Everyone knows it: Even though you are not really hungry, you occasionally feel the urgent need to eat something sugary right away.
But where does this compulsive and harmful desire for sugar come from?
This phenomenon did not arise by chance, but is deliberately brought about by the food industry.
With the help of countless names that cannot be directly identified as sugar, such as glucose, sucrose, maltodextrin and many others, the food industry manages to give us their harmful sugar in large quantities and thus make us dependent on them.
The following happens in our body after consuming something sugary:
As soon as we consume something sugary, our blood sugar level rises, whereupon the pancreas releases insulin, transports the blood sugar level into the cells, which causes the sugar level to drop rapidly and ensures that, with hypoglycemia, we want to seek out the next source of sugar and thus become "insatiable".
This process is harmful to our health, but beneficial to the income of the food industry, which is therefore not above letting us fall into this trap again and again with the help of deceptive packaging, advertising and ingredients.
The harmfulness of sugar does not mainly refer to fructose or natural sugar such as coconut blossom sugar, jaggery etc., but to the so-called "refined sugar"/"table sugar" that is used in the vast majority of products or often for preparing meals. This is because all the vital substances that were originally contained in sugar beet or sugar cane, for example, are industrially extracted from this sugar. Refined sugar is then empty calories that no longer contain any substances that are important for the body, which means that the consumption of this sugar steals space in the stomach from wholesome food, which can lead to malnutrition in the long term. In addition, the digestion of table sugar deprives the body of vital substances, which, if you consume a lot of sugar, can result in there being insufficient vital substances available for other important processes in the body, such as the immune system. Increased sugar consumption also promotes the development of so-called fatty liver, which affects around 40% of the population at various stages, the strengthening of harmful intestinal bacteria, and the development of small inflammations in the body, which are the basis for almost every disease of civilization. Too much sugar also makes our body too acidic, which causes our bones to demineralize in order to compensate, which leads to brittle bones, i.e. so-called "osteoporosis".
Generally speaking, however, sweet foods are not inherently harmful.
On the contrary. Almost all sweet fruits are actually very healthy and essential for our well-being. There is also nothing wrong with using natural sweeteners such as yacon syrup, honey or unrefined cane, palm or coconut blossom sugar.
So sweets and sweeteners are not harmful in themselves, as long as you pay attention to the dose, quality and type of sweeteners.