REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News

Sugar is Killing Our Children

by Raymond Francis

The health of the American children is in a catastrophic, long-term decline. In 1995, the American Health Foundation downgraded the health of our children from a C- to a D. I would now rate it a D-. What is happening here? I can tell you one thing. Parents are systematically poisoning their children by feeding them a dangerous toxin that destroys health, lowers quality of life, shortens life-span, and even damages the health of the next generation. Parents do this unwittingly, but every parent who allows a child to eat products containing sugar falls into this deadly trap. It is time to put a stop to it.

Sugar is a deadly metabolic poison. Regular consumption of sugar is guaranteed to damage health, cause disease, and result in premature death. Sugar is the most deadly product the average person is exposed to on a daily basis. Few things stress the body as much. Consuming sugar on a regular basis is nothing less than death by installment. How could such a deadly poison be allowed on the market? It was "grand-fathered". Sugar was on the market before regulation so it did not require approval. If sugar were a new product seeking approval today, it would not be allowed on the market. There is too much proof that it is a major stress factor, which weakens our defense against disease.

Until recently, man ate no refined sugar at all. Not being designed for it, even a small amount of sugar throws the body into biochemical chaos for a period of 6 to 8 hours. Sugar is actually an anti-nutrient. Rather than supplying the body with nutrients, as a food is supposed to do, sugar actually robs the body of nutrients. Sugar initiates a cascade of destructive events leading to degenerative diseases such as allergies, diabetes, tooth decay, osteoporosis, endocrine problems, arthritis, hypoglycemia, heart disease and cancer. Sugar may be the leading reason why disease is one of our major growth industries.

When the body is at homeostasis (the fine-tuned balance that is health), disease cannot appear. In this balanced state, the body is self-regulating and self-repairing, thus keeping you in good health. But, just two teaspoons of sugar (an average soft drink contains ten teaspoons) is sufficient to throw the body out of homeostasis by upsetting its delicate mineral and hormonal balances. Tragically, children and teenagers consume above average amounts of sugar, thus systematically destroying their health even before they have a chance to live.

How much of this poison do people consume? Considering that for most of man's existence the answer was none, the amount consumed today is as astounding as it is catastrophic. Here are some figures on average per capita consumption:

1990 - 124 pounds
1985 - 133 pounds
1994 - 149 pounds
2000 - 160 pounds

As sugar consumption has been increasing, our health has been deteriorating. More than 20% of an average person's caloric intake comes from sugar, an empty-calorie toxin having no nutritional value. Many of our young consume up to 50% of their calories from sugar. This means they are consuming more than 200 pounds per year of a substance that the body cannot safely handle. Most people are not aware of how much sugar they are consuming. There is so much sugar in processed foods that manufacturers try to hide the truth by using different kinds of sugar. Here are some of the different names: sugar, sucrose, fructose, glucose, dextrose, raw sugar, turbinado sugar, honey, brown sugar, barley malt, rice syrup, and corn syrup. The problem is the body treats them as if they were all the same exact thing.
Few Americans die of old age. Most of us die from preventable chronic diseases such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. These are the direct result of chronic abuse to our body chemistry. Here are some of the ways we abuse our bodies with sugar:

Mineral Relationships

Sugar disturbs the mineral relationships in our bodies. Sugar requires minerals in order to metabolize. In the refining process, minerals that were in the sugar are removed. Therefore, to metabolize the sugar, minerals including magnesium, manganese, chromium, cobalt, copper and zinc are removed from the body tissue where they are stored. This depletes the body of minerals that are essential to health and disturbs critical mineral relationships. An immediate outcome is that minerals required for the function of digestive enzymes become depleted, thereby reducing the availability of digestive enzymes and diminishing the body's ability to properly digest food. This alone starts a cascade of destructive biological events.

Allergies

Sugar causes food allergies. Most food allergies start with improperly digested food. Sugar reduces the supply of digestive enzymes leading to incompletely digested food. Undigested food molecules enter the blood stream where the immune system sees them as the enemy and attacks them, forming antibodies. Regular eating of a food to which one has become allergic causes regular reactions, leading to immune exhaustion and a variety of related problems. Food allergies produce symptoms that include: joint pains, headaches, depression, anxiety, anger, hyperactivity, and withdrawal, fatigue, dizziness, and tissue swelling in the hands, legs, and ankles. All of these symptoms are treated by traditional physicians with toxic prescription drugs, thereby making an already bad situation worse. Foods often consumed with sugar become our most common allergies. These include wheat, corn, milk, chocolate and eggs. For example, eggs are often consumed with sugar-rich orange juice and sweet rolls, thus causing poor digestion and an allergy to eggs.

