As sugar is added to lots of foods and beverages, many people probably eat and drink more sugar than they may realise.  Reducing sugar intake is a healthy idea, although it is quite a challenge to reduce the intake of sugar, as it acts like a drug in the brain.  Less intense than cocaine and heroin, but nonetheless addictive for some people, sugar activates the very same region in the brain that makes you experience a high and feelings of pleasure.  Like using hard drugs, bingeing on sugar blunts the “pleasure” response over time, making you want the sugar fix more frequently and in higher doses to experience the same feelings of pleasure.  What is sugar and what does it

Increasing global consciousness about the dangers of too much sugar in the diet has resulted in manufacturers of processed foods trying to hide the sugar content.  A myriad of names that could hardly be associated with sugar, or are innocent sounding, are used on the label.  But sugar by any other name is still sugar. In his book “Drop Acid” Dr. David Perlmutter lists seventy different commonly used names for sugar, listed here in alphabetical order.  A:  agave syrup, anhydrous dextrose. B:  barley malt, beet sugar, birch syrup, blackstrap molasses, brown rice syrup, brown sugar, buttered sugar/buttercream. C:  cane juice (crystals), cane sugar, caramel, carob syrup, coconut palm sugar, coconut sugar, confectioners’/powdered sugar, corn sweetener, crystal dextrose, crystalline fructose. D: 

Invisible to the eye, sugar is a disaccharide consisting of two molecules in equal amounts, namely glucose, and fructose.  They get separated early in the digestive process and both get absorbed into the bloodstream but are processed quite differently.  While glucose is the currency of energy in the body, fructose is the currency of energy storage.  When consuming moderate amounts of sugar, concentrations of glucose and fructose circulating in the blood are low.  Most glucose gets delivered to cells in the body to provide fuel for the generation of energy in the cells, while about 20% ends up in the liver and gets converted into glycogen.  Glucose levels are constantly controlled in the body, mainly through the hormone, insulin.  Virtually

Too much sugar in the diet has been referred to as “white death” and on closer inspection it boils down to the two ingredients in sugar.  A single molecule of sugar consists of equal amounts of glucose and fructose, which gets separated early during the digestive process in the small intestine.  After separation, they follow different pathways in the body and have different effects when metabolized.  After absorption into the bloodstream following the digestive process, about 80% of glucose circulates in the blood stream and around 20% goes to the liver, while 100% of fructose goes straight to the liver. Glucose:  When glucose enters the bloodstream, it signals the pancreas to release the hormone insulin, which allows cells to absorb

The ever-increasing extent of overweight and obesity is highlighted by the World Health Organization, which found that worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975.  In 2016 more than 1,9 billion adults were overweight, of which over 650 million were obese.  Over 39 million children under the age of 5 were overweight or obese in 2020.  The world population in 2021 was close to 7,9 billion. In the 1960’s and 1970’s the buzz words in food and diet became “low fat”, following on (largely incorrect) assumptions that obesity and related metabolic syndrome disease (characterized by abdominal obesity, high triglycerides, high blood pressure, high blood glucose, and low HDL cholesterol) were caused by food high in fat, including the healthy fats.  Food

Mushrooms are not a vegetable as they appear to be, but are a kind of fungus.  Some wild mushrooms can be toxic, but the commercially grown edible ones are quite tasty and come in different shapes, sizes, and colours.  Adding flavour and meaty texture to many different dishes, mushrooms also provide several of the important nutrients that the body needs and is unable to make itself. Nutritional value of mushrooms: Mushrooms contain a wide range of nutritional content, such as protein, vitamins, minerals, fiber, and antioxidants, all with various health benefits to the body. Protein: Mushrooms are a low-calorie food that provide a small amount of protein. Mushrooms contain more than twice the amount of protein than most vegetables.  As