Sugar is Safe? No. It's a Health Hazard

For decades, the sugar industry has done an excellent job in portraying refined sugar as a safe ingredient in many of our favorite baked goods, candies, chocolates, desserts, and sodas… all the while letting saturated fat take the “blame” for serious health issues.

However, with more independent research conducted outside of the sugar industry, researchers and health professionals are documenting a very different picture of refined sugar. Refined sugar – in all its many forms – is now seen as a toxin to the body. More importantly, it has addictive properties that make it hard for many people to quit.

Furthermore, sugar is not only in our favorite sweet treats, but has spread pervasively into most ultra-processed and convenience foods. Besides the typical sweet foods, sugar can now be found in bread, crackers, frozen pizzas, frozen meals, sauces, condiments, and dressings – the vast majority of all products found in grocery stores, fast food, and takeout.

Part of the issue with sugar is that the vast amounts people are consuming exponentially increases its toxicity in the body. One example: The leading cause of liver disease used to be cirrhosis from alcohol abuse; today, it is nonalcoholic fatty liver disease – a direct result of too much sugar consumption (which leads to insulin resistance and chronic inflammation).

One of the most comprehensive analyses of the impact from sugar consumption, which itself was a review of 73 meta-analyses — which included 8,601 studies and 83 health outcomes — determined that high consumption of added refined sugar was associated with significantly higher risks of 45 negative health outcomes, from gout to cancer to premature/early death.

The research, titled “Dietary Sugar Consumption and Health: Umbrella Review,” was published in The BMJ, an international research journal in 2023 (https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2022-071609), with an objective to “evaluate the quality of evidence, potential biases, and validity of all available studies on dietary sugar consumption and health outcomes.”

Researchers concluded that sugar consumption – in all refined forms – is a danger to people’s health, especially in the levels being consumed today. Please note that naturally occurring sugars in whole foods should not be a major health concern, as long as the whole fruit is eaten (with the fiber) and you are not overly consuming fruits high in sugar content.

The Negative Health Outcomes From Sugar Consumption

What follows is the main list of negative consequences of excessive (the new normal) sugar consumption, but the thing to remember is that all these health issues result in reduced quality of life and premature death.

Specifically, here are the major health consequences identified by the researchers:

• Elevated blood sugar

• Weight gain

• Obesity

• Gut microflora disruption

• Leaky Gut

• Increase in visceral fat (surrounds some of the vital organs)

• Increase in ectopic fat (accumulates in the liver, heart, pancreas, and muscles)

• Reduced bone mineral density

• Insulin resistance

• Gout

• High blood pressure/hypertension

• Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)

• Asthma

• Tooth decay

• Attention-deficit disorder/attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

• Addictive behavior

• Higher low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol

• Higher levels of uric acid/hyperuricemia

• Oxidative stress

• Chronic inflammation

• Autoimmune diseases

• Metabolic Syndrome

• Depression

• Anxiety

• Diabetes (Type 2)

• Heart attack, heart disease

• Myocardial infarction

• Stroke

• Overall cancer risk, overall cancer mortality

• Liver cancer

• Bladder cancer

• Prostate cancer

• Pancreatic cancer

• Breast cancer

• Premature/early death

Classifications of Sugar

Many people are aware of things like table sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, but there are many types of sugar that are often in people’s diets, including:

• Dextrose/Glucose (from the starch of wheat, rice, and corn, but mainly from corn)

• Fructose (extracted from fruits and some vegetables)

• Syrups (such as high-fructose corn syrup)

• Honey

• Sugars from concentrated fruit and vegetable juices

The sugar industry also has a long list of names for sugar, including some of the most commonly used:

• Agave nectar/syrup

• Beet sugar

• Brown rice syrup

• Brown sugar

• Cane sugar/cane syrup

• Coconut sugar

• Confectioners’ sugar

• Corn syrup solids

• Dextrin

• Dextrose

• Evaporated cane juice

• Fructose

• Fruit juice/fruit juice concentrate

• Glucose

• Glucose solids

• Golden sugar/golden syrup

• High fructose corn syrup

• Honey

• Maltodextrin

• Maltose

• Maple sugar

• Maple syrup

• Molasses

• Organic (cane) sugar

• Powdered sugar

• Raw sugar

• Sucrose

• Sugar beet

• Turbinado sugar

How to Reduce Your Sugar Consumption

While sugar lurks in most of the processed and prepared foods in the grocery aisle, the biggest culprits are the many sugar-sweetened beverages, breakfast cereals, breads and pastries, and candies and desserts.

STOP Eating These Foods:

• Sodas

• Juices

• Energy drinks

• Sports drinks

• Sweet teas

• Cereals (especially children’s cereals)

• Energy bars

• Protein bars

• Granola bars

• Plant-based “milks”

• Doughnuts

• Ice cream

• Candy

• Chocolates

• Cakes, cookies, pies, and other desserts

• Sauces, dressing, and condiments (salad dressings, ketchup, barbecue sauce, spaghetti sauce, sweet chili sauce, etc.)

• Low-fat, nonfat, and no-fat products (which usually contain added sugar to compensate for the removal of the fat)

• Commercial breads

• Canned fruits (usually packed in a sugary syrup)

Final Thoughts About Sugar

Many people mistakenly think of saturated fat as the food to avoid to maintain a healthy heart, but the research has been definitive in the last decade that when it comes to heart health and overall health, refined sugar is much worse than saturated fats because higher sugar consumption promotes oxidative stress and inflammation in the body – the precursors to the vast majority of chronic illnesses killing people in the U.S.

Americans eat anywhere from 70–120 grams of added sugar daily, which is equivalent to consuming 18–30 teaspoons of table sugar each day; multiply that by 365 days, and the average person is consuming 90-120 POUNDS of added sugar per year. Much of that sugar is stored as fat in the body (including in the organs).

The researchers concluded: “High dietary sugar consumption is generally more harmful than beneficial for health, especially in cardiometabolic disease. Reducing the consumption of free sugars or added sugars to below 25 g/day (approximately 6 teaspoons/day) and limiting the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages to less than one serving/week (approximately 200-355 mL/week) are recommended to reduce the adverse effect of sugars on health.”

My recommendation is to reduce added refined sugars to near zero so that you can still occasionally enjoy grandma’s pie or home-baked birthday cake.

For more thoughts on our sugar crisis, see my other article: The Deadly Truth About Our Sugar Addiction.