Benefits of Sugar

Sugar, honey, and the sweetness of fruit have components that become glugose. Whatever natural sweet you eat, including refined sweets and starches, can become glucose in your body. There are two big issues in the way in which sugar affects you. The main issue is how long it will take for it to become sugar. The second issue is what other ingredients come in that sweet.

Starches have to be converted into sugars before they can be used as fuel or as the basis for the production of glucosamine. Therefore, starches stay in your body longer time before you consume them. If you have consumed sugar and starch, your body will consume the sugar and store the starch. Unhappily, starch can be used to make fat, or to add to the production of fat if you also ingest fats. Therefore, if you eat sugar and starches, your body will use at least some of the starch to make fat. If you eat sugar, starch, and fat, then your body can use the sugar as fuel, to produce glucosamine, and store the starch and fat as fats. Therefore, there is no better recipe to become fat than mixing sugar, starch, and fat.

Consequently, what other ingredients come in our sugar should be a major concern to those of us worried about our weight. Therefore, even though we call so many things sugars, not all sugars are the same. Their common denominator is that all of them can be converted to glucose by our body. Their differences are based on how much effort it is to convert them.

Many sweets in nature, such as fruit and honey come with an array of other very important nutritional components. Fruits tend to include fiber, vitamins and minerals. Honey is also very rich in enzymes. But all sugars have one extremely important function: They become glucose, the fuel our body needs to survive.

Sugar is sucrose that becomes glucose. Glucose is easily regulated by our body if we eat it regularly. If our levels are low and we get some glucose, the body does rush to consume it. But this is because glucose is so essential for us to live. Glucose is our energy. It keeps our body sustaining a regular temperature. Our brain thinks using glucose. The production of myelin requires glucose and its derivative, glucosamine. Collagen, the basic fabric of our body is made with glucose and glucosamine. Glucose contributes to transport monocytes. Diabetic people end up with poor defenses because of their poor glucose levels. Glucose and its derivative, glucosamine are essential for muscle formation. Two of our skin main components are collagen and elastin. Both need glucose and glucosamine to be formed. Without sugar our skin ages. In fact, without sugar our body ages much faster. Sugar is good for living, for thinking, and for the regeneration of our bodies. Yet, so many people preach against it.

I keep reading that white crystals are empty calories. Where does it fit in a person's mind that the most important nutrient in our diet (glucose) is a zero. White sugar has sucrose which becomes glucose. And we have learned that glucose is essential for every metabolic process.

The way I see it, when I am eating sugar, I am having only the ingredient I want to have. I get the rest of my nutrition from other foods. Thus, sugar is not empty calories. Sugar is calories from glucose. A very good site that describes calories and what you need is:

http://www.all-creatures.org/health/carbo.html

NO!!! SUGAR CAN NOT MAKE YOU DIABETIC!

It is a fact. Diabetes is a genetic condition. People are born diabetic. Their pancreas progressively becomes less efficient. This process can be accelerated by bad eating habits, such as eating too many sweets and fats. But if they did not have the condition initially, they do not become diabetic by becoming obese or eating fat.

The American Diabetes Association has a page to debunk diabetes myths:

http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/diabetes-myths/

I just bought the book "The New Glucose Revolution". Its copyright dates back to 1996. In the introduction it includes myths about sugar and the corresponding facts.

"Myth 7: Sugar is fattening.

FACT: .... It's the total energy (calories) rather than the sugar in those energy-dense foods that may contribute to new stores of body fat."

I would add that some calories are much easier to convert into usable energy and collagen than others. The more difficulty your body has to make them usable, the higher the probability it will store it. Sugar is very easily convertible into usable resources. Starches are more difficult to convert. Fats are even more difficult. Proteins, aided by sugar are much more usable than proteins without it.

I really recommend this book. I have not finished reading it, but I am finding it very informative. The strange thing is that the knowlege I am trying to offer in this blog had been published already more than 10 years ago. Why is it that so many people stay convinced that sugar is fattening? Is the result of a corporate campaign?