You can't really evaluate this outside of a metabolic context. That goes for a lot of things, but you're a lot more likely to burn the sugar more or less immediately early in the morning, particularly before a workout.
Sugar is a necessary nutrient (i.e. healthy by any sane meaning of the word, if such a meaning exists) and we've gone much too far in demonizing it.
Literally every study, from rats to humans and from obesity to cancer to gut microbiome to mood to oral health to chronic inflammation shows that dietary sugar is harmful. Modern Americans eat unprecedented amounts of refined sugar compared to any point in history.
Sugar should be consumed in moderation akin to alcohol, not pumped into every product at every meal.
Emphasis on refined sugar.
Most food products, even meat in trace amounts, has some level of some form of sugar in it.
Added sugars are not needed in mass amounts for sure.
Most of the body's natural way of generating energy involves turning macronutrients into glucose and later into ATP. sucrose and fructose just so happen to have very short and very fast routes to conversion.
That fast path is what I think makes sugar particularly problematic (as well as honey and a whole lot of other "natural" sweeteners that are just repackaged *oses). That big jolt of energy which the body ends up converting to fat since it has nothing to do with it is (probably) where most of the problem lay.
there is no way to separate the discussion, doing so it’s just to avoid solving the issue that is to regulate refined sugar
You could make a case for honey, but, like all other natural sources, it contains other ingredients that somehow limits ingestion or metabolization.
In the natural environment, said other ingredients would be the angry swarm of bees?
Sugar is naturally occurring in basically all the food we consume. Good luck ripping it out. Good luck getting a functioning body without consuming carbohydrates, either.
> Literally every study, from rats to humans and from obesity to cancer to gut microbiome to mood to oral health to chronic inflammation shows that dietary sugar is harmful.
The body also requires dietary sugar to function :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate
> Sugar should be consumed in moderation akin to alcohol,
Alcohol is a literal poison that you should not consume at all. Sugar is a basic dietary requirement. Of course, all nutrients should be consumed in moderation, but that's not unique to sugar in any way.
The body doesn't need carbohydrates to function.
> The body also requires dietary sugar to function :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate
Again, the body does not :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet
Ketogenic diet doesn't mean stripping all carbs from your diet (which is, again, effectively impossible). It just means burning fat. It's also wildly unhealthy if you don't have fat to burn. Only obese people should engage in that sort of diet.
You mean, is there any evidence aside from every person who manages their diabetes through diet alone? Or the various pre-industrial human cultures who ate virtually nothing but fish and small game because their climate was notoriously resistant to agriculture and fruit trees?
> It's also wildly unhealthy if you don't have fat to burn. Only obese people should engage in that sort of diet.
You seem to be confusing the ketogenic diet with starving. That's not how it works. If you deplete your fat body's stores and get hungry, you simply eat some fat and then your body will burn it for fuel. If you decide to eat much more fat than your body needs, your body will store the fat as fat. But it won't do it quite as readily as with sugar/carbs, and you won't get food cravings mere hours after eating.
We have longer life span. We are healthier then them. And we have also bigger muscles for those fitness oriented.
> The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate dietary therapy
Keto diet is low-carbs - not completely carbs free.
Only in so much as that it will built glucose out of other things you eat if you don't eat carbs separately. Your body runs on glucose which is a carbohydrate.
How do you go from "Sugar should be consumed in moderation" to "Sugar should be ripped out of all foods and the body doesn't need carbohydrates"?
Why jump from a reasonable and sound observation to some ridiculous extreme nobody asked for?
I wonder why nobody has started sweetening stuff with glucose as a 'healthy sweetener'. It is maybe 3 times more expensive than normal sugar - but I guess this is mostly because it is not a common product - cane sugar in Poland is of the same price - and the impact on the price of the end product would be marginal.
What is “long?” There are people living years on no carbs at all.
But I am only looking at summaries outside a bunch of paywalls, so I can't confirm the quotes on the wikipedia page.
This is NOT true. Carbs are ONE form of energy that the body can use for fuel. Fat is the other one.
> people with diabetes tried to live on a completely carb free diet - but you cannot do that for long.
I guess you're saying I don't exist?
For about 10 years, I haven't eaten carbs beyond the VERY rare cookie or two every other month and the insignificant trace amounts in above-ground leafy vegetables and the like. I'm not alone, there are lots of us who eat this way. Whole online communities, full of people who each have their own reasons. I did it for general health and fitness reasons, others do it to reverse their type 2 diabetes.
In the 1960s, a man named Angus Barbieri fasted for over a year under medical supervision and suffered no ill effects afterward. Unless you want to believe the whole thing is a hoax and he was secretly snarfing donuts on the sly, he is proof that humans don't NEED carbs.
The planet used to be dotted with cultures that eat animals and fish primarily or exclusively for hundreds to thousands of years. The Inuit, Mongolian nomads, tribes in the Amazon, etc. They mostly don't exist anymore. (But not because of their diet.)
It's not a big group, but there ARE modern people who live on a carnivore diet for years on end and don't appear to suffer any notable long-term effects. Generally these are either extreme keto/paleo adherents, bodybuilders, or those who are trying to manage a medical condition.
Read a little about this on Wikipedia, that's insane! I'm still being stubborn and halfway refusing to believe there were no bad side effects, though lol
So far as I can tell, he consumed yeast extract, which all my suppliers of assure me does in fact contain carbohydrates.
But perhaps Barbieri ate a special kind that didn't?
i also tried to find a link for a paper here but it's been a long time but basically the population we have the smallest register of disease is an indian tribe around the coast of South America that mostly has a super high carbohydrate consumption compared to the rest of the world (will edit and comment if i find it)
edit: yeah, doubt i'll find but another counterpoint, go look at the rate of disease of Eskimos... they eat meat only!
But our body produces glucose anyway - so consuming or not does not change much. Brain needs glucose.
That is actually incorrect, just a common misconception. You might want to read up on ketogenic diets, and specifically the state of ketosis itself.
If you have an ultra-low carb diet (<30 g/day) with only moderate protein consumption (<30% of daily required calories), then the body can’t produce enough glucose to power the brain. Instead, it starts to convert fats to ketones in the liver, and the brain actually runs fine on ketones as well. Alternatively, if you’re not underweight, you can fast for 24 hours with a moderate activity level, and should enter ketosis regardless of diet (as you start converting stored body fat into ketones to power the brain).
Interestingly, you then notice that the “low blood sugar” mental haze disappears as your brain switches over to ketones, and you kinda avoid the rollercoaster between mental highs and lows throughout the day that you usually get with a carb-based diet – instead, mental energy is kinda just at a constant “medium” throughout the day. It’s also easy to measure more objectively, if you pick up a glucose monitoring device + “keto sticks” from a pharmacy.
https://www.ualberta.ca/en/folio/2020/10/excessive-ketone-me...
This is relatively easy for anyone on a carnivore diet.
Sacharids are good for you in general, just like faits, protein and everything else.