Sugar: The Facts

The Leaf is working extra hard in November, American Diabetes Month, to make sure you’re fully informed about diabetes and the risks it presents to your health. Simply put, diabetes is a metabolic disease in which the body’s inability to produce any or enough insulin causes elevated levels of glucose in the blood. Diabetics, and those wishing to avoid the disease, need to be very careful about dietary sugar, which take many forms, including glucose, fructose and sucrose. Here are some facts about sugars you should be aware of in order to make good decisions about what you consume:

• Americans consume more than twice as much sugar each day as the average country in a survey of 54 nations: we eat the equivalent of the amount of sugar in three cans of soda. If you don’t want to eat sugar, head to China, where the average person eats just 11 percent of what an American eats.
• Americans drink an average of 53 gallons of soda a year.
• Refined sugar has no nutritional value.
• Sugar is used as a preservative in jams, jellies and preserves.
• A three-ounce serving of dried fruits is higher in sugars than a similar serving of fresh fruit; drying concentrates the sugars.
• Brazil is the world’s largest producer of sugar.
• If you suddenly and completely remove refined sugar from your diet, you may suffer withdrawal symptoms such as depression and fatigue.
• The World Health Organization recommends that less than 10 percent of a person’s average energy intake come from sugar.