Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Get Stuffed

Sweet truth

Why we can’t live without sugar

The first time that I became aware that sugar had a downside came with my first cavity, a real beauty on my upper left first molar.

Until my baby teeth were taken by the tooth fairy my parents were content to let me eat what shut me up, but afterwards they started to get on my case about brushing every morning when I woke up and every evening before I went to bed. They used to check to see if my toothbrush was wet, but I’d learned to rinse my brush under the tap and maybe smear a little paste on my front teeth to make things smell convincing and 99 times out of 100 they fell for it.

When I used to reach for the ice cream or come home with some candy, they’d tell me that I was going to rot my teeth out if I wasn’t careful.

I guess I didn’t believe them until the dentist pulled out the needle and started drilling. The Novocain took care of most of the pain, although both the needle and drill were extremely uncomfortable.

The worst part was the smell of burning tooth, the little flying things shooting out of my mouth and landing on my bib, the vacuum sucking all of the spit and debris out of my mouth, the pressurized air shot into the cavity that reawakened my sleeping nerves, and the taste of metal as the dentist crammed the amalgam, mostly mercury with silver, copper and tin, into the hole. It was the single worst experience of my life up to that point, with the possible exception of a broken femur in senior Kindergarten.

Still, I couldn’t stay away from sugar even if I tried. I liked to drink pop and read comic books. I liked Captain Crunch, and if my parents bought health cereal I’d put a spoonful of sugar on it. I ate a lot of gum and chocolate and licorice and candy and cake – there was always some sugar around.

My parents’ philosophy was that it was better to let the kids have some sugar, or we’d just wind up sneaking it anyway. Besides, my mom knew that the brain is largely made of glucose and that kids need at least some sugar in their diets in order to grow. Her explanation for some of my sillier or slower friends was that their parents were too strict about sugar intake.

And then there were the kids who went completely berserk the moment they ingested even the smallest amount of sugar. A few of my friends weren’t allowed any because they had a tendency to fight, yell, and jump off of playground equipment. I was always happy to give them a little of my own junk food just to get them going – school was far more interesting that way.

I grew out of the sugar cravings, at least for the most part, although I have yet to cut it out of my diet. I’m still not convinced that something that occurs naturally can’t really be all that bad for you in small quantities, providing that all of the health benefits haven’t been bleached and refined out of it.

Nevertheless, there is overwhelming evidence that even a little too much sugar can be a bad thing. One doctor, Thomas McPherson Brown, implicates sugar as a contributor in 78 different health conditions, from kidney damage to mineral deficiency to cancer to blindness to coronary disease to varicose veins. And yes, he does say it promotes tooth decay.

According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, per capita sugar intake has increased by 29 per cent since 1983, "fueling soaring obesity rates and other health problems." About a third of that increase is the result of soft drink consumption.

The CSPI recommended that the U.S. Food and Drug Association set daily intake guidelines for sugars and require more accurate sugar information on food labels, but that bit of legislation has yet to materialize.

The sugar industry is extremely competitive, with thousands of farmers around the world providing beet and cane sugar to a glutted world market. Trade disputes among Canada, the U.S. and Mexico are already brewing over sugar subsidies, and why not? Globally the sugar industry employs hundreds of thousands of people and generates billions of dollars in revenue for farmers, governments, investors and processors.

In the 2000/2001 fiscal year, world sugar production from canes, beets, corn and other sources was more than 260,000 metric tonnes. With prices fluctuating between 10 and 12 cents per pound on the global market, and 2,240 pounds in a metric tonne, that’s a lot of money. Its value increases exponentially as the sugar is converted into Captain Crunch, Oh Henry bars and other consumer goods.

With that kind of money at stake, there are powerful sugar lobbies out there that counter every study on the effects of sugar with studies of their own. The result is a confusing mish-mash of information on the overall healthiness of sugar.

It’s probably worth straightening out as our diets increasingly revolve around sugar. According to the Canadian Sugar Institute, sugar is used to add sweetness and enhance flavours in various foods. Improves appearance, holding colours in candies and browning baked goods. It acts as a preservative, and keeps food like bread and cake moist.

