That Sugar Story

The World health Organisation released a new report about a Global Sugar health crisis, with countries consuming more than 7 times a healthy sugar intake. In light of Australian actor Damon Gameau’s documentary That Sugar Film, he exposes the ‘hidden’ secrets behind this health crisis and the serious and even deadly health effects of a high sugar diet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uaWekLrilY

Globally we are all being exposed to more in depth reports about cancer, heart disease and obesity. They all link back to our daily diet and exercise. Currently, Australians are trying to make healthier choices, to increase mortality and overall productivity.

What if I told you these healthy foods were killing you?

Most packaged healthy foods that manufacturers produce with labels such as fat free and diet don’t necessarily mean that they are healthy for you. Most manufacturers don't specify the amount of added sugars they put in their diet products to compensate for the decreases in fat content.   

With the 2.5 billion dollar Sugar cane industry dominating the Australian market …it’s obvious we love sugar.

Australians consume approximately 40 kilograms of refined sugar a year. The amount of sugars we are consuming today are at toxic levels- you don’t even have to eat high sugar junk foods.

It’s clear the world is facing a public health crisis pushing us into serious health issues and even early death- but where are these sugars coming from?

You may not want to drink another fruit juice again after the release of Damon Gameau’s documentary ‘That Sugar Film’. The Aussie actor experimented with hidden sugars in healthy foods in response to all the conflicting claims about sugar being good or bad for your health. He found out a series of effects that sugar has on the human body as his health began to deteriorate.

"People, like me, are just better off without it," says Gameau.

The World Health Organisation recommended in a recent report, that we should be consuming six teaspoons a day for optimal health. 

The average Australian eats 40 teaspoons of sugar a day, which is almost seven times the recommended dietary amount.

‘Sugar is okay in moderation', says Dietitian Zoe Taylor from Nutrition Australia.

“We recommend cutting back on the obvious sugar foods such as sugary drinks like soft drinks, sports drinks and fruit juices, confectionery, cakes, biscuits and chocolate to just 12 teaspoons a day.”

With the extreme amounts of sugar added in our everyday foods, it is easier to monitor and cut back on the obvious sugars we are putting into our bodies.

"We need to include whole foods from the five core foods groups like vegetables, fruit and wholegrain foods.  For most people, making these changes will automatically reduce the amount of sugar you are consuming, and boost your nutrient intake too” Taylor says.

"It's the added sugars in our everyday foods we need to worry about." Sugar is a carbohydrate our body uses as an essential energy source.  

Studies show that sugar has big role to play in our overall wellbeing. 

Sugar is okay in moderation if you are an active person, but if you are not burning off this energy the sugar remains in the tissues in your body until it turns into fat.

Australians are currently one of the top Twenty-five countries in the world suffering from obesity. This is mainly due to the fast food epidemic and overeating, although studies show that sugar also has a big role to play.

The World Health Organisation states that 'if people don’t reduce the amount the free sugars they are consuming, our health will continue down this road.'

Free sugars are the more obvious types of sugar we include in our diet. The ‘quick fixes’ like chocolate, soft drinks and lollies - are all examples of free sugars.

We all know we are eating bad food when we eat foods with an obvious high sugar content.

It’s the added sugars in our everyday foods, that we eat to help sustain a healthy lifestyle, that we need to worry about.

Although studies have not directly linked sugar to being overweight or obese, it is a huge contributing factor.

A selection of physicians and patient education professionals in an article about sugars, describes added sugar as sweeteners 'that are added to processed foods and drinks by the manufacturers while they are being made.’

"Food manufacturers may add both natural sugars (fructose) and processed sugars (high-fructose corn syrup) to processed foods and drinks," they said.

"The sugar you add to your food at home is also added sugar."

Fructose and Lactose are names for the naturally occurring sugars found in most foods within the 'Australian Guide to Healthy eating'. Fructose is a natural sugar normally found in fruits, and Lactose sugar is found in most dairy products.

Added sugars on the back of our food labels have a variety of different names.

The National Institute of Health describes added sugars as hard to identify.

This packet of Pop Tarts contains many toxic sugars such as Corn Syrup, high fructose corn Syrup, dextrose and sugar. 

“They may be listed as sucrose (table sugar), corn sweetener, high-fructose corn syrup, fruit-juice concentrates, nectars, raw sugar, malt syrup, maple syrup, fructose sweeteners, liquid fructose, honey, molasses, anhydrous dextrose, or other words ending in “-ose,” the chemical suffix for sugars."

