I've talked previously on the blog about sugar and how your body processes it. Now I want to cover why Fructose, a specific type of sugar is particularly bad for you. This all stems from the principal that all calories are not created equal when we are trying to fuel our body. If you already subscribe to a Paleo/Primal lifesyle this concept probably makes sense to you. If not you may assume that the key to weight loss and overall health related to Calories In - Calories Out , if you take in more calories than you burn you get fat, if you take in less calories or burn more calories than you take in, you lose fat. A few "experts" on the all calories are not created equal subject are Gary Taubes who wrote "Good Calories, Bad Calories" and just released a new book which is a sequel to Good Calories, Bad Calories that is more digestible "Why we get Fat, and what to do about it" along with Dr. Robert Lustig whose lecture, Sugar: The Bitter Truth which was published on YouTube made a huge splash.
So losing fat isn't as easy as calories in being lower than calories out. You need to take a look at what you're eating as well as how much. As a nation Americans are getting fatter - on average we Americans weigh 25 more pounds than we did 25 years ago (~1985). How are we gaining all this extra weight, beacause we're eating more and too much of the wrong stuff. And the reason why we are eating more than we need, its because we are increastingly Leptin resistant. Leptin is the hormone that tells your brain that you are full and you don't need anymore food to fuel your body. When you are Leptin resistant, that means that your brain doesn't respond as well to the leptin signals, meaning that even though you have enough food for fuel your brain doesn't register that I'm full signal and you still feel hungry, so you eat more than you need. What causes the letpin resistance in your body - one thing is the processing of fructose in the liver. If you look at what the extra calories are in today's diet, it is generally in the form of added carbohydrates. In the 1990s when the nation started following the high carbohydrate and low fat diet have essentially doomed ourselves to a diet that will make us fat through the increase in carbohydrates in our diets.
Did you know that 1 soda a day (additional 150 calories) is an additoinal 15 pounds of fat per year that is added to your body.
Americans today eat/consume a whopping 141 pounds of sugar per year!