For alcoholic beverages, sugars provide a base for yeast fermentation. Sugar keeps sauces smooth and cooked fruits and vegetables firm. Before you can judge sugars you have to distinguish between the varying kinds because some kinds are better than others.

All sugars fall under the Carbohydrates heading. It’s a source of instant energy, and as it’s broken down into glucose in our blood, it fuels the muscles, organs and cells of our bodies.

There are five varieties of sugar: Sucrose, which is found in sugar cane and sugar beets; Fructose, which is found in fruit and honey; Glucose, which is found in honey, fruit and vegetables; Maltose, which is found in sprouting grains; and Lactose, which is found in milk.

All have varying degrees of sweetness and physical properties that allow them to be used in many different products. Carbohydrates have about four calories per gram, which is roughly the same as protein. Fat and alcohol have between seven and nine calories per gram.

According to Whole Earth, a U.K.-based health food site, sugar has never been scientifically proven to have any negative impact on health, including hyperactivity, diabetes and weight gain. As for the assertion that sugar is bad for your teeth "it is all carbohydrates, including sugar, that tooth bacteria feed off to form acids that help attack tooth enamel. Therefore, avoiding frequent carbohydrate based snacks, which will keep the plaque acid high, should be avoided, rather than just sugar."

Sugar does have a variety of vitamins and minerals, but typically the best way to get the benefit of these is through its natural source, such as a piece of fruit. The more refined the sugar is, the more unhealthy it becomes.

And my mom was right – according to Nutrimed Labs (www.nutrimed.com), glucose is the brain’s only source of fuel. Low blood sugar has been tied to various brain ailments, such as headaches, mental sluggishness, drowsiness and mood swings.

Unless you are diagnosed with diabetes or hypoglycemia, sugar doesn’t pose any kind of immediate health threat. And while a sugar-heavy diet probably won’t do you much good in the long run, moderate intake may actually be a necessity.

Before the human genome was finally unraveled in 2000, sugars were basically thought of as energy providers in the forms of glucose and glycogen. Now scientists are starting to realize that sugars play an even greater role in our bodily functions, and believe that sugars may play a key role in the treatment and prevention of various diseases and disorders.

According to the latest issue of Scientific American, sugars are now known to combine with proteins and fats on the surface of cells, facilitating communication with other cells. They play a key role in our immune system, and in the progression of various diseases, like viruses and cancer.

With this new information in hand, pharmaceutical companies are studying the possibility of synthesizing new drugs from natural sugars to treat a wide variety of ailments.

In fact, the answer was there all along. Since the 1930s doctors have been using Heparin, a sugar chain, to prevent blood clots from forming during surgery. Unfortunately, the methods for refining Heparin were not fully understood until recently, and the potency would differ from batch to batch.

Sugar was so poorly studied in the past because it is incredibly complex, even more complicated than DNA. There are approximately 10 sugars common to mammals that can join with one another in hundreds of different ways, and they can probably assemble into more than 15 million four-component arrangements.

In contrast, the 20 different amino acids in proteins can only produce about 16,000 four-component arrangements.

Some of the sugar-based cures and treatments on the market or in development include:

• A treatment for Guacher’s disease, which is caused by an enzyme deficiency;

• An antibiotic that can treat infections that are immune to conventional antibiotic treatments;

• A kind of cancer vaccine that triggers an immune response against certain types of cancer cells;

• A sugar mimic that treats various types of inflammations on blood vessel walls;

• A sugar that interferes with the action of sugar-binding proteins on tumours;

• A sugar mimic that inhibits the production of carbohydrates that help cancer spread in the body;

• A sugar mimic that disrupts the hepatitis C virus from infecting cells.

Glycomics is a relatively new field, but scientists believe that a more thorough understanding of sugar could result in some important medical breakthroughs.

Sugar, it seems, is too complex a subject to be labelled as either good or bad for a person. Let’s just say it does both good and bad things, but at the same time it’s a necessity.

The debate over the merits of this natural sweetener, cereal topping and cake moistener was never about good and bad, anyway – you couldn’t avoid eating sugars if you tried. Instead, it’s always been a question of quality and quantity.

Something to think about when you’re sitting in that dentist’s chair.