In the modern diet of today, added sugar is one of the worst ingredients. The damage it causes to our metabolism can also contribute to all sorts of diseases, so here are five reasons why you should avoid added sugar like the plague!  

1. Weight gain- One of the most obvious reasons why sugary foods and drinks are bad for your health is that they’re normally high in calories but not all that filling. This makes it easy to over eat, and then the excess calories can cause you to gain more weight.

2. Added sugar has no essential nutrients and is bad for your teeth- I know this may have been said a lot but it is worth repeating. Added sugars like high fructose corn syrup contain too many calories with no essential nutrients. There are no essential fats, proteins, minerals or vitamins in sugar… just pure energy. Sugar is also very bad for the teeth as it provides easily digestible energy for the bad bacteria in the mouth.

 3. Sugar is addictive- Sugar is real addictive for a lot of people. Like illegal drugs, sugar causes a release of dopamine in the reward centre of the brain. The problem with sugar and even junk foods is that they can cause massive dopamine release…much more than nature intended.

4. Sugar raises insulin levels- A lot of sugar into your body will have only one result, your blood sugar levels will sky rocket up. Then shortly after, your pancreas will release a bunch of insulin to help clear sugar form your blood into your cells. As blood sugar levels go down, insulin levels return to normal. But when you eat a lot of sugar, you’re constantly calling for insulin, and that can backfire in a few ways. Over time, it takes more and more insulin to get the job done. Eventually your pancreas may just stop working.  If it was not so sad I would congratulate you, you are now type 2 diabetic! And along the way, exposing your cells and organs to chronically high insulin levels that will rapidly accelerate   the ageing process.

5. Sugar stresses your liver- When we eat fructose, which is just corn syrup, it goes to the liver. If the liver glycogen is low, after a run, for example, the fructose will be used to replenish it. However most people are not consuming fructose after a long work out and their livers are already full of glycogen when this happens. The liver then turns the fructose into fat and some of the fat gets shipped away but part of it stays in the liver. The fat can then build up and lead to Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease.