Protect Your Organic Lifestyle
We all want to live a long healthy life. Living an organic lifestyle takes planning, especially if fruits and vegetables are not readily available. If you are just beginning your journey of organic awareness, you may not know of all the places that sugar has been hiding in your diet. If you have been a part of the organic community all your life, you may understand that refined sugars are not good for you. However, you may not know how different sugars react in your body or what exactly makes them “bad” for you. Welcome to our next little series – Sugars and you.
Good Sugar vs. Bad Sugar
You may recall a post we wrote back in November titled Your Body and High Fructose Corn Syrup. High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is in so many of our common grocery store food items that it is difficult to read an ingredient label and not find it. Unfortunately, as our article from way back in November stated, it is precisely this reason it is possibly one of the worst “bad” sugars out there. Before we go too far into this series let’s address those who would say, “Sugar is sugar. There is no ‘bad’ or ‘good’ sugar.” To some extent, this is true until you look at how the body breaks down these sugars. However, like anything else moderation is key. Even in this situation too much of a good thing can still be very bad for you. Processed sugar specifically is very hard on your body and is a major contributing factor for many health issues like:
- Obesity
- Heart Disease
- Diabetes
- Fatigue
- Memory problems
- Depression
- And more…
Where Are These Hidden Sugars?
When you think you are doing everything right, it can be very disheartening to find out that even what is labeled ‘organic’ may contain sugar. The unfortunate reality is that sugar makes our brains crave sugar. Manufacturing companies have used this knowledge to create a demand that they are all too happy to feed. Sugar is also an inexpensive preservative that makes it serve a dual purpose of making the food taste good and stay on the shelf longer. Even if your favorite organically labeled bottled tea says organic cane syrup – it’s still sugar. This doesn’t mean stop drinking your favorite tea! But, now you can be aware of the other places that sugars may be hiding. For example:
- Yogurt
- Cereal (even the ones marked as healthy)
- Sauces (Organic marinara sauces too)
- Meat substitutes (like vegan burgers, sausages, etc.)
There are alternatives to refined sugars but are they better? Stay tuned over the next few weeks to learn the answer. You will also hear how sugars affect your body, how your body processes the natural sugars in our fruits and vegetables, and so much more!
Applications & Resources
- Check out Sugar Stacks to see how your snack stacks up with its sugar content
- Read an interesting article on the importance of reading “healthy” labels at Food Trainer
