Why go sugar free for a month?

We’re not asking you to give up sugar forever. A healthy diet can indeed include a slice of cake every so often, or whatever your sweet treat of choice is. But often it’s really hard to cut back and if you’re having way too much, this kind of targeted approach is a brilliant way to making you be more aware of where added sugars are sneaking in. Think of it seriously pulling in the reins on added sugars (not naturally present sugars), changing a few habits along the way, so that come October you’ll be better able to find a happy medium. You may even find those sweet cravings have disappeared along with the habits that were creating them.

Doesn’t sugar turn to fat in my body?

by Dr Joanna McMillan 

Absolutely unequivocally yes! There is a wealth of evidence supporting the fact that whole fruit is good for us. On Sugar-Free September we are not asking you to give up fruit – quite the contrary. We encourage you to enjoy at least 2 pieces of fruit a day… but not fruit juice. You can certainly add a piece of whole fruit to a smoothie but drinking pure fruit juice is generally not a good idea. The fibre has been extracted and it’s very easy to consume the juice of several pieces of fruit in one foul swoop.

Sugar can be turned into fat in your body, but so can protein and of course dietary fat. All of the kilojoules we consume have to go somewhere – they can fuel the body, be dissipated as heat or be stored for later use. They can’t simply disappear – unfortunately! However it costs the body energy to convert sugars in to fat, and once the process is done it can’t be turned back. You cannot make glucose from body fat. So the body will store as much of the incoming glucose as glycogen, it can ramp up the ratio of glucose being used as fuel and only when glycogen stores are chocka-block with no more room, will glucose be converted and stored as body fat.

Now this can certainly happen in this modern world of sedentary living and easy overeating. If you sit at a desk all day and rarely do much exercise, you are very unlikely to ever empty your glycogen stores – particularly if you’re also snacking on lollies, drinking soft drink, treating yourself with dessert, or tucking into refined carbs at most meals. The surplus carbohydrate will most certainly end up expanding your waistline.

Isn’t fructose especially fattening?

Some researchers have claimed that fructose is especially fattening. Fructose is another monosaccharide and along with glucose, makes the disaccharide sucrose – what we know as table sugar. Fructose has to be processed by the liver where it can be converted to glucose, it can enter into the energy producing pathways or it can be converted to fat.

Some argue that fructose does not seem to turn down appetite controls in the brain as much as other sugars, but on the plus side it is much sweeter so you may eat less of it. It also does not raise your blood glucose and therefore has a low GI and a minor effect on insulin. So there are actually pluses and minuses for fructose.

All up there is debate over whether it is uniquely fattening over other sugars, but the take home message is that the problem is one of quantity and where the sugar comes from.

In nature carbohydrates including fructose are almost always accompanied by fibre. This slows down the digestion of the food and the release of the sugars. Just think of whole fruit, wholegrains and legumes. These foods are also rich in nutrients that we need for optimum health.

Fruit should be the major source of fructose in our diets, but for many it’s not. Remember I said the problem with fructose (and really any sugar) is the quantity – the poison is in the dose. Research is only showing potential problems above about 100g a day. If you eat the recommended two pieces of fruit a day, you’ll get 10-20g of fructose (depending on the fruit) – well within this limit. But a can of soft drink alone will give about 22g, 100g of lollies another 25g or so… you can see that eating these kinds of sugar-sweetened foods and drinks can easily stack up, made worse since they have no fibre or other nutrients to protect you.

Understanding Sugar

by Dr Joanna McMillan

The media has been a little hysterical of late regarding sugar, sending many into a frenzy, devoting their energy to reading food labels, ditching anything with even a gram of sugar, while spending up on sugar alternatives or those deemed by some as healthier. This is not what we intend with Sugar Free September.

Let’s start with a grounding of what we actually know. There are a number of different sugars with the simplest being the monosaccharides. Of these glucose is the most important as it runs in our bloodstream, fuelling cells all over the body. Humans have glucose greedy brains and the brain cells need a constant supply. In fact at rest your brain uses about 60% of the glucose used by your body. Over the course of the day it amounts to approximately 120g of glucose and 1760kJ. Glucose is also used by cells throughout the body, and is especially important for muscle cells during more intense exercise when energy is required quickly. So clearly this is one sugar that is absolutely essential for the working of your body.

So where does glucose come from?

Mostly from our diet. When we eat predominantly plant foods that contain either sugars or starch, digestion of those carbohydrates begins in the mouth. Your saliva contains an enzyme called salivary amylase and this begins the process of breaking starch down into its individual glucose units. This process continues down in your intestines where the glucose is then absorbed across the gut wall and into the bloodstream for transportation around the body.

Some of that glucose may be used immediately for fuel, but anything not required immediately will be stored as glycogen in your liver and in muscles. Glycogen in us is the equivalent of starch in plants – it’s our carbohydrate energy store. You can store up to about 500g of carbohydrate in this way, and the fitter you are the more you will be able to store in muscle in particular. So when I hear people arguing that there is only about a teaspoon of sugar in our blood, and therefore making the assumption that this is all we need in our diet, that’s really a bit silly. We need to control blood glucose levels carefully as high blood glucose is damaging to blood vessels and the brain, but that is why we have these glycogen stores as a kind of reservoir of glucose.

It is exceptionally dangerous for blood glucose levels to fall too low. When it starts to head that way, either because you are exercising and using glucose at a faster rate, or you have failed to eat any carb-containing foods, your body will break down glycogen stores to release glucose into the blood. We can also make some glucose from certain amino acids, and a tiny amount from the glycerol backbone of triglycerides (the form of most fat in our food). In fact if you starve yourself one of the reasons it is not a great means of losing weight, is that you break down muscle tissue to provide the amino acids necessary to make glucose. That’s not what you want! Muscle is essential to boost your metabolism and keep you strong and healthy. Including adequate amounts of smart carbs in your menu plan actually helps because it preserves muscle.