Osteoporosis

Sugar is a leading cause of osteoporosis. Sugar increases calcium loss in the urine. When the body is loosing calcium, in order to keep blood calcium within normal limits (homeostasis), the body removes calcium from the bones. Physicians, not understanding the cause, are often mystified when their osteoporosis patients have normal blood calcium levels, while suffering bone loss.

Immunity

Sugar depresses immunity. Sugar damages the function of immune cells, causing immunity depression and reaching a low about two hours after ingestion. Those eating sugar several times a day will suppress immune function all day. Combine this with the immune exhaustion resulting from sugar-causing food allergies and you have a real problem.

Diabetes

Sugar causes diabetes. With chronic high sugar intake, the body's mechanisms for balancing blood sugar become dysfunctional, thus causing both hypoglycemia and diabetes.

Arthritis

Sugar causes arthritis by first causing food allergies, which result in the formation of immune complexes. Immune complexes can collect in and do damage to joints. Another mechanism is that joints can accumulate excessive calcium as a result of sugar, causing altered calcium metabolism.

AGEs

Another problem with sugar is AGEs (advanced glycation endproducts). After eating sugar, the sugar content of the blood increases. When there is a lot of sugar running around, some of it reacts with proteins in the body, forming AGEs. As a practical example, a breakfast of eggs and orange juice would put both sugar and protein into the blood at the same time, thus forming AGEs. For that matter, any protein meal and a sugary dessert will create AGEs. Unfortunately, AGEs damage health. AGEs act like a glue that binds tissue together thus making tissues like blood vessels less elastic and more rigid. They also cause blood cells to stick to blood vessel walls, thus causing arteriosclerosis. Immune cells try to get rid of AGEs, but if you form lots of AGEs, this helps to exhaust the immune system. AGEs can also initiate a biochemical pathway that can lead to long-term inflammation. AGEs are known to promote heart disease, high blood pressure, cataracts and arthritis.

Hypoglycemia

Hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) is the result of the body's response to sugar. The majority of Americans are affected by hypoglycemia on a daily basis, even if they aren't aware of it. When blood sugar increases to an above normal, insulin is released to lower it. The sugar level decreases but the insulin remains high for a longer period. The insulin continues to work at lowering blood sugar and soon the blood sugar levels go below normal. Low blood sugar affects energy levels, the ability to learn and remember, and moods. Teachers often have difficulty teaching children after their sugar-laden noontime meals.

Acidosis

When sugar is metabolized by the body, it creates acids, which make the body acidic. This changes the body's normal pH thereby affecting enzyme activity in the body. Enzymes are dependent on a narrow pH range for their proper function. When enzymes are disrupted, the whole body suffers.

Imbalances

On the bottom line, refined sugar is destructive of human health because we were never designed to handle such a substance. When we try to metabolize it, it throws the body out of balance, and this is what disease is all about. Nutrients constantly fluctuate in the body, within narrow limits. Sugar causes these fluctuations to get too large and to last too long. Regular consumption of sugar will keep the body in biochemical chaos everyday. When the body is thrown out of homeostasis, mineral and hormone levels become abnormal, digestion impaired and enzyme levels function damaged. Since all of the body's systems are interdependent, when one function is out of balance, every system is affected.

Regular consumption of this dangerous poison is guaranteed to cause disease. A sure sign of toxicity is a craving for sugar. This means that the body's chemistry has become so dysfunctional that it now depends on sugar. Excess sugar is so toxic that to get rid of it the body coverts it into saturated fat. This fat accumulates in arteries and other organs, doing long-term damage.

Please don't eat sugar, and most especially don't feed it to innocent children who have no idea how much damage is being done and how much this damage will affect their future. In fact, I am at I loss to think of anything that people consume on a daily basis that is more destructive than sugar.

Raymond Francis is an M.I.T.-trained scientist, a registered nutrition consultant, author of Never Be Sick Again and Never Be Fat Again, host of the Beyond Health Show, Chairman of the The Project to End Disease and an internationally recognized leader in the field of optimal health maintenance.

Reprinted with permission from:
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Copyright 2000, Raymond Francis