By in Nutrition

Make 2017 the Year That You Quit Sugar!

One of the most popular resolutions is to start the New Year with a detox, although the health world is divided over the usefulness of detox diets: Some experts advise to detox at least twice a year – advice here ranges from strict regimes such as water or juice fasting to more gentle approaches just cutting out caffeine, alcohol, wheat and dairy -, while others dismiss detoxes as completely unnecessary because detoxing is what your liver does all the time anyway.

It’s true: Detoxing is one of the liver’s major jobs and does indeed work on removing toxins from our body every day, by converting them into less harmful substances or packaging them up for excretion via the bile and ultimately the colon. But of course you can make its job easier by lightening its load as much as you can and by keeping your liver in good shape.

Everybody knows that one thing that seriously affects liver health is alcohol. It has 7 kcal per gram, but is not a substance we need, and it doesn’t provide anything beneficial. Instead, it is toxic and when consumed frequently it can be addictive. In the long run, overconsumption of alcohol causes fatty liver disease, a condition caused by the build up of fat (triglycerides) in liver tissue. Although this is reversible by quitting alcohol, it can progress into inflammation and scarring – cirrhosis – of the liver.

A condition not everybody has heard of is ‘non-alcoholic fatty liver disease’. This is the accumulation of triglycerides, a type of fat, in the liver tissue that was not caused by alcohol. For a long time doctors were puzzled by this condition that is even seen in children now, but it appears that sugar is to blame. Table sugar – sucrose – is formed of two molecules: glucose and fructose. While glucose is easily used as fuel and burned for energy, fructose has no purpose. It still provides 4 kcal per gram, but no nutrition at all. Instead, the liver has to dispose of it and it is metabolised there in the same way as alcohol. Fructose is converted into triglycerides and stored in liver tissue. And while glucose is usable for energy, any excess is also turned into triglycerides, contributing to the accumulation of abdominal fat and fatty deposits around the organs. In time, overconsumption of sugar can damage the liver in just the same way as alcohol.

So how much sugar is safe? In 2015, the WHO halved its recommendation for the intake of sugar from 10% to 5% of the daily caloric intake, which means 35 g for men (8 teaspoons), 25 g for women (6 teaspoons). Note that this is the upper limit, there’s no minimum requirement. Most popular breakfast cereals contain 12g (3 teaspoons) of sugar per serving on average – but that’s a serving as defined on the side of the package, which is usually 30 g. Try and weigh out a 30-g-serving and you will find that it is little more than a tablespoon full. Most people have considerably larger servings and have thus consumed their entire sugar contingent for the day before they haven even left the house. Before starting to worry about whether or not you should detox, you would do your liver the biggest favour by quitting sugar.

So, where to start? Here are my 6 top tips:

Stop drinking fizzy drinks – whether or not they are sweetened with sugar. Sugar-sweetened soft drinks are the biggest source of sugar in our diets. Cut them out and you have already taken a load off your liver. Artificially sweetened drinks are taxing to the liver for other reasons – they are not a desirable alternative.

Stop drinking fruit juices – In our search for a flavoured, yet healthy drink, many of us switch to fruit juices. Yes, they may be marginally healthier than soft drinks, because after all a homemade fruit juice at least contains vitamins and minerals. True, but pure fruit juices contain just as much sugar as soft drinks. Most of the sugar in our lives is the sugar we drink, because it’s so easily done. Switch to water – still or fizzy, it doesn’t matter – or herbal or fruit teas.

Read labels – Packaged food must be labelled, and the sugar content must be declared. 22 g of sugar per 100 g is high, less than 5 g is low. Check out the ingredients list as well: Ingredients must be listed in the order of quantity, so if sugar is near the top of the list, the food is high in sugar. Unfortunately, sugar is not always called sugar. It might also be syrup, honey, nectar, molasses or anything ending in –ose. In an effort to hide the true sugar content of their foods, some manufacturers split it in the ingredients list. If it contains, for example, molasses, honey, dextrose and maltose, these components will slide much further down the ingredients list. To begin with, read labels on everything you buy – you will be amazed how many ‘non-sweet’ foods contain sugar, e. g. salad dressings, bread, or pickles. In time, you will know your culprits as well as your trusted brands and can speed up your shopping again.

Shop on the outer rim of the supermarket – a health tip by American food writer Michael Pollan. Picture your local supermarket in your mind. Aren’t the fruit and veg, meat, cheese, and fish counters and/or the fridges containing dairy and butter located on the outside, with all the junk down the aisles in the middle? By avoiding those places you can stay out of harms way much more easily.

Avoid low-fat products – When fat is removed from food that would normally contain it, such as milk, cheese, yoghurt or guacamole, it’s sugar content either goes up naturally (skimmed milk contains more lactose than full fat milk) or is added to make the food in question more palatable. Given the choice, always go for fat rather than sugar.

Give it two weeks – If you struggle with strong sugar cravings, hold out. It takes only two weeks for the cravings to stop if you strictly cut out sugar for that time. Many people find it doesn’t even take that long and they can feel the benefits much sooner. There’s still enough of January left! Have a go and quit sugar just for January.

For more advice on quitting sugar for good, please call The Body Matters on 01702 714968 to book an appointment.

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Melanie
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