Brown Sugar

Brown Sugar

Weight Loss Secret Revealed: It'S The Sugar, Stupid!

If you're really serious about taking off weight, and who isn't, then it's time to reconsider the type of food that's most likely to make you fat.  Even though most people believe that "fat through the lips leads to fat on the hips," fat is not the biggest culprit in our diets.  Think about this for a moment.  How many fat people do you know who eat whole slabs of bacon or a whole pound of butter or a whole jar of mayonnaise?  No one.  No one does this.  In fact, many fat people are religiously devoted to low-fat products. 

My good friend, Greta, who's about 40 or 50 pounds overweight, is a living example of an educated, well intended fat person who doesn't eat much fat.  Greta always buys low-fat products.  Greta never eats fatty meats.  And Greta hasn't had real butter in years. When Greta got on the scale last January 1st,  she weighed a pound more than she did the previous January, which is really not so bad.  However, she was truly horrified to discover her waist measurement increased by a full inch and a half!  Greta is a full-fledged, card-carrying fat phobic person, yet despite that - or maybe because of it - she got bigger, not smaller.  Fat takes the rap in everyone's diet, but what if it's not the fat?  What if it's the sugar and all the highly processed, fiberless foods that quickly convert to sugar that are making Greta, you, me and everyone else get bigger and fatter?  As Bill Clinton might say, It's the sugar, stupid! 

Here's what I observe.  Greta eats cereal, muffins, or bagels for breakfast.  She eats sandwiches, buns or wraps for lunch.  She eats crackers and chips for snacks.  She eats breads, croutons, white rice and pastas with dinner.  She eats fat-free yogurt, fat-free ice-cream, fat-free salad dressing, and low fat desserts.  Greta's sole determiner of the goodness and healthiness of food has to do with whether or not it contains fat.   If Greta checked the ingredients list of her favorite off-the-shelf products, she'd see that most of them are filled with sugar and high fructose corn syrup.   Sugar and high fructose corn syrup are a food manufacturer's dream because they're fat free.  That means they don't count.  That means they're magic foods.   Highly processed grain-type foods are magic too.  Not only are they fat free, they're the kind of food our government instructs us to eat the most.  The latest food pyramid displays breads, pastas and cereals at the bottom, the largest group.  The message behind this image is to fill up on grain-based foods. So we do.  And like Greta, we think we're doing something good for ourselves.

Too much sugar and too many highly processed grain-type foods are not good for us.  These types of foods provide those excess but uncounted magic calories.  Even more, too much sugar (and highly processed foods) in through the mouth results in too much sugar in the blood, which results in a cascade of other unwanted biological responses.  Your body, being a good sport, produces excess insulin to remove the excess sugar in your blood.  The excess insulin removes the excess sugar you're your blood, which makes you hungry...ferocious hunger is not unusual.  Some people experience food cravings and/or out-of-control eating episodes.   Why deal with this kind of physiological distress?  Even more, insulin is an important and necessary hormone responsible for the storage of fat.  So excess insulin in your blood predisposes your body to store fat, not to burn it.  First it stores fat in your muscles and liver.  That's short-term parking.  If those spots are full, insulin stores fat in long-term parking, which are your fat cells.  If those spots are full, it makes more parking spaces or more fat cells.   Insulin may also inadvertently store fat elsewhere - like in your heart and brain vessels.    

The healthiest, most skinnyfying preventive and healing action you can take for yourself is to stop eating in a way that produces excess insulin.  And the easiest and fastest way to do this is to reduce or eliminate consumption of foods containing caloric sweeteners or foods made with fiberless, highly processed flours.    Your new mission is to become a detective in search of caloric sweeteners and highly processed flours lurking in the packaged foods you buy.  Disregard the claims made by the food manufacturer on the front of the container, and go straight to the ingredients list.  This is the one and only place to figure out what ‘s in the recipe. Focus on the first four foods on the ingredients list.  These are the foods that predominate.  A food is a protein, a carbohydrate or a fat.  Water, herbs, minerals and chemicals are not foods, so don't count them.  Caloric sweeteners are easy to identify.  They include all types of sugar (raw sugar, organic sugar, brown sugar, confectioner's sugar, etc.), high fructose corn syrup and every other kind of syrup.  Highly processed flours are a little trickier to identify.  In general, you're looking for whole grain products with a high fiber count, at least 3 grams of fiber or more per serving.  Since only about 10% to 15% of grain-type products come to us in a less refined way, be prepared to pass over most off-the-shelf products in your grocery store. 

Here's a little background about flours for you to consider.  All flours originate from grains or seeds, and each seed has three parts:  the bran, the germ and the endosperm.   The bran is the tough outer skin of the seed that has the most fiber.  The germ is the embryo or the part of the seed that actually sprouts into a new plant.  And the endosperm, the largest part of the seed, is highly concentrated food for the germ.  Through typical processing, the bran and the embryo are removed, and the endosperm is the only part of the grain that gets passed on to us.  This is the soft, fine, fiberless powdery substance we know as flour.  According to the Whole Grains Counsel, processing also removes 25% of the protein contained in the seed as well as 17 other key vitamins and minerals.  Of course, food manufacturers are not going to identify ingredients using words like highly refined, fiberless or processed.   After all, they're in the business of selling product. So you have to figure it out for yourself.  They're going to use terms like flour, wheat flour, corn flour, enriched flour, bleached flour, unbleached flour, organic flour, pastry flour.  This is the kind of flour you don't want!  Instead, look for the whole grain stamp, which some food manufacturers started using in 2005, or look for words like 100% whole grain or stone ground. 

The bottom line:  if you're not getting the results you want from your low-fat eating strategy, it's time to consider a different strategy.   Get started by identifying just one food you eat that's either loaded with caloric sweeteners or made with fiberless flours or both, and then find a better choice for that one food.  Surprise yourself by how much you don't miss your old food choice!  For more information about losing weight by 1) getting sugar out, 2) adding healthy fat back in, and 3) eating yourself thin with big food volume, go to www.sugarfreemiracle.com.  The Sugar-Free MiracleTM Diet System includes the Diet Handbook, the Heal My Body Workbook, the Success Journal, the Maintenance Program plus two bonus cookbook collections, all for the amazingly affordable price of just $19.99. 

 

About the Author

Karen Bentley is an award-winning fitness educator, a sugarfree eating expert, and the creator of the Sugar-Free Miracle Diet System. For more information go to www.sugarfreemiracle.com and www.karenbentley.com.

Why do I need more brown sugar than white to get the same sweetness level?

I switched to brown sugar in my coffee because I heard it is better than white, but to get the same level of sweetness, I need to add more than I normally would with white sugar. Why?

ummm brown sugar is not as sweet as white sugar!

It is often said that brown sugar is a healthier option than white sugar. But you can chalk that up to clever marketing or plain and simple illusion. In reality, brown sugar is most often ordinary table sugar that is turned brown by the reintroduction of molasses. Normally, molasses is separated and removed when sugar is created from sugarcane plants.

In some cases, brown sugar — particularly when it is referred to as “raw sugar” — is merely sugar that has not been fully refined. But more often than not, manufacturers prefer to reintroduce molasses to fine white sugar — creating a mixture with about 5 percent to 10 percent molasses — because it allows them to better control the color and size of the crystals in the final product.

The Rolling Stones- Brown Sugar

 

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Brown Sugar