"If any of these sugars are on the back of your food labels- under ingredients- then we need to avoid them," says nutritionist Zoe Taylor.

Although sugar is a beneficial source for energy in the body, it is proving to have more dangerous health implications on your body.

"There is actually not a single study showing the benefits of added sugar in the diet," says Gameau.

Now that sugar is becoming cheaper and easier to produce, it is put in more of the everyday products we consume.

Our brains are replacing wanting sugar with needing sugar- if our need is greater than our want it becomes dangerous.

With added sugars being more prevalent in diet foods, we are relying on sugar more than we thought.

Many health professionals agree that we are in fact facing a public health crisis with the increasingly toxic amounts of sugar in foods. 

If Australians continue to eat the amounts of sugar at the rate they do, it will have fatal health consequences.

Excess sugar causes long term physical damage to the human body such as diabetes, heart disease, hypertension (high blood pressure), cancer and obesity.

"Our consumption of added sugars has tipped into the more dangerous side. I think it is a result of excess; we are just consuming far more sugar than we are designed to" says Gameau.

The more short-term affects sugar has on our bodies are on our sleeping patterns, weight loss and our mood.

Sugars increase your energy levels only for a short time. Once the sugar reaches your brain, it releases a ‘happy hormone’. Although once the sugar reaches your liver, your liver begins to produce insulin to counteract the amount of sugar you are digesting. When the insulin is released, your body becomes tired so the energy from processed sugars is unsustainable. 

Dietitian Zoe Taylor says that "consuming a large amount of sugar each day means you are probably getting more energy than you need leading to weight gain, which in turn can increase your risk of obesity, liver disease, insulin sensitivity, diabetes and heart disease."  

If Australians continue to consume sugar at the rate they do...it will have fatal consequences. 

"It is also likely that you wouldn’t be eating enough whole foods like fruits and vegetables, which provide the nutrients we need to keep us healthy," she says.

Fructose is found in small amounts of natural foods like fruits. Eating these fruits satisfy our sweet cravings in monitored amounts. It’s the processed foods that are slowly killing Australians and people around the world. Fruits have nutrients in them that make us full, so we don’t over indulge on fructose.

Eating too much sugar in healthy processed foods increases levels of triglycerides within the bloodstream. Triglycerides are fats within the blood and tissue in the human body, and at elevated levels can increase the risk of heart disease.

A report in Sugar Science, explains the process in which consuming 'large quantities of added sugar can stress and damage critical organs such as the pancreas and liver.' 

"When the pancreas, which produces insulin to process sugars, becomes overworked, it can fail to regulate blood sugar properly. Large doses of the sugar fructose also can overwhelm the liver, which metabolizes fructose. In the process, the liver will convert excess fructose to fat, which is stored in the liver and also released into the bloodstream," they wrote. 

The liver stores some of the sugars we eat for eat energy and the other half is transferred into fat. Some of that fat stay in the liver while the other half is sent to the bloodstream causing blocked arteries and heart disease.

Gameau’s biggest health issue, during the ‘high sugar diet’ experiment, was his failing liver function. 

He developed fatty liver disease in just 18 days, put on 8.5 kilograms and 11 centimeters around the waist without eating any junk food.

“All this sugar was in healthy foods. For 60 days I had to eat 40 teaspoons of sugar a day which is what the average teenager is eating,” says Gameau.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8elq9KS9V0

Some of my own questions were asked and answered in a Q and A with Film-maker Damon Gameau at a live screening of the new Documentary. He explains his diet before and after the experiment and why it was so important to conduct this 'unhealthy' experiment.

Gameau continued to eat the same amount as he did before the experiment, and maintain his regular exercise routine but his fat percentage still increased dramatically. His liver cells were dying and he was very close to a pre-diabetic condition.

He explains in his documentary ‘That Sugar Film’, that he gained almost 3.2 kilograms in only 12 days, without one fizzy drink, no ice cream, and no chocolate- but by just eating healthy foods.

According to the heart foundation, cardiovascular disease is a major cause of death in Australia, killing one Australian every 12 minutes. Pancreatic cancer is another life threatening disease, which can also be caused by eating too much sugar. Statistics show that 2,663 Australians were diagnosed in 2010, increasing to an estimated 2,890 in 2014. The survival rate for pancreatic cancer is poor, because by the time it is diagnosed, it is too late.

Although studies have not directly linked sugar to being overweight or obese, it is a huge contributing factor.

"All this sugar was in healthy foods...I developed fatty liver disease in just 18 days." Damon Gameau.

