Sugar Sugar Sugar

Le sucre est mauvais - Sugar is bad. We've heard this a lot of times, Johnny's father is angry at Johnny for eating sugar and so were your parents at you... and your dentist too.
Sugar is irresistible, it gets you hooked. 

But whoa lets be clear. Just Sugar isn't the problem… the object of concern is the rate at which its absorbed and the amount in which its absorbed.

What controls these two major factor? A hell lot of things! Which does consist of genetics, your geography, Type of delivery and all, yes these factors are somethings you cant control. 
Wait! 

That doesn't give a license to blame our stars! 

Because well.

The majority of our health depend on our diet.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT.

Lets explore one aspect of the sugar mania.

The Calcium Connection

Your Bones are a lively place, nope its not dead, at least not completely dead. Its thriving with live cells, nerves and blood vessels! 
Bone tissue is constantly replenished and regenerated, and as long as bone replenishment rate is higher than bone deterioration rate, all is well and you'll have strong healthy bones.

Its a well known fact that children and teenagers have to build strong bones, because on an average nearing 30 years of age, bone deterioration rate skies up…. 

And sugar can make things worse.

Sugar can skew your body's mineral and vitamin balance. Lets be more precise, eating products that only contain sugar can skew your body's mineral and vitamin balance. 
And we know that most products we buy off the shelves are highly processed and loaded with sugar- nearly making them ‘empty calorie’. This also implies that these products have high glycaemic index. 
Looking at you coke.

Now in our small intestine, the food is digested. Sugar gets broken down into glucose and fructose. Then the absorption takes place, Fructose makes way to liver for storage as glycogen and glucose quickly gets absorbed into the blood stream (No fibres, High Glycaemic index!). 
Plus if the majority of gut microbiota consists of the high fat diet induced type, expect increased gut permeability , high capacity for energy harvest (more glucose absorption) and storage and inflammation.

Now that there is excessive of glucose molecules in the blood stream there are various things that can go wrong.

Glucose is the molecule that is used to generate ATP on being acted upon by oxygen (Thank Mitochondria). ATP is the energy currency, that is used to drive important life sustaining processes of the body. The whole process of ATP generation from glucose requires various molecules like Vitamin B, Calcium, Magnesium and other minerals.

Now as the stuff being eaten is devoid of anything but sugar, the required minerals for ATP generation is sucked from other parts of body where it is stored. 
Now which place in our body is a bank of Calcium and Magnesium? 


Its the Bones!!  

When such products are eaten on a regular basis, it can be compared to making constant withdrawals from the bank with negligible depositing… and slowly comes bankruptcy…. Also called osteoporosis, the silent killer.

Another way it leaches bones is by disturbing the pH of blood. Our blood is maintained at a particular pH that is nearly neutral, but slightly on the basic side.

Loads of glucose suddenly makes way into the cells (for ATP production). Now the amount of oxygen diffusion can't keep up with the sudden high influx of glucose molecules which requires much more oxygen. This causes incomplete oxidation of glucose, which makes an acidic molecule. This overall acidifies our body. To counteract this effect Calcium is leached out of bones to form a basic buffer and neutralize the body back to normal.

Just imagine, 1 molecule of sucrose, requires 28 molecules of Magnesium to be metabolized. And there are 700-800 important enzymatic reactions requiring Magnesium, which includes insulin control. 
Magnesium is required for Calcium absorption too. 
The bigger news is that excessive sugar causes inhibition in Magnesium and Calcium absorption, plus it causes your kidney to let go off more Magnesium and Calcium. Given today's sedentary lifestyle, calcium absorption is already impaired… 

Yes Sugar is a DOUBLE WHAMMY.

The main consumers of easily available empty calories like candies, cokes, 'energy drinks’ are teenagers and children. Being at an age where its important to build bone strength, the food industry is a deep pit for them. With constant sugar consumption they are at a higher and early risk of developing osteoporosis, which has a notorious reputation of a silent killer. The bone density decreases slowly sans any symptoms and then boom, the affected person starts getting fractures.

Opening up to the Reality

Lets make it clear in the first place… all the food scientists may cry their voices out and turn blue saying familiar phrases like… “ Don't drink coke! It's a poison”, 
But we know that it doesn't work… 
People know it already, but they will still go for it.

Yeah lets just admit it, it's hard to resist in a sugar saturated environment.

It's hard because food scientist are employed by the food industries to engineer products with recipes designed to get you hooked and addicted. 
And guessed it right, sugar is their go to ingredient to get you hooked. 
Moreover they use the very fMRI machines used to detect problems, to create problems.

Another added dimension is that all products are priced so cheap, My friend rightly said, the only other drink except water which is cheap is coke. At some places it's cheaper than water.

HOW DO WE TACKLE THE SITUATION?

Yes these sugary companies are chummy with administration of the country, they bring big money. And poking these gorillas has its own monetary consequences.

If money is the biggest concern, can we ever achieve a better health for our population?

Sure.

Lets just collect more money.

One of the ways to shake up the monopoly of big food industry giants is by imposing tax rates on every unit amount of sugar beyond a threshold level. 
Tax rate that is based on an EXPONENTIAL FUNCTION. 
Mathematician can be employed to formulate a plan that makes it extremely expensive for putting the loads of sugar the industries put in right now.

This would discourage dumping of sugar into products that don't taste sweet, beyond a certain level (a certain level because sugar also acts as a preservative).

Since sugar stuffs become more expensive, people would be discouraged to a certain extent to buy them that is if the original recipes are maintained, the other way to still maintain a customer base is reducing sugar content.

A very predictive consequence of such tax imposition would be hiring of mathematicians by the industries themselves to find an optimization way out.
Government can always employ mathematicians to break those optimizations.

Yay! More Jobs for Maths people!!

Disclaimer: I am not from Maths Department.

Solution?

This is something that may or may not applied… but lets return to what we started with, 
YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT. 
Your health depends more on you and your genes follow. EPIGENETICS!

Well certainly if not completely giving up, we do need to lessen our dependency on fast foods and packaged products.

Because it's a fact, you will keep eating it, without getting necessary stuff from it. In fact all it would do is make you deficient in nutrients.

What is put wrong can be put right too.

Eat DAHI, it's a wonderful probiotic, it salvages the antibiotics, preservatives skewed gut microbiota population , increases calcium and magnesium absorption and is a wonderful source of vitamins!

And always remember you are an embodiment of symbiosis, you are you because of seemingly insignificant diversity of microbes. These microbes digest your food for you more than what your body does. Believe it or not they also control your moods, since they are also known to produce neurotransmitters.

Feel energy deficient? Eat fruits. Its full of sugar, BUT its wrapped around in lot of fibres, so low glycaemic index, no sudden boom for your body, plus there are bonus other vitamins and minerals, so no leaching from good old bones.

So thats it for today, Thanks and have a great day!