Cosmetic Surgery and Beauty Magazine #68

feature
So, are we all junkies?
According to the Harvard School of Public Health, the average American consumes 22
teaspoons of added sugar a day, equating to an extra 350 calories. Scarily, these 22
mouthfuls of sweetness are easily consumed – added sugar is difficult to avoid.
Gillespie claims food manufacturers are taking advantage of our collective sugar
addiction and are “lacing” non-sweet products – such as bread, sauces, soups and
cereals – with the poison to ensure we stay hooked. And he’s not alone in this thinking.
Dr Robert Lustig, a paediatric endocrinologist at the University of California-San
Francisco and author of the book Fat Chance: The Hidden Truth About Sugar, says the
food industry is purposefully sweetening up our diets.
‘The food industry has made sugar into a diet staple because they know when they do,
you buy more,’ he told The Guardian in 2013. ‘This is their hook. If some unscrupulous
cereal manufacturer went out and laced your breakfast cereal with morphine to get you to
buy more, what would you think of that? They do it with sugar instead.’
Is it really that bad?
Sugar has been linked to high blood sugar, cardiovascular disease mortality,
diabetes and cellular ageing.
An article published in the online journal Open Heart found sugars are probably
more instrumental in increasing the risk of hypertension (high blood pressure)
and cardiovascular disease (CVD), as compared to dietary sodium (salt).
‘Compelling evidence from basic science, population studies, and clinical
trials implicate sugars, and particularly the monosaccharide fructose, as
playing a major role in the development of hypertension,’ the researchers state.
‘Moreover, evidence suggests that sugars in general and fructose in particular
may contribute to overall cardiovascular risk through a variety of mechanisms.’
Furthermore, a study published in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal,
conducted by researchers at the Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention
at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, associated a high added
sugar intake with a heightened risk of CVD.
The study found that people who consumed between 17 and 21 per cent
of their daily calories from added sugar exhibited a 38 percent higher risk of
CVD mortality, compared to those whose added sugar intake was maintained
at around eight percent. For those whose daily intake of added sugar was
more than 21 percent of their daily calories, they had double the risk of CVD
mortality. And, in participants who consumed 25 percent of their daily calories
from added sugar, their risk of CVD mortality was tripled.
Cellular ageing
The anti-ageing world is full of talk about telomeres – or the protective DNA
that caps the end of cell chromosomes. The common consensus is the longer
the telomeres, the longer the quality of life. The trick? Telomeres continuously
shorten as our cells replicate, getting shorter and shorter as we age.
Ongoing research is furiously exploring the possibilities in lengthening
telomeres to reduce the rate of ageing or ways to prevent their ever-persistent
shortening. But sugar, according to scientists from the University of California-
San Francisco, is one sure-fire way to shorten your telomeres before their
time. The research, led by Prof. Elissa Epel, assessed 5,309 participants and
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