Excess amounts of added sugars also contribute to your overall mental health. When you have a high sugar diet, your brain begins to crave sugar. Dopamine is a hormone that is releases in your brain telling you that you need more sugar. This is what makes sugar so addictive. 

In a CBS broadcast ‘Is Sugar Toxic’, Journalist Sanjay Gupta interviews neuroscientist Eric Stice about his most recent MRI scans to test how our brains respond to sugar.

“Sugar is much more addictive then we realised earlier on...it activates our brains in a special way that’s very eminent in drugs like cocaine.” 

When sugar is ingested into the human body, it releases a hormone Dopamine located in the brains pleasure centre.

This is where sugar becomes dangerously addictive. Scientists believe that we are eating that much sugar that our brains are now developing a tolerance to sugars. When this happens, the pleasure receptors in our brains become blocked and to continue feeling that pleasure sensation we have to eat more amounts of sugar. 

"Mental health conditions are complex, and there is no clear cause for these conditions – rather a range of contributing factors," says Dietitian Zoe Taylor. 

"What we eat can certainly affects how we feel, and if you are eating lots of high sugar foods throughout the day, it is likely that you will experience periods of higher and lower energy throughout the day, and our mood can be affected along with this. An excessive intake of caffeine can have a similar effects", she says.

By reducing the amounts of sugar we eat has a short-term effect on the body where we become lethargic and develop headaches. 

This is the brains way of telling you it needs more sugar when in fact you need healthy foods in order to sustain your energy and mood. 

Film maker Damon Gameau said that the biggest effects the high sugar diet had on his body was his mood. 

"Definitely my moods. The sugar diet really affected my brain and many studies are now starting to back this up" says filmmaker Damon Gameau.

Australians are eating almost seven times the amount of sugar then required within the human body, so majority of Australians already have these symptoms.  

Manufacturers add sugars to their products for a number of reasons. 

Most sugars are added and processed for flavour, especially diet foods to replace the fats they have taken out. 

Sugars are also added to foods to help preserve the life of a product such as jams and bread.

Some products will add on their labels ‘No added sugar’. This is where the manufacturers could replace those sugars with preservatives and artificial sweeteners.

Artificial sweeteners are also sugar substitutes consumers need to look out for. These sweeteners are added to foods to replace the sweetness normally provided by sugars, but contain no nutritional benefits.

So most consumers are convinced that these ‘low fat’ or ‘no fat’ labels are actually healthy for you.

Australians love sugar so much that manufacturers put it in everything.

Added sugars can be found in 80% of everything you see in a supermarket. Added Sugars can be found in a variety of foods, from sauces to chocolate.

The less obvious sugars are packed into processed health foods, so we as consumers don’t even know how much sugar we are eating.

Four grams is equivalent to one teaspoon of sugar. 

“Just because a product says low fat, doesn’t mean it’s good for you,” explains Gameau.

Choosing processed foods that are healthy for you can be difficult. There are so many labels such as ‘no added sugar’, ‘99% fat free’, ‘organic’ and ‘low fat’. Manufacturers put these labels on their foods to advertise that they are healthy products. But what do they all mean?

The company Arnott’s makes snack Right Biscuits. They advertise ‘more than 30% real fruit’ and have the heart tick of approval on their packaging. The name ‘Snack right’ pretty much speaks for itself, advising consumers that this product is a healthy choice.

The average serving size calculated by Arnott’s is two biscuits.

Two biscuits contain 14.5 grams of sugar. If we converted these grams into teaspoons, (four grams equals one teaspoon of sugar) two biscuits would be over three teaspoons of sugar. 

That’s over three teaspoons of sugar are in each recommended serving size. How many times have you opened a packet of biscuits, or a packet of anything and eaten more than two biscuits?

There are 15 biscuits in the packaging measuring 5cm each in width. For those who love to snack on a full packet of biscuits, you would be consuming almost 23 teaspoons of sugar- that’s more than a packet of Tim Tams at 15.12 teaspoons.

One serving of 'Snack Right' equates to three teaspoons of Sugar. The whole packet of biscuits- or 15 of them- equates to just under 23 teaspoons. 

If you look at the ingredients you are able to tell what kind of sugars are in these biscuits. 

The natural sugars are within the fruits, and added sugars are within the preservatives and 'sugar' ingredient. 

23 teaspoons of sugar is more than half of the dangerous sugar levels we are consuming a day, and almost four times the daily serving of sugar recommended by the World Health Organisation.

No wonder Australians and people all over the world are ‘growing sicker everyday’- we have no idea how prevalent sugar is in everything we eat.

