The real cholesterol concern
For so many years we have been led to believe that the fats in our diets increase our cholesterol. When in fact it’s the sugar – the high amounts of sugar that we consume.
All fats were blamed for our high cholesterol, so we were told to get onto a ‘low fat’ diet. This has caused more harm to us as we stopped having fats and we needed to still consume good omega-3 and omega-6’s. These omegas help our body to function in so many way, it feeds our brain, it helps to protect our bones and keeps our vital organs warm.
Eating good fats (extra virgin olive oil, avocados, nuts, seeds) in our diets is talked amount more and now being explained more as to why we need to include them. For some people they still find it hard to believe that eating good fats is better for us, and that the ‘low fat’ products are in fact doing us more harm.
Low fat products are full of sugar and consumers need to be aware of this, you need to stop looking at the fat content and start looking at the sugar content on your nutritional labels.
So much research is released weekly on this fact and so many studies show how sugar has led our society to many life threatening diseases.
Sugar feeds cancer – if you continue to eat excessive amounts of sugar, this will have damaging effects on your health, ask your local naturopath about these studies.
Sugar is highly addictive – sugar leads to dopamine release in the brain, which can make eating it rewarding.
Sugar causes inflammation – which causes pain throughout the body.
Cane sugar is high in fructose, and it’s mixture is half glucose and half fructose. Fructose can overload the liver, which is the only place in the body that can metabolize it. Fructose also does not turn off the hunger hormone, ghrelin, making you eat more.
It’s a good idea to check your nutritional labels on your products, but you need to look at the ingredients as well as the nutritional table, to understand where some other hidden sugars can be, as in the vegetable gum, thickeners etc.
Vegetable gum is a thickening agent which is a polysaccharides (poly – many, saccharides – sugar molecule) they are tiny sugar units making up a bigger molecule.
Pectin is another common thickening agent which is a polysaccharides, along with starches under this category as well.
You need to look more at the sugar quantity more than the marketing of “fat free” when purchasing a processed product as you will find what is low in fat, is high in sugar, because taking the fat out of the product doesn’t leave it any flavour, so therefore manufacturers load in sugars and additives to make the product taste better. Whereas if you look at the full cream product will see the fat content is high, and the sugar content is lower.
Please be mindful when you are out shopping and the best products to buy are your fresh and close to natural produce as you can, but if you are purchasing something from the supermarket aisle, check your labels for the sugar content first.
Please note that this is information and if you have any concerns please contact a medical practitioner.
