Immunity Week 3 - Sugar

 

Ready to be blown away?

The average American consumes 150 pounds of sugar/year. 3 pounds/week. Keep in mind this is the average American which includes people who drink soda. This is probably not someone reading a newsletter from GOODONYA.

Say for us healthy folk we cut the amount in half.

At 75 pounds a year, from age 10-50 you will have processed 1.5 tons of sugar through your body.

About 35 million Americans have diabetes. 80 million or so have pre-diabetes which if left untreated will develop into type 2 diabetes. Type 2 mostly develops in your mid to late 40s. Makes sense if you are processing tons of sugar by that time.

I am sure YOU aren’t sitting around drinking soda and eating candy, but sugar is hiding in the foods we eat, so don’t get too high and mighty yet.😜

Our goal this week is to...
(1) Understand our options
(2) Find where sugar hides and save where we can
(3) Choose our battles!

And remember the goal from week one... we won't stress about it.

WE LOVE SWEET

Our taste buds recognize: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami.
In the USA we mostly nurture the sweet and salty, other countries do a better job with the other 3. The sooner we train our taste buds to be stimulated by the bitter, sour, and umami, the more we like those types of foods. I know a 5-year-old kid who throws back seaweed snacks. Impressive! When I was traveling the world on the US Team, after matches we’d sometimes hang out with the players from other countries. The Koreans always had dried fish protein snacks after games. I thought it was totally gross. In hindsight, eating my chocolate covered, soy protein cliff bar with 20g of sugar…. I was the gross one!

ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS

First, let’s get this out of the way. When people talk about balance, 80/20, living life, you have to enjoy, yada, yada, yada, I get it. I am all for it.
BUT…When it comes to artificial sweeteners these are non-negotiable.

They need to be removed from your diet, full stop.

Also, they do not work.
Diet Soda/Artificial Sweeteners have been shown to actually cause weight gain.
"The advertising of artificially sweetened soda as ‘diet’ may well be one of the greatest consumer frauds in modern times," said Gary Ruskin, co-director of U.S. Right to Know. "It is a shame that the FDA is siding with the soda industry against consumers."

AVOID

  • Aspartame - Equal and Nutrasweet - Developed by accident in 1965 by a chemist working on ulcer drugs. Whoops, it was sweet.
  • Saccharin - Sweet 'N Low. Banned in 1981 and then unbanned. Developed in 1879 by a chemist working on waste products from the coal tar industry.
  • Sucralose – Splenda - This is sucrose + chlorine. 😱
  • Acesulfame K/Acesulfame Potassium/Ace-K - Hit the shelves in 1988, also discovered by accident when the chemist got some on his finger and noticed it was sweet. So hey, let's put this in drinks!

 

Owned by the makers of Sweet N Low. This is a great example of greenwashing.
The package is literally green, "raw" seems natural, yet it's processed with chemical solvents and has added GMOs.

NATURAL CHOICES

Below are what we use at GOODONYA. 100% Organic.
They are the healthiest choices, but you can see…. even the good ones can add up quickly.

The thing about natural sugars is they have enzymes, nutrients, and some health benefits. The power of honey is so incredible it deserves a whole post. These are literally what humans evolved eating, and not very much in a typical day. Now we start our day with a 50g/sugar latte each morning! A medium, 2 pump vanilla latte has this much!

🍯  1 TBSP Raw Honey = 16g - Nature at its best. Organic and raw is the gold standard. Local honey sounds great but unfortunately, the bees can be pollinating in yards with Round-Up, drinking dirty water, etc. A bee will travel a 5-mile radius from the hive. Ask the beekeeper what is around their land. For this reason, there isn't any Certified Organic honey from the USA. Certifying a 5-mile radius of land in the USA is near impossible.
🥥  1 TBSP Coconut (Palm) Sugar = 12g - Dried sap from the coconut palm. Contains small amounts of minerals, antioxidants, and fiber. But that's not a license to go wild.
🍬 1 TBSP Evaporated Cane Juice = 12g - Different from refined white sugar, which is more processed. Still retains some nutrients.
🌱   Dash of Stevia = 0g - Organic stevia is processed with water like a tea and dried with natural enzymes into a powder. Non-organic stevia uses chemical solvents to extract the sweetness, pesticides to grow the herb and they blend the stevia with GMO corn sugar usually. (dextrose).
The 3 top non-organic brands are owned by Coke/Cargill, Pepsi, and The Cumberland Packaging Group (makers of Sweet n Low).

AMAZING FACTS ABOUT HONEY🍯 🍯 🍯

  1. A honeybee will produce approx 1/12 teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.
  2. She will visit 50-100 flowers on a single trip out of the hive.
  3. Honey is the ONLY food that includes all the substances necessary to sustain life, including water. It's 80% sugar and 20% water.
  4. It takes 768 bees to make one pound of honey.
  5. The ancient Egyptians used honey as a sweetener, as a gift to their gods and even as an ingredient in embalming fluid. 𓀿𓀿𓀿 (can you believe there is an emoji for mummies)?
  6. Properly preserved it really doesn't expire. Like ever!
  7. And my favorite.......did you know your lungs, gut, and thyroid make hydrogen peroxide? And honey contains hydrogen peroxide, which has been used against viruses and bacteria since the dawn of time. See what I am saying about nature!?

WHERE SUGAR HIDES

Packaged Foods - Crackers, bread, pasta sauce, yogurt, apple sauce oatmeal mixes, electrolyte powders (not ours) - It's added to everything!!! If I am eating cookies, I expect sugar… but sugar in my crackers! No!

