Life is Sweet
Hi everyone, it's Vanessa here today with some thoughts :D. Telling someone that sweetened foods and drinks can be ok is controversial, and I recognize that. You've likely had a conversation with a health professional or clicked a headline where the main takeaway is that you should stop eating and drinking sugar. You've probably seen social media posts full of all the ways that your sugary choices will kill you. It seems foolish to hold any sort of nuanced or alternative viewpoint where these foods and beverages are concerned. And that frustrates me!
I think what's most frustrating is that people put their trust in health professionals and the media (or at least most people do). They count on these sources to provide evidence-based information and advice backed up by research. Sometimes, however, scientific conclusions are misrepresented, whether unintentionally or due to the hard-to-escape allure of popularity or clickbait. And as a health professional I take pretty darn seriously my ethical responsibility to point out bad advice that is often based on these misleading headlines.
The relationship between sugar and inflammation is one topic that seems fueled by this kind of coverage, and this topic often comes up in nutrition consults. (I do want to point out that all inflammation should not be defined as bad. Inflammation is actually a necessary step that your body takes toward healing an acute injury. We all need our inflammatory response to keep thriving. Nuance, AGAIN!)
The problem with many studies on sugar and inflammation is that researchers are isolating and testing human response to sugar in an unadulterated form, such as having study participants drink a pure sugar syrup and then drawing conclusions. That simply does not reflect real-life sugar consumption - I don't think most of us are sitting down with a spoon and a bag of sugar and watching Netflix. So taking a result that found increased inflammatory biomarkers when people drank a pure sugar syrup and then extrapolating from that that the sugar in your ice cream will cause chronic disease is a tad irresponsible. Ice cream has fat and protein and other nutrients that are going to alter how your body processes the sugar.
Now, we live with lot of things that can cause chronic inflammation. Stress is one of them! And for some people, closely monitoring sugar intake or banning it all together creates a lot of psychological stress. Now: I am not saying that sugar is “healthy” or nutrient-dense and that we should eat sugar all day without regard to how it might make us feel. Not at all. If your goal is taking care of and respecting your body and mind, you wouldn't be doing that anyway! I think we can agree that daily excessive sugar intake isn’t a healthful behavior. And excessive is very different than enjoying ice cream or honey in your coffee or a piece of watermelon. A headline or health professional that states that the metabolic effect of drinking pure sugar in liquid form is the same as eating sugar within a balanced diet... well, that is just plain irresponsible and unsupported by the literature that they are claiming to report.
We like absolutes in life. They give us a feeling of knowing what's coming next and a means to sort and classify all sorts of things. But they rarely are adequate to help us process and thrive and see all the sweet stuff humanity has to offer. Instead of black and white, try to embrace the grey! I'll be there cheering you on.