The True Danger of This Food Has Been Kept Secret

Scott:  You know, I think we all know that sugar's bad for us.  We've talked about that, when it comes to the low fat and the things like that.  Do we really know how bad it is in terms of our overall health and what an impact it has?

Dr. Jaime Schehr:  I think we do.  I think we do from a functional, or scientific perspective, or maybe on the science side of it we know, in the medical science side.  I'm not sure that it has been well communicated to the population about just how bad it is.  I think it has been kept secret, you know?  Sugar is a destructive chemical.  It is inflammatory, it can cause a lot of problems.  Again, easy example is diabetes, right?  So, direct correlation to an increase in sugar intake, puts you at risk for diabetes.  From a functional, medical standpoint, looking at how sugar affects us.  

But the other piece of this is, it's quantity, not quality, in regards to sugar and disease.  You can get sugar from fruit, and that's a fantastic sugar.  And it's a quality sugar, but too much of anything is no good.  So if you ate excessive amounts of fruit, and didn't balance that with proteins and other nutrients, you're still gonna have too much sugar and it's still going to be a problem in your body.

Scott: And if we're told to reduce that... some people might say, ok, I'm not going to have the candy, I'm not going to have the brownies after dinner anymore.  I'm going to eat healthy.  I'm going to eat yogurt.  Um... and then... 

Schehr:  Yogurt.

Scott: You know where I'm going.  

Schehr:  I do!

Scott:  It's about the labels again... or the gluten free, things like that.  There's so much that we don't think of being loaded with sugar that is. 

Schehr:  Yep!  I couldn't agree more!  Well, first of all, as medical professionals, we should be teaching our clients and our patients how to read a food label.   That should be an essential tool.  You should be able to look at a label and know what that means.  You know, how many grams of sugar is too many.  And we should just learn ways to reduce our sugars.  I probably stress that as much as vegetables in my practice, as we've got to decrease the sugar and we've got to increase the vegetable, you know the vegetable fibers.  But if the question is how to, it's about going away from foods that turn or convert into sugar inside of our body. 

Scott: You mentioned... how many grams of sugar is too many?  And I'll go back to the yogurt example.  If we have... it's blueberry, blueberries and yogurt.  That should be very good for us.  

Schehr: It should be.

Scott:  Then you look at the small little cup and it's 24, 26 grams of sugar.  

Schehr:  Right, which is more than a Snickers bar.  That's insane, right?  So this wonderful yogurt that you're having for breakfast has more sugar than a Snickers bar.  I might go to the Snickers bar in that situation, get some protein.  Again, there goes the label.  You know if you're... generally speaking, of course it's going to change individually.  Generally speaking I say to people if there's more than 10 grams of sugar in any given serving, that's too high.  That's getting into numbers where that's too high.  So let's try and start with finding foods that have less than ten grams of sugar.  And if we find ones that have less than ten grams of sugar, we'll then start to think about where the sugar is coming from and what's the source of sugar.  But that's my starting goal, if you will.