10 Things You Didn’t Know About Sugar And Fat

As the trend line for America’s waistline steadily rises, many diets have cropped up in the interest of helping people lose weight. From Atkins, Paleo, and Keto, one commonality stands: limit intake of sugars and carbs and the scale will thank you. This, however, is not in conjunction with what corporate interest and government agencies would have you believe.

1. A Crusade Against Fat

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Following a heart attack President Dwight D. Eisenhower suffered in 1955, America was catalyzed to find the culprit to its growing heart disease epidemic. Following corporately influenced research and lobbying campaigns, the sugar industry successfully shifted the blame away from sugar onto fats, particularly saturated fats.

2. Coke Influenced the USDA

Coca-Cola / Via coca-colaproductfacts.com

Coca-Cola invested million of dollars into research that downplayed sugar’s role in heart disease. One of the researchers, D. Mark Hegsted, became the head of nutrition at the United States Department of Agriculture. In 1977 he helped draft the forerunner to the federal government’s dietary guidelines targeting saturated fat at the main cause of heart disease.

3. Saturated Fats aren't the Devil

American Heart Association / Via healthyforgood.heart.org

Above depicts several common sources of saturated fats. While the American Heart Association does recommend limiting saturated fats to 5% to 6% of one's daily caloric intake, sugary foods and beverages are just as bad if not worse for heart health and weight loss.

4. It's Sugar That Makes You Fat

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The average American eats 152 Lbs. of sugar. There is no way your body can process that, resulting in your body saving that sugar directly as fat for a rainy day.

5. Large Amounts of Sugar Throws Your Body out of Wack

National Institutes of Health / Via niddk.nih.gov

Sugar inhibits a cell's ability to react to insulin, resulting in more insulin being pumped into your bloodstream to help reduce your blood sugar. Eventually your cells will become insulin resistant and your metabolism will go haywire. Your body simply can’t burn the amount of sugar the average American ingests, resulting in that sugar being stored directly as fat.

6. Carbs are Processed into Glucose

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Your body processes carbohydrates into glucose, and should therefore be treated like sugar in your diet.

7. Sugar is Sugar

Via cdn-images-1.medium.com*frqKS5AHTuLDyuugGywtsg.jpeg

Sugar has over 200 different names, but it always does the same damage.

8. Fat Comes in Many Different Forms, but they aren't all the same.

Healthline / Via healthline.com

Fats can be unhealthy. Trans-fats are exceptionally harmful to your health, and saturated fat should only make up a small part of your diet. However, healthy fats like monosaturated fat are an important part of a healthy diet.

9. The Ketogenic Diet

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In the popular weight loss diet keto, or the ketogenic diet, one limits their intake of carbs and sugar as much as possible. Roughly 75% of one’s daily caloric intake should be in the form of fat, 20% in the form of protein, and just 5% for one’s intake of carbohydrates and sugar. The theory is that through this diet your body will be put into a sort of fat burning state known as ketosis allowing one to rapidly lose weight.

10. It's Different for Everyone

University of Calgary / Via ucalgary.ca

Diet is uniquely complicated. Not every plan will work for every person. The best thing you can do is be informed, and talk to your doctor about where you should be weight wise, and how you should get there.

11. Sources

“Adam Ruins Weight Loss.” Adam Ruins Everything, season 2, episode 2, TruTV

Hyman, Mark. “Sugar or Fat: What’s Worse for Your Waistline?” Health Essentials from Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland Clinic health.clevelandclinic.org/2016/02/sugar-vs-fat-which-is-worse-for-weight-gain/.

“Ketogenic Diet Food List: Everything You Need to Know.” Ruled Me, Ruled Me, 5 May 2017, www.ruled.me/ketogenic-diet-food-list/.

O'connor, Anahad. “How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 12 Sept. 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html