“Many of us have come to rely on the food package itself to decide if a product is healthy or not,” says Nutritionist Zoe Taylor.

A Cream of asparagus soup made by Campbell’s contains 6.3 grams of sugar in their standard serving size.

In a 420g tin, there are 3.4 servings per package. There are almost two teaspoons of sugar per standard serving size and 4.5 teaspoons in the whole tin. 

Dairy products and cereals are extremely high in sugar. In ‘That Sugar Film’, Damon Gameau found it dangerously easy to consume the whole 40 teaspoons of sugar with just breakfast foods. Breakfast foods are one of the most sugary and highly concentrated health foods on the supermarket shelves.   

A tub of ‘natural’ Jalna Greek yogurt has approximately 10 servings per 1kg tub. Each serving has 9.6 grams of sugar. That’s just over two teaspoons of sugar per serving. If you were consuming the whole tub, that’s just over 20 teaspoons of sugar.

Cereal such as Uncle Tobys Plus also has the heart tick of approval with the label ‘Good Food, Good Life’. The 410-gram box has approximately 10 servings per pack. Each serving has 9.5 grams of sugar. That’s two teaspoons of sugar per recommended serving size of around one and a half cups.

This 410-gram box of healthy breakfast cereal contains almost 20 teaspoons of sugar.

A loaf of Homebrand white bread contains 4.3 teaspoons of sugar in every loaf, with a standard serving size of two slices.

A Goulburn Valley fruit cup Fruit cup only has one serving in each small container. One cup contains 15.5 grams of sugar- equivalent to nearly four teaspoons of sugar.

Healthy brands of milk with Fat free labels have more sugar than the 'unsweetened' brand. 

Healthy milks such as ‘Organic’ Oat milk, ‘lactose free’ milk and skim Milk all have competing health labels on them. Skim milk and Lactose free milk both have 99% fat free on their cartons. They all have four glasses in each carton. The Lactose Free milk contains 12 grams of sugar in a standard serving size of one glass. That’s 2.52 teaspoons per serving, similar to the skim milk. If you drank the whole one litre carton, you would be consuming just over 10 teaspoons of sugar in just one day. This is milk that you drink by the glass, pour over your cereal, and add to your cooking or for people who drink a lot of coffee. Manufacturers have labeled the Oat organic milk carton as ‘unsweetened’ and ‘no added sugar’. The sugar levels- compared with the Lactose free and skim milk- are quite low but the sugar is still there. Overall sugar content works out to be almost 8 teaspoons of sugar, and only just less than two teaspoons per serve.

It’s difficult to actively work out the metric system (grams). Very few people understand how much sugar is actually in the specified measurement of grams. Measuring sugar in teaspoons can be a more efficient way for consumers to immediately relate to that measurement. Everybody roughly knows the size of a teaspoon. 

Manufacturers need to include an additional nutritional information section for ‘added sugars’ so consumers are well aware of what they are putting into their bodies.

What consumers can do is adopt a healthier lifestyle now. Australians are not only eating too much excess sugar, but excess of all foods.

“Portion sizes are increasing,” says Nutritionist Zoe Taylor.

Australians are generally consuming larger meals a lot more than what our bodies need therefore overdosing on the recommended daily amounts of sugars.

“Remember – your stomach is only about the size of two fists, but we usually eat more than this at meal times,” says Taylor.

“We must take control of the size of food packages and the types of food we are eating.”

The larger the packet, the more sugar in it.

Nutritionist Zoe Taylor explains that diet foods are not necessarily healthy foods and the best thing to do is choose whole foods from the core food groups from the healthy eating pyramid.

Source: fitness first.com.au

We need to nourish our bodies with 'Whole foods like fruits and vegetables (which usually come unpackaged) legumes, nuts, meats, fish, eggs, dairy and grains' that are all ‘nutritious’ healthy foods. 

“If you are buying a packaged food, look for foods that have less than 5g of sugar per 100g to know it’s a low sugar option”, she says.

“The ingredient list and nutrition information panel can be particularly helpful...Only some front-of-pack claims are reliable, so we recommend making you decision based on the back of the pack rather than the front.”

Filmmaker Damon Gameau says that totally avoiding all sugar is not the point of that sugar film.

“We just need to be aware of the hidden sugars in foods we think are healthy and we need to be aware of what we put in our bodies.” 

The film raises awareness of the sugars present in packaged foods and encourages people to eat from whole foods while avoiding excess sugar, because excess sugar is proven to be toxic.