In our first three decades of marriage, Lisa and I didn’t exactly have sophisticated tastes when it came to coffee.
We drank Folger’s, typically flavoring it with manufactured creamers like what you see at right. As its ad copy says today:
Coffee mate Italian Sweet Creme flavor coffee creamer will transport you to a land of rich taste – right in your kitchen! Indulgently creamy and remarkably rich, the incredible flavor of Italian Sweet Creme is a silky smooth sip that’s lactose-free and cholesterol free.
Cholesterol free! That’s got to be healthy, right?
Check out the ingredients:
Water, Sugar and Vegetable Oil make up most of it.
With apologies to Meat Loaf, “Two out of three ain’t good!”
Stopping Sugar is #BodyBabyStep One, so on that basis alone you should get rid of these non-dairy creamers. Vegetable oil isn’t much better, as we’ll address in future posts.
But tomorrow I’ll show three wonderful ways you can enjoy coffee without spiking your insulin.
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While much of what the U.S. government has done relating to food and nutrition has been counterproductive at best (such as the food guide pyramid), its incorporation of ingredient and macronutrient information in food labels is mostly helpful when read with discernment.
One thing you’ll find is that sugar is everywhere.
When you read a food label, if you see SUGAR, BROWN SUGAR, HONEY, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, SUCROSE, DEXTROSE, LACTOSE or any other -OSE – especially among the first few ingredients – stay away!
Juice is a special case, though. When you review an ingredient label for 100% fruit juice, you might see lists like:
INGREDIENTS: FILTERED WATER, ORGANIC APPLE JUICE CONCENTRATE, ASCORBIC ACID (VITAMIN C)
INGREDIENTS: Grapefruit Juice (water, grapefruit juice concentrate)
What could be wrong with those? They’re “all natural” or maybe even “ORGANIC”!
It doesn’t even list sugar as an ingredient.
Well, let’s do a comparison.
Few would consider Coca-Cola (or any other sugar-sweetened carbonated beverage, for that matter) a healthy drink. (I’m not picking on Coke, here; it’s actually the soda, or “pop” depending on your region, that I have most enjoyed over the years.)
Look at its Nutrition Facts label, you’ll see plenty of warning signs:
Obviously with High Fructose Corn Syrup behind only water among its ingredients, you’ll expect this to be high in sugar. And sure enough, each 12-ounce can has 39g of Total Sugars (all of them Added Sugars.)
That’s bad, right?
Well, let’s compare with several 100% fruit juices:
Orange, Grapefruit, Apple and Grape juice nutrition labels.
Each these lists “0g Added Sugars” as if that’s something of which the bottlers should be proud. I realize that’s an item the government requires them to note, but it detracts from the real news, which is that for an 8-ounce serving, total sugars for these juices are:
Grapefruit – 17g
Orange – 23g
Apple – 28g
Grape – 36 g
When adjusted to the same serving size as a can of Coke (and rounding down to be generous), those range from 26g to 54g for 12 ounces.
Apple juice and grape juice actually have more sugar per ounce than Coke!
Here’s my confession: in the last half of the 1990s, I would regularly stop at the convenience story on my morning commute and buy a quart of orange juice to drink on the way to work!
I actually thought that was a healthy choice! I mean, it had Vitamin C, right?
Based on the figures above, I was getting 92g of sugar before 8 a.m. almost every workday. And that was after I had eaten a bowl of cereal that typically included 16g of sugars and 41g of total carbohydrates.
I might as well have had a 48-ounce Coke for breakfast!
Fruit in reasonable quantities is good because it carries fiber with it, which fills you up and also slows the absorption of sugar into the bloodstream.
But my Nordic ancestors didn’t have fresh fruit year-round, and yet somehow here I am today. Fruit is less necessary than you may think.
So as you’re taking #BodyBabyStep One, quitting fruit juice (and all other sugar-sweetened beverages) is essential.
Don’t do as I did; do as I do now.
I drink coffee black, or with fat-based additives that don’t cause blood sugar spikes and also slow release of caffeine.
More on that next time.
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I realize it’s a big challenge. Sugar is in everything. Especially “low-fat” processed foods. If you’re going to succeed in cutting it out, you’ll need sufficient motivation.
Investigative science and health journalist Gary Taubes, another of my guides, continues the prosecution in the video below with The Case Against Sugar, a summary and introduction to his book by the same name. It’s well worth your time:
Excessive carbohydrates are a problem in our diet generally, but sugar is an extra specially bad type of carb, for the reasons Dr. Lustig and Taubes outline.
You may be surprised, as I was, to find how much sugar is in food and drink you consider “healthy.”
More on that next time.
If you think your friends might find this series helpful, I hope you’ll share by email or on your social networks using the buttons below.
Why is this so important? I previously recommended a 2009 video from Dr. Robert Lustig, which does a great job of explaining the damage done by all kinds of sugar, and the special case of fructose. Here’s an updated version of Dr. Lustig’s talk, from 2013:
Stop the Sugar is #1 on my top 20 list as well, because sugar sabotages every other helpful behavior you attempt.
Sugar spikes your insulin, which causes your fat cells to accumulate energy instead of releasing it.
You cannot burn fat when your insulin is high, and as Dr. Lustig shows in the video, insulin also blocks leptin, the hormone that reduces appetite and increases energy expenditure.
In leptin resistance, as he describes it, your brain can’t see your leptin, and so you think you are starving and are driven to consume more fructose.
Every diet Lisa and I have used during the last four years, from Trim Healthy Mama to Tim Ferriss’ Slow-Carb diet to Dr. William Davis’ Undoctored plan to our current low-carb healthy fat diet, has called for limiting or eliminating sugar.
In fact, cutting sugar is the common thread in almost every popular diet that works.
So as you’re starting the #BodyBabySteps series, taking time to understand the sources of sugar in your diet will pay off in helping you to avoid self-sabotage. I’ll have more on how to do that, as well as insights from others I count among my Health Sherpas, in future posts.
If you think your friends might find this series helpful, I hope you’ll share by email or on your social networks using the buttons below.
For your weekend enjoyment (or perhaps engagement) here’s a video featuring Dr. Robert Lustig from University of California, San Francisco.
While I don’t necessarily associate myself with all of his comments (I don’t think Richard Nixon is behind all of the problems in modern society, for instance), I think his message is important.
If you want to understand how sugar is processed by your body, and particularly why fructose is so dangerous, you will find this fascinating as I did.
What do you think about this?
What steps have you taken (or do you plan to take) to reduce your sugar and fructose consumption?
