Over the last several weeks, we have been learning about the shortcomings and dangers of the world's diet. In this Health Tip we are going to examine a substance that makes up a high percentage of the world’s diet — and discover why it is so dangerous to your health.
Refined Sugar Is A Dead, Fiberless Poison
Refined sugar is not a food substance at all. It is a dangerous poison that is consumed by almost every man, woman, and child, in large quantities, on a daily basis. It is a dead (contains no enzymatic activity), fiberless, and good-for-nothing killer that creates monumental problems within the body. Refined sugar is something God never intended our physical bodies to consume. The only sugar God designed our physical bodies to ever have to deal with are the natural sugars found in the living (enzymatically alive), raw fruits and vegetables God created for us in the Garden! Only 100 years ago, the average annual intake of refined sugar was approximately 5 pounds per person per year. Today, the average annual intake of refined sugar is around 172 pounds per person per year. This means that if a person is consuming the Standard American Diet (SAD), that person is placing into their God-made physical bodies approximately 50 teaspoons of refined sugar, each and every day of their life. If a person lives to the age of 80, they will have during their lifetime placed into their body some 13,760 pounds of refined sugar. My friends that means that the average person on the “world’s diet” consumes nearly 7 tons of refined sugar in their lifetime. That amount, 13,760 pounds, equals 2,752 five-pound bags of refined sugar. Can you visualize what 2,752 five pound bags of refined sugar looks like when in the grocery store there are usually no more than ten 5-pound bags on the shelf?
Refined Sugar Is A Dead Food
All refined sugars originated as a natural, unrefined sugar in a living plant. As such, natural sugars contain a complete complement of enzymes, nutrients and fiber, just as God intended. By the time natural sugar reaches its refined sugar stage, all nutrients have been removed, all enzymes destroyed, and all fiber removed. As such, refined sugar is a very dead and toxic substance. Let's look for a moment at the process of taking sugar cane or sugar beet in its nutrient rich, fiber rich, enzymatically alive state as found in the plant, into a refined, fiberless, lifeless, nutrient-devoid product. The following information was taken from a newsletter written by Charlotte Gerson of the world-famous Gerson Clinic:"Sugar is a basic element in starchy food; however, processed sugar is a completely different matter. The sugar we purchase in the supermarket for personal consumption is processed sugar. This kind of sugar is heated up in chalk-milk, so that calcium and protein are extracted. After the process, it becomes alkaloid, destroying all vitamin content. In the second phase the sugar is mixed with acid chalk, carbonic gas, sulfur dioxide and finally with natrium bicarbonate. The mixture is cooked and cooled off several times and thereafter crystallized and centrifuged. The dead mass is then treated with strontium hydroxide. Subsequently it arrives at the refinery where it is passed over chalk carbon acid to clean it. Dark coloring is removed by adding sulfuric acid and then it is filtered with bone charcoal. Finally, it is colored with Indathrenblue or the highly toxic Ultramarine. This product's chemical composition is C12H22O11, which you can buy in shops as 'pure cane' sugar."
Refined Sugar Is Fragmented
Through heating and mechanical and chemical processing, all vitamins, proteins, fats, enzymes and fiber – indeed, every single nutrient is removed until nothing but pure white sugar, pure 'naked calories,' pure refined carbohydrate remains. Sixty-four food elements are destroyed in the processing. Fragmented foods like these set up nutritional imbalances that precipitate health problems galore.
Refined Sugar Is Highly Acidic
Like animal source foods and refined grains, refined sugar is also extremely 'acid forming.' In fact, refined sugar is possibly the most acidic substance one can consume. Soft drinks, which usually contain at least 10 teaspoons of refined sugar, have a pH between 2.8 and 3.5, making it the greatest source of acid we can place into our bodies. In an effort to neutralize all of this acid, the body takes vital alkaline minerals, calcium being the most plentiful, from the body's bone structure in an effort to neutralize the acidity. The acidity found in all animal source foods and refined grains cause the body to lose calcium as well. This highly refined acidic sugar intake, along with the consumption of acidic animal and acidic grain source foods, causes the body to remove so much calcium from the bones and teeth that the bones become osteoporotic (porous) and teeth decay.
Refined Sugar Creates Blood Sugar Disorders
One pound of apples contains 263 calories, whereas one pound of candy contains 1800 calories. Refined sugar is concentrated far beyond what the God-created human body was designed to process at one time, while the body processes the much smaller amount of natural sugar found in apples just fine. If a body is going to survive, it must find a way to somehow cope with the incredibly high amounts of sugar found in refined sugar. The body learns how to cope with it, but in so doing, often creates two new physical problems – diabetes and hypoglycemia.
Diabetes
The primary cause of diabetes is the fat contained in animal products which coats the cells and hinders the insulin from entering the cell. But when a diabetic consumes refined sugar, the pancreas has difficulty producing adequate insulin when the blood sugar rises. Concentrated amounts of sugar cause a rapid rise in blood sugar. Chronic intake of refined sugar eventually exhausts the pancreas as it tries to compensate. Thus the diabetic is condemned to having to take ever-increasing amounts of insulin to compensate. Diabetes is the #3 killer disease in America, preceded only by cardiovascular related problems and cancer.
Hypoglycemia
Hypoglycemia is the flip side of diabetes. Hypoglycemia occurs when the body still has a fairly strong pancreas. The body overreacts to concentrated sugar intake and releases too much insulin from the pancreas. Blood sugar levels then plummet far below the normal stable level. The suffering hypoglycemic often experiences fatigue, headaches; mental depression, and irritability. Depression is often dealt with by the intake of more refined sugar, and so the hypoglycemic is caught in an endless cycle that causes the pancreas to wear out from constant over stimulation. This often results in diabetes, because now the sufferer cannot produce sufficient insulin for normal metabolic activities.