Wine - Some bottles of mass-produced wine can have up to 100g of sugar. Insane! And it's not about the brand name of the price. American winemakers are known to make the wine sweeter to satisfy the American taste buds. Some wine has 0 residual sugar per bottle. But it is super frustrating because there isn't a nutritional panel on wine, so they don't have to tell you. But most legit winemakers will tell you if they ask. Oh and I ask! I know the residual sugar on every bottle of wine at GOODONYA.

If you are into wine, read this. And drink wine at GOODONYA. We have a massive selection of the lowest sugar, highest quality wine in the world! #truestory. And we sell bottles to go!

Mixed Drinks - 1oz simple syrup has 15-ish grams. A margarita with 1oz Cointreau adds 8 more grams. There is about 3g in 1oz juice. So think more about the mixers in your favorite mixed drink.
My go-to drink is Tequila + Lots of lime juice + sparkling spring water like Topo Chico.
You’re welcome! 😜

⬆️ This is when I was in Utah and ordered simple syrup on the side*, now instead of the simple syrup I use sparkling water...DELISH! *yes, I am that person.

My mom loves GOODONYA HYDRATE + Gin. She brings a little bottle with her mixed HYDRATE and orders gin on the rocks with lemon. Then she pours the HYDRATE in at the table.  This saves her money, calories, and sugar! Way to go, mom!!!! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

Coffee Shops -A medium Starbucks peppermint mocha has 54g of sugar. It is also full of GMOs, factory-farmed dairy, pesticides, chemicals - it's bad.

A GOODONYA Mocha uses 1 TBSP of coconut sugar (12g). Pure raw cacao and coconut milk powder (1g). The coconut milk powder has a little bit of tapioca sugar in it. We use 1 drop of peppermint essential oil instead of a cane sugar based mint syrup. The total drink is 13g of sugar, 100% Organic. Treat yourself with us this holiday season! Or make this at home, it's so easy!

PS. 🍮  1oz of any flavored syrup = 23g. Each pump at a coffee shop is about 1oz.

Drinks - Even if you aren’t drinking soda, sugar is everywhere. Juice, kombucha, tea, coffee drinks. All bottled drinks and drinks from coffee shops need to be examined closely.

Even organic, healthy drinks like kombucha can have 25g in a bottle. A cup of 100% fruit juice is 20+.  It's not to say you can't have it, but it's about choosing your battles.

UNDERSTANDING SUGAR ALTERNATIVES

STEVIA
I believe in stevia, but it has to be organic. Some think stevia is dangerous. Some even have an allergy to it similar to a ragweed allergy.  It is a plant, and you know me... I side with nature when they debate things. There have been anti-stevia articles put out by the sugar industry. When I read something I am always digging for the source and who funded the study.

If processed naturally I believe this is the best option for a little sweet without the calories or all of the negative impact of sugar. If it’s not organic, it’s processed with chemical solvents and mixed with GMO corn sugar to balance the taste. If you think you do not like it, try organic stevia and try a LOT LESS. One dash or one drop can do the trick. The bad aftertaste comes from too much and the wrong kind.  We use the best on the market in GOODONYA HYDRATE and we use .01g in an 8g serving. Almost every brand and every product that tries to use stevia uses too much and ruins the taste.  We have mastered it, but it took me 3 years!

MONK FRUIT
Also known as Luo Han Guo.
Same as above. Has to be organic and use just a tiny bit.

SUGAR ALCOHOLS
To me these are…..meh!  The ones added to foods are made from processed sugars. Anytime we process things, we get further away from nature. Some of them have a side effect of gastrointestinal distress. With the majority of our immune systems located IN our digestive system, food should not cause immune distress. Anyone with IBS should avoid these. And I’ve never seen organic sugar alcohols, which means they are grown with chemical pesticides and possibly GMOs. You will see these broken out on a nutritional label. Often a product will claim 0 sugar and have up to 15g of sugar alcohols.

Watch out for these in the ingredient list:
xylitol, erythritol, sorbitol, maltitol, mannitol, isomalt, and lactitol.

ADDICTION
It’s real! Drugs like Cocaine and sugar both activate the same reward system in the brain, causing the release of dopamine. If you overdo it constantly, there are fewer receptor sites in the brain for the dopamine to bind to. So the next time we eat sugary foods we don’t get the same feeling. This leaves us chasing the high. We have these receptors in our brain for a reason, and on our taste buds, nature wants us to have some. But nature didn't put sugar in pasta sauce, a food scientist did so you'd choose their addicting pasta sauce over other brands.

PS - Natural and artificial sweeteners both activate this part of our brain. 🙈

GOAL
I thought I was pretty good until I really started looking at the back of every label and adding it up for a few days. It was so much more than I thought. So now I just pay attention and choose my battles. For example, if I want a glass of wine or a treat, maybe I don't have kombucha that day.

When I was an athlete I drank PowerAde. It is 50g in 28oz. It's criminal. And I turned into a sugar addict with full-blown hypoglycemia. Which is one reason I am so passionate about this issue!!!

I fully believe stressing about food is the last thing we want to do, but that doesn't give us a free pass not to pay attention to our immune system.....it is too important. And sugar taxes our immune system, it's not just about weight gain and diabetes.

So how about this for a plan?

Track your sugar intake for a week and see how much you consume each day. 🍭
Come on, it will be fun!

BOTTOM LINE

  • There are natural choices and toxic choices.
  • You can choose one from a bee or one made by a chemist with chlorine.
  • Watch for added sugars.
  • Limit where you can
  • Enjoy life 💃🏽
  • I am not sure about an afterlife. 𓀿 I love him!

BONUS
One thing a lot of people do not talk about is the effect of sugar on our hormones.
This is a really well-written article on the topic. Women.... think sugar cravings and your period.
Watch the video below if you want to see how sugar is causing you stress and messing with your hormones.

 

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