘safe’ sugar such as this, Sucanet, Rapudura, and more. I need to do that.

So now, I have fun finding good sweet recipes that don’t damage. I’ve found 2 great cookie recipes, some wonderful pancake recipes, and at the moment, an awesome BBQ sauce. Darn refined sugar is in nearly all the condiments I used, so I’ve been making things from scratch. Ketchup is awesome. I post pictures on Instagram of my food quests. Look me up as ‘erinhatch’, and ask to follow me. It’s fun.

There’s always two parts to eating processed free; Part 1, what you do at home, and Part 2, eating out of the home. We hardly ever eat fast food anymore. We do occasionally eat at restaurants, (still love BJs:), but we notice more how we feel after we eat processed junk. It’s harder for your body to digest the food.

Ok, kids are up. Look how much I wrote, woo! Enjoy the food posts:)