SUGAR AND CARBOHYDRATES 101

SUGAR AND CARBOHYDRATES

One could argue that the principle shift from prehistory to
modernity was to promote concentrated sources of
carbohydrates from cameo appearances in our diets tostarring roles. The most concentrated source of
carbohydrates is refined sugar, which is now added to
everything—from seemingly innocuous juices, crackers,
and condiments to more blatant offenders like soft drinks.
Even when we try our best to avoid these simple sources of
carbohydrates, they can be hidden most inconspicuously.
Anti-obesity researcher and crusader Robert Lustig has
identified fifty-six unique terms food manufacturers use to
disguise sugar—making it difficult, if not altogether
impossible, to spot added sugar on ingredient lists unless
you are the most diligent of sleuths. Here are just a few of
the many names for sugar: cane juice, fructose, malt,
dextrose, honey, maple syrup, molasses, sucrose, coconut
sugar, brown rice syrup, fruit juice, lactose, date sugar,
glucose solids, agave syrup, barley malt, maltodextrin, and
corn syrup.
But it’s not just overt forms of sugar that have achieved
prominence in the modern diet. Grains like wheat, corn, and
rice, tubers like potatoes, and modern sweet fruits are all
cultivated for maximum yield of starch and sugar. Though
these starches don’t look or taste like sugar, they are simply
chains of glucose, stored in energy-dense tissue in the seeds
of plants. (At this point you may be wondering if this book
is going to banish these forms of food from your life
forever, and the answer is no. In later chapters, we’ll
demonstrate how to consume starchy foods with higher
energy density in a way that benefits you as opposed to
making you fat and sick.)

Scientists believe that in the preagricultural past, we were
consuming close to 150 grams of fiber a day. Today, we’reeating more concentrated carbohydrates than ever before,
and getting a meager 15 grams of fiber—on a good day.
Critics of the ancestral diet often point to the probable
consumption of ancient grains in the preagricultural diet, but
regardless of the exact percentage, they were clearly
accompanied by massive fiber content—a dramatic and
critically important contrast to the calorie-dense, processed
sources we have today.
It’s important to be aware of the ease with which our
bodies can break a starch into its constituent sugar
molecules. This conversion process doesn’t even wait for
you to swallow—it begins in your mouth, thanks to an
enzyme in saliva called amylase. (If you’re like me, you
learned this in your ninth-grade biology class. Allow a
starch to linger in your mouth and you’ll taste the sweetness
as the starches begin to break down to their constituent
sugars right on your tongue.) In fact, even before you take
your first bite (or sip) of food, just looking at what you’re
going to eat stimulates the production of the storage
hormone insulin, so that it can be ready to dispose of the
oncoming sugar deluge.
Insulin’s main job is to quickly shuttle sugar molecules
out of your blood and into your fat and muscle tissue. By
the time sugar makes a quick pit stop in your stomach and
hops on the ten-minute subway ride to your bloodstream,
your body’s endocrine (hormone) system is already in fullon energy storage mode. But energy storage is just one part
of the story—this process is also responsible for controlling
the damage caused by having too much sugar in your
blood.
The human body likes stability. It goes to great lengths
to keep your body temperature within a narrow range
(hovering around 98.6°F) at all times, and the same can be
said for your blood sugar levels. Your entire circulating
plasma volume (about five liters of blood) contains just one
single teaspoon of sugar at any given time. This may cause
you to look at your food in a different light, perhaps
thinking twice before reaching for that glass of orange juice,
which contains six times your body’s circulating blood
sugar in just a single cup. Or that delicious cranberry muffin
beckoning you from the office kitchen, containing
seventeen times the amount of sugar—dumped nearly
instantly into your bloodstream upon consumption.
Okay, so what? Eat the sugar, insulin gets it out of the
bloodstream—no harm, no foul, right? Wrong.

The Rising Tide of Sweet Stickiness
Sugar is sticky once it’s in your body, akin to the stickiness
of maple syrup on your fingers—with the important
difference that once sugar sticks to your insides, it can’t be
washed off. On a molecular level, this is called glycation,
and it occurs when a glucose molecule bonds to a nearby
protein or the surface of a cell, thereby causing damage.
Proteins are required for the proper structure and function of
all organs and tissues in your body—from your liver to your
skin to your brain. Any food that elevates blood sugar has
the potential to increase glycation, and any protein exposed
to glucose is vulnerable.

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