Be aware of your sweet tooth

The average American consumes close to 175 pounds of sugar per year. If you look at the labels of what you are eating it is in almost everything. Before you think about switching to “diet” products such as: Splenda, Sucralose, NutraSweet, Equal, Aspartame read the topic Artificial Sweeteners. You will see that they are much worse than sugar.

Why is sugar bad?

Sugar intake leads to higher blood sugar levels. The more your blood sugar levels are elevated the more the body will not be able to effectively use and regulate insulin. This will lead to diabetes. What is really scary is more and more children are developing diabetes. Since 1990 there has been a 76% increase in the number of adults that have type 2 diabetes.

High sugar intake is also leading to an obesity epidemic in our country. The prevalence of obesity has quadrupled over the past 25 years among children. Over 40 million people in the US are considered obese.

Obesity has been shown to increase your chances of: cancer, hypertension, diabetes, sleep apnea & osteoporosis. A recent study, that involved close to 1 million people, indicated that 14 percent of cancer deaths in men and 20 percent of cancer deaths in women might be due to being overweight or obese.

This isn’t to say that you can never have sugar or sweets again, just try to be aware of what you are putting in your body and know that it will have an effect on your overall health.