5 Ways too much sugar can harm your health
While the sugars occurring naturally in fruits, vegetables, dairy and grains are digested slowly and give us a steady supply of energy, added sugar in processed foods and drinks makes our energy levels spike – and then slump – and can harm our health in many ways.
1. Obesity
South Africans are among the most overweight people in Africa, with 39% of women obese and 11% of men, raising our risk for a raft of ills from diabetes to coronary heart, reports Aviva Tugendhaft, deputy director of PRICELESS SA at the Wits School of Public Health.
Among other things, this obesity has been linked to consuming too much sugar, leading to the imposition of a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages in 2018. The Food Based Dietary Guidelines for South Africa advise: “Use sugar and foods and drinks high in sugar sparingly”. The World Health Organization spells that out as getting no more than 5 to 10% of your total energy intake each day from sugar, the equivalent to 25 to 50g. That’s just six to 12 teaspoons – half our current average.
2. Heart disease
Even if you’re not obese, getting more than a quarter of your daily calories from added sugar can more than double your risk of dying from heart disease, compared to someone who gets less than half that, according to a major study in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
The reasons are unclear but it’s thought that too much sugar raises your blood pressure or releases more fats into your blood, which lead to a heart attack, stroke or other heart disease.
3. Diabetes
Sugar-sweetened beverages, especially, can raise your risk for Type 2 diabetes. They’re loaded with sugar – even so-called “vitamin water” is basically sugar water with a few added vitamins and packs around 5 to 8 teaspoons of sugar per 300ml, says Cape Town dietitian Gabi Steenkamp, who has a special interest in diabetes.
Liquid sugar is absorbed rapidly, causing blood sugar to spike fast, which leads to the sugar changing into fat in your liver and contributes to the development of diabetes. You also end up drinking more than you intended as it requires no chewing, Steenkamp says – and you don’t feel full, as you would with solid food.
4. Blood pressure
High blood pressure is usually linked to high salt consumption, but some researchers are reporting that sugar may be more to blame, according to a review in Open Heart Journal. It’s been suggested that by causing insulin levels to spike, sugar eventually makes your blood vessels less flexible, and causes your kidneys to retain water and sodium.
5. Ageing
Finally, if nothing else induces you to cut back on sugar, this may: new research suggests that consuming too much sugar, especially in sugary drinks, can age you faster. According to a large study in December in the journal PLOS Medicine, women who drank two or more servings of sugar-sweetened beverages a day were 32% more likely to become frail than those who drank none. “We would advise people to avoid sugar-sweetened beverages,” said the lead author.
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