14 Not-So-Sweet Facts About Sugar [Infographic]
It’s pretty common knowledge that sugar is not the most nutritionally dense food substance. But do you really know how bad sugar is for your health?
As the infographic below states, the American diet is filled with sugar and it is poisoning us. Yet we don’t even know how much sugar we consume on a daily basis. And while sweet to the taste, this sweet substance certainly has an unsavory side.
How Much Sugar Do Americans Typically Consume?
- The average American consumes 22 teaspoons of sugar per day!
- The average child consumes 32 teaspoons of sugar per day.
Women should have no more than 6 teaspoons per day and men should have no more than 9 teaspoons per day. Most of us are 2-3 times over the recommended amount of sugar per day.
Refined Sugar is Linked to:
- Insomnia
- Dizziness
- Allergies
- Manic Depression
- Cardiovascular Disease
- Hypertension
- Hypoglycemia
- Colon & Pancreatic Cancer
- Hair Loss
- ADD/ADHD
- Breakouts & Skin Irritation
- Tooth Decay
- Metabolic Syndrome
- Obesity
- Type 2 Diabetes
So why do we continue consuming so much sugar? Besides the sweet taste, sugar is addictive. It releases an opiate-like substance that activates the brain’s reward system. And the consumption of sugar is growing faster than the world’s population, increasing about 1% every year. In the past decade, sugar consumption jumped 23%.
Did you know that in the American diet, added sugar alone accounts for 496 calories per day?
One of the reasons we end up consuming so much sugar is due to hidden sugars in the foods we eat. Hidden sugars are found in ketchup, hot dog and hamburger buns, french fries, pasta sauce, salad dressings, mayonnaise, and most processed foods, even if they aren’t sweet. And while sugar has no nutritional value it is added to a lot of our daily foods. In fact, as a steady diet, sugar is actually worse than nothing.
Removing refined sugar from your diet can cause withdrawal symptoms, much like with drugs. These symptoms include fatigue, depression, headaches, and achy limbs. Start removing refined sugar slowly from your diet to reduce the number of withdrawal symptoms you experience.
And, if you’re interested in losing weight with a diet program that has proven success and regulates the amount of refined sugar in your diet, contact Calla Slimspa Medical Weight Loss Center in Winter Park today.
We’ve helped thousands of local Orlando residents lose weight and keep it off with our medically supervised weight loss program. But don’t take our word, check out our real patient weight loss success stories.
Infographic courtesy of OnlineSchools.org.
Check out the infographic below to see how unsavory sugar really is.
