Most of us know that eating too much sugar is bad for us. Sugar promotes acidity in the body which provides a breeding ground for illness and disease. Rising rates of sugar consumption over decades has contributed to increasing rates of candida, obesity, insulin resistance and diabetes, adrenal fatigue, metabolic imbalances, liver toxicity, cancer, vitamin and mineral deficiencies and a range of health conditions.
When your body craves sugar, it usually signals a high level of candida, which provides an internal acidic, environment in which bacteria and fungus, and ultimately disease, grows. Unfortunately, most people don’t know how to combat sugar cravings and don’t realize that many of the processed foods they consume every day disguise sugar on labels with names such as high fructose corn syrup, sucrose, maltose and dextrose. When you constantly feed your body sugar, which is acid-forming, your taste buds can become addicted to the taste and crave more sugar! On the other hand, as you feed your body alkaline-forming foods and beverages, your taste buds will crave less sugar and you will feel better.
Integrative Health Blog
Tags: sugar, insulin resistance, diabetes
Anita Capizzi RN, CHC
Every 5 years the U.S. government revises our national dietary guidelines. This past week the nutrition advisory panel that helps to formulate those guidelines came out with new recommendations. Among them was their new sugar consumption guideline. They now advocate consuming no more than 12 added teaspoons of sugar/day, or roughly 10% of the diet due to the link between sugar, obesity and chronic disease like heart disease. While this recommendation is certainly a step in the right direction, the American Heart Association has a tighter restriction, and advises no more than 6 teaspoons of sugar/day for women and no more than 9 added teaspoons of sugar/day for men.
Read the full article here:
How Much Sugar Are You Consuming?
Processed foods generally contain high levels of sugar and it’s estimated that Americans, due to high consumption of processed foods, consume in excess of 22 teaspoons of sugar per day!
Real food is always the winner over processed food when it comes to nutrient value and density.
Among all the “real” food choices though, there are things to consider when planning your next breakfast, lunch or dinner fare such as:
- Which foods will give me the most energy?
- Will I be hungry in an hour if I choose to eat this now?
- Is this really enough food for lunch? (always the culprit when dieting!)
- Do I see carbohydrates, protein AND good fats on my plate?
Tags: sugar, carbohydrates
Anita's Healthy Tips
Summer officially starts this week, on Friday, June 21. Most of us have air conditioning these days, but many of us can remember sleeping on sticky sheets with the fan in the window during the summer! Which never worked, by the way!! When it gets hot, who wants to be in the kitchen using the oven or the stove? Now is the time to try all those recipes that don’t require cooking!!
Salads of all types - green salads, fruit salads, raw kale salads, gazpacho soups, cold cucumber or melon soups, and caprese salad - taste wonderful and don't heat up the kitchen.
Know Your Fruits and Veggies: The "Dirty Dozen" and The "Clean 15"
Tags: holistic nutrition, diabetes, integrative nutrition, sugar, pre-diabetes, pesticides
Tags: holistic nutrition, holistic health, integrative health, sugar
Eve Colantoni CHC
If you’ve tried to kick the sugar habit and failed, you could be facing a larger problem than you may have realized; you may be facing an actual addiction. Sadly, sugar addiction is greatly misunderstood by most people; parents, teachers, even doctors and the medical community at large. In this article, you’ll learn why sugar is so addictive, how to tell if you’ve become addicted, and what steps you can take to break away from the grips of sugar addiction.
“Sugar and spice and everything nice!” The old saying takes us back to happy memories from childhood, but not all that we remember nostalgically is necessarily good for us. In fact, one of the problems with sugar is that since it’s always been a part of our lives, from birthday parties, to holidays like Valentine’s day or Halloween, we think consuming it is all very normal. A little in moderation never hurt anyone, right? Well, when you see the history of sugar, and how it’s become woven into the fabric of our lives, and what it’s actually doing to your body, you may think differently.
Long before you or I were ever born, the first sugar refinery in the United Sates was constructed in 1689. Many historians have now documented that much of the slave trade was initiated to find free labor to grow and harvest the plants from which sugar is derived; sugar cane or sugar beets. In my opinion, it makes the scar that slavery left on humanity even deeper knowing that much of the atrocity was committed in the name of producing a drug that would further enslave us--sugar.
Tags: holistic nutrition, integrative health, addiction, candida/yeast, sugar
Tags: holistic nutrition, integrative health, integrated health, addiction, integrative nutrition, sugar
Tags: integrated health, anita's healthy tips, integrative nutrition, sugar
Tags: holistic nutrition, candida/yeast, sugar
Nowadays it seems everyone has a “sweet tooth” but for some the desire to consume sugar is anything but an innocent or occasional craving. For some, the need for sugar morphs into an unwavering compulsion and could be considered an actually biological addiction. Before you continue to read any further, check and see if this sounds like you:
Tags: holistic nutrition, sugar