Refined Sugar Promotes Emotional Instability
After a "sugarholic" has consumed a box of candy — or bag of cookies, or any large amount of refined sugar — they know how self-abused and depressed they feel. Indeed, studies reveal a strong link between juvenile and adult criminal offenses and sugar addiction. Similar research reveals a link between mental illness and sugar abuse. Hypoglycemic reactions, for the very sensitive consumer, promote extreme irrationality and emotional instability, which can lead to aggressiveness. Studies reveal that sugar may be as involved in mental illness, divorce, and crime as alcohol has been found to be. Refined sugar is one of the major contributing factors to depression! ADD and ADHD are running rampant among our children and even some adults! Isn't it a paradox that these emotional problems, caused by a very toxic and poisonous addictive drug called refined sugar, are then treated with another poison — like Ritalin or Prozac! How sad! If your child is having a behavioral problem, why not consider removing all refined sugar in their diet instead?
Refined Sugar Contributes To Heart Disease
Animal fat is not the only contributing factor in heart disease. Those on a highly refined sugar diet show significantly higher levels of fat in their blood than those who eat no refined sugar. This high fat content in the blood is directly related to the development of plaque build-up within the arteries, then to hardening of the arteries, and ultimately to heart attacks and strokes.
Refined Sugar Leads To Addiction And Weight Gain
Refined sugar is highly caloric in its pure form. But then it is often made worse by combining it with something containing high fat, like shortening, along with some salt. This produces a tempting goodie like candy, cookies, cake, pie, fudge, a donut, or cinnamon bun. Often these high sugar foods are consumed with a high calorie sugar drink, like soda pop. All of this sugar contributes to weight gain. If a person consumes just one 12-ounce can of soda pop a day for one year, that 10 teaspoons of sugar found in each can of soda could add 12 pounds to their weight in just one year. When these excess calories are not burned for energy, they are stored as fat, contributing to the obesity epidemic we are seeing today among children and adults alike. Obesity is an underlying factor in not only cardiovascular disease but most other chronic diseases. Furthermore, because of the way it plays havoc with emotions, refined sugar is highly addicting - it works exactly like a drug. This means that once a sugarholic sufferer has given into this crystalline sweetness, they can't stop consuming. Refined sugar is every bit as addictive as nicotine and alcohol and withdrawal from it can be as difficult as withdrawing from cocaine! We have found that when a person decides to adopt The Hallelujah Diet, they usually do not have a great deal of difficulty eliminating the animal products, white flour products, table salt, or even caffeine (which is another addictive drug). Many find that the most difficult substance to eliminate is refined sugar. Sugar has a powerful addictive influence upon many people. Have you ever noticed that children, who are allowed to have candy, are always asking for more? They are never satisfied no matter how much you give them! This is because their little bodies have become addicted to sugar and their bodies are screaming for a fix. NOTE – For those parents who would like to have a better understanding of how refined sugar is affecting their child’s behavior, I would like to recommend a book written by Barbara Reed Stitt titled: “Food and Behavior.”
Refined Sugar Compromises The Immune System
Let's remember that the immune system is what God built into your body to protect you from the germs, viruses, and bacteria of this world. The immune system is our first line of defense! But refined sugar is an immune system suppressant — it knocks out this first line of defense. That is why those who consume refined sugar find themselves susceptible to colds, the flu, and all sorts of other physical breakdowns, while those who consume The Hallelujah Diet, which contains no refined sugar, rarely if ever experiences a cold, the flu, or other physical breakdowns. This editor hasn't experienced a cold or the flu since eliminating refined sugar and adopting a primarily raw, plant-based diet over 35 years ago! Don’t forget, God tells us we are going to reap what we sow...“Be not deceived: God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
Sugar Contributes To Myriad Physical Problems
Refined sugar is associated with malnutrition and decreased resistance to disease. Refined sugar impacts quality of life — it increases the severity of PMS; decreases cognitive or intellectual function, especially in children; contributes to heart disease and cancer; and so much more. Following is just a partial list of other health problems related to the intake of refined sugar:- Acne
- Addiction to drugs and caffeine
- Alcoholism
- Allergies
- Anxiety
- Behavioral problems
- Binge eating
- Bloating
- Bone loss
- Candida
- Depression
- Difficulty concentrating
- Eczema
- Edema
- Emotional problems
- Fatigue
- Food cravings
- Hormonal problems
- Hyperactivity
- Insomnia
- Menstrual difficulties
- Mental illness
- Mood swings
- Premature aging
- Psoriasis
- ... and the list goes on and on.
No wonder God says in Hosea 4:6: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge."Is it not a sad commentary, that instead of dealing with our physical problems by eliminating their causes, we deal with symptoms? We take a poisonous medication instead. It will never fix the problem — but rather exacerbate it! Almost every physical problem we experience in a lifetime, other than accidents, is because we have failed to nourish our physical bodies the way God intended in Genesis 1:29!
“AND GOD SAID, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed (vegetable), which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat (food).” Genesis 1:29
If you are consuming the “world’s diet”... And suffering the consequences with all those physical problems you keep asking God and the doctors to fix... Isn’t it about time you considered changing your diet from the “world’s diet” to “GOD’s diet... So that you can experience the abundant health God designed for you?
Next week, the good Lord willing and if the creeks don’t rise too high, we will explore another item that is consumed in large quantities by the average person on the world’s diet that is also devoid of fiber... Trust you will join us!
