Hello my ghoulishly great Plante Lifers,
This Halloween, instead of playing a trick on you, I’m shedding light on one serious trickster. Last week, I explained the sneaky rollercoaster that sugar can take your body on. To recap, while that cupcake or candy bar may seem harmless at the time, it can wreck havoc on your insides in just a short while.
That’s because sugar is like the cocaine of the food world and just as addictive.
You heard me right. Studies show that sugar, which releases opioids and dopamine—the feel good chemicals—produces the same behaviors and changes in the brain that would diagnose addiction to drugs and alcohol.
Now, this is an important topic all year round, but especially during the holiday season where sweets and desserts are even more up in our faces!
Slaying your sugar addiction, like a substance addiction, can be a difficult process. Cardiologist James O’Keefe says it can take up to six weeks to kick a sugar addiction, and you can experience intense cravings almost like a drug withdrawal. And then you have to make sure you don’t get right back on the sugar rollercoaster.
But the long term health benefits are more than worth it!
Your blood pressure will come down, diabetes will become more manageable, obesity will subside, your skin will be clearer and brighter, your mood will elevate and your sleep will improve. Sounds sweeter already, doesn’t it?
Now as a health coach, the best advice I can give you is to eliminate or drastically reduce refined sugar from your diet. And one of the first ways to do that is to avoid artificial sweeteners.
This might seem counter intuitive for some people, but artificial is not synonymous with alternative. It means it’s fake, guys! The name says it all. And you know what I think about anything artificial in your diet.
Our bodies simply do not understand how to deal with processed foods. So this faux alternative actually does the opposite of what you think it would do—artificial sweeteners trick your body into believing that it is about to receive actual sugar. And since no sugar is actually consumed, it can lead to actual sugar cravings, causing you to constantly desire the very thing the artificial sweeteners are supposed to be helping you avoid. Ahhh, there’s always a catch!
There is also research that shows that sucralose (hello Splenda, you ol’ nemesis) causes a 20% rise in blood glucose. This means it is acting very similar to sugar (warts and bad health conditions and all) without containing any sugar whatsoever.
Basically artificial sweeteners confuse your body into storing fat and ultimately can still induce diabetes. So, let’s just keep it real my friends! Go for the real unrefined natural sweeteners like organic maple syrup, brown rice syrup or pure raw honey.
As a special Halloween treat, I want to help pull the curtain back on all the places the monster sugar is hiding in the food you eat every day.
According to the nonprofit Food Label Movement, there are almost 100 different names for sugar and sugar alcohols on ingredient lists! Sugar is hidden in so many foods you would never expect like ketchup, pasta sauce, salad dressing, cereal bars, bread, crackers, sushi, cough medicine, milk & non dairy milks and frozen dinners.
So here is my as-comprehensible-as-possible list of all the aliases sugar uses. Think of it at your grocery store decoder ring for all those sneaky ingredient labels.
Click here to download the list.
LOVE + a naturally sweet Halloween!
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