By Penelope A. Domogo, MD
No matter what our tongue says, our body, thanks to its innate intelligence, does not like too much sugar. How much is too much? Well, there’s already sugar in rice, camote, pechay and beans. So adding a teaspoon of white or brown sugar in your coffee everyday is too much. Don’t wait for your blood sugar to spike above normal because by that time, it means you have been eating too much sugar for a long time and you are already addicted to it so much so that even if your doctor tells you to limit sugar, it would be very difficult.
Our society at present does not tell us to be careful with sugar. You don’t hear it in school, neither do you see this message plastered in the walls of health facilities. In fact, our society now promotes sugar consumption. The Department of Trade & Industry, TESDA, DOST, DA and LGUs promote food processing that uses a lot of sugar as additive – look at those banana chips, camote chips, peanut brittle, wine, even longanisa. How about all these SSB? (Sugar-sweetened beverages) It is only this year that excise taxes are levied on these SSB. But still these are very affordable to the madlang pipol. Just this morning, I was in the town center and was observing the consumable goods being loaded in the jeepney going to the barrio. OMG, there was nothing healthy – packs of soft drinks in big and small bottles, sugar-sweetened beverages, junk food, instant noodles and San Miguel. All these filled the jeep. To think that this was just one sari-sari store owner buying her supplies. And this jeep was going to a small barrio with less than a thousand population. How many sari-sari stores are there in this one small barrio? No wonder our hospitals and clinics are full of patients from all ages.
What’s sugar, anyway? Let us discuss some technicalities because not all sugar are monsters. Some are good, they are buddies. So from now on we say “sugars”, not “sugar”.
Sugars are carbohydrates and carbohydrates are sugars. They come in two forms- simple sugars and complex sugars. Their difference is in how quickly they are digested and absorbed. There are two kinds of simple sugar- 1) monosaccharide or single-chain sugar and 2) disaccharide or double-chain sugar. Examples of monosaccharides are glucose (in your dextrose), fructose (fruit sugar) and galactose. Examples of disaccharides are sucrose (cane sugar), lactose (milk sugar) and maltose.
Let’s tackle simple sugars first. White or brown sugar is refined sugar- a simple sugar. Now here is one of those confusing terms in the English language. When we say “simple lifestyle”, it is a good commendable lifestyle. But when we say “simple sugar”, it is bad sugar. Confusing, eh? So let’s remember that- simple sugar is bad sugar. Its opposite is “complex sugar” which is, of course, good.
Why is simple sugar bad? When you eat bread or cookies that contain refined sugar or drink 3-in-1 coffee (this contains refined sugar), this sugar gets absorbed immediately to your blood. Because it is simple, it does not have to be broken down by the digestive juices. Easy isn’t it? The problem with this easy entrance of sugar in the blood is that it creates a sudden spike in your blood sugar. Imagine if you drank one bottle of 8 oz. Coke- that’s 8 teaspoons sugar loaded suddenly to your bloodstream. Geez, imagine if it’s a 6 year-old child drinking this so much sugar. Well, our body does not like this excess sugar because sugar makes the blood acidic. Acidic blood is the fertile ground for germs and cancer cells to grow. So because of its innate intelligence (as designed by our loving Creator), our body removes as soon as it can this excess sugar from the blood and turns it into fat and deposits it to your liver or to your bilbil. So after a little while, you will feel hungry and the nearest thing to you is white bread. You eat that and again a sugar spike is created in your blood and the cycle goes on and on. Don’t be surprised when one day, you find you are overweight, have high triglycerides (this is a kind of fat), hypertensive, diabetic, arthritic, easily gets infection, have dental caries. There, avoid these simple sugars. You protest and say “But we need sugar.” Yes, we need sugars, we need carbohydrates. But eat them in its complex form.
Complex sugars are in our whole grains, legumes, root vegetables. Take note that I wrote “whole grains”- meaning unpolished grains or hand-pound grain, not white rice. Complex sugars take time to be digested precisely because they are complex- these big molecules have to be broken down into simple sugars so they could be absorbed by the body. This process creates a slow, gentle rise of blood sugar thus your body is not stressed. I am sure you have noticed that it is longer to get hungry if your food is unpolished rice that when it is pandesal. Nature has provided us with enough complex sugars all year round. Rice, camote, beans, can be stored naturally even without any preservative. God is good. Even pechay has carbohydrates although not as much as camote. So it is your choice – simple sugar or complex sugar. Sugar monsters or sugar buddies.
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“It is better to be patient than powerful, it is better to have self-control than to conquer a city.”
Proverbs 16:32
