Sugar. So sweet yet… so controversial. The health implications of sugar are controversial. Some sugar critics consider it no better than a slow poison, like smoking. Some respected researchers (by respected researchers, I mean they’re independent and not in the industry’s back pocket) say the fear and criticisms are unfounded.
Sugar for purpose of this discussion is refined sugar. Sucrose. The stuff in the sugar bowl. We’re not talking about complex carbohydrates, which are merely long strings of sugars. We’re specifically talking about the kind of sugar you may put in your coffee or find on the label of your candy bar.
Sugar’s enemies say it causes all sorts of physical problems, and even emotional problems. They claim sugar contributes to glucose intolerance, diabetes, elevated cholesterol, hypertension, coronary artery disease, behavior changes in both children and adults, problems in the central nervous system, obesity, increased likelihood of developing gallstones, lower bioavailability of vitamins and minerals, dietary deficiencies, cavities and even cancer.
The Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition had a Sugar Task Force look into these claims. The task force reviewed the scientific research they reviewed supported only one of these claims, the one linking refined sugar to cavities. Their overall finding was that there is no conclusive evidence that sugar is a public health hazard at the levels at which it is currently consumed.
Nonetheless, there is enough preliminary evidence to suggest that may indeed be a contributing factor to obesity (which in turn has the knock-on effect of contributing to the risk of glucose intolerance and diabetes). Studies also suggest that sugar may lessen the likelihood of getting a balanced diet by replacing more nutritious foods with high-intensity empty calories. Diet imbalance brings with it its own set of knock-on effects, such as insufficient intake of micronutrients like chromium, increase blood triglyceride (fat) and cholesterol (increasing the risk of coronary artery disease).
So there’s the downside. What’s the upside of sugar consumption? Calories and… more calories. That’s it. Beyond calories, sugar has no nutritional value whatsoever beyond its calories. Foods that offer concentrated calories but no other nutritional benefits—no vitamins, no minerals, no fiber, nothing—are quite rightly said to consist of empty calories.
If you consume too many empty calories one of two things is likely to happen: you’ll stick to your appropriate calorie intake and risk not getting all the other nutrients you need, or you’ll increase your calorie intake and eat enough to meet your other nutritional needs. And guess what? Eating more calories than your body needs for its given level of activity gets you fat.
Sugar, while not the dire poison some of its critics make it out to be, has no nutritional upside either. In light of the absence of any nutritional value, it’s reasonable to decrease one’s sugar consumption. But how? Cutting down on sugar is not so easy as avoiding adding sugar to your meals yourself, or using a sugar substitute in your coffee in the morning. Many, many products contain far more sugar than you might realize. The solution, or at least the start of it? Read labels.
译文:
糖和你（Sugar and You）
糖，甜蜜中夹杂着争议。糖对我们健康的影响可谓众说风云。一些反对者们认为糖就像慢性毒品，吃糖就和吸烟一样危害健康。而一些有关专家（我指的是那些与相关产业无利益纠葛的，单纯的研究者）说那些恐慌和批评仅仅是空穴来风。
这里所指的糖是经过提取加工的糖，就是我们糖罐中的蔗糖。我们不讨论碳水化合物，那是一长串糖的合成物。我们只讨论你加进咖啡里的那种糖。
嫉糖如仇者们说吃糖会引发各种身体甚至精神疾病。他们称吃糖会导致糖耐量减低（glucose intolerance），糖尿病，高胆固醇，高血压，冠心病，儿童及成人行为异常，中枢神经系统问题，肥胖，胆结石的发病率增加，维生素和矿物质的作用削弱，营养素缺乏，蛀牙甚至癌症。
食品安全中心为此特别组建了一个研究小组。他们回顾了以往的科学研究，其中只有蛀牙被证实是与吃糖有关的。他们经过全面调查得出没有确凿的理论依据表明正常情况下的糖分摄取会危及健康。
然而，有足够的初步证据表明吃糖的确会导致肥胖（进而增加低血糖和糖尿病发病率）。还有研究提出吃糖会影响饮食均衡，人们会用高糖分高热量的食品替代那些更有营养的食物。饮食失衡会引起一系列连锁反应，例如微量元素摄入不足，如铬，增加血脂和胆固醇含量（增加患冠心病的几率）
这是糖的弊端，那吃糖有什么好处呢？卡路里和。。。。更多卡路里，就是这些。糖含高热量，但没有任何营养价值—没有维生素，没有矿物质，没有食物纤维，什么都没有—是名副其实的无营养卡路里。
如果你摄入过量的无营养卡路里 ，以下两种情况很有可能发生：要么你宁愿舍弃身体所需的其它养分来控制热量。或者就是吃得更多以满足营养需求。那会怎么样呢？如果吃下的食物所含的热量大于你自身消耗的热量，那你就会变胖。
糖，虽然不如它的反对者说的像毒药那么可怕，但它的确没有什么营养价值可言。因此，我们应该少吃糖。如何做到少吃呢？仅仅通过不往饭菜中加糖或者是在咖啡中加代糖是不够的。大多数食品中所含的糖分要比你想象的多得多。那怎么办？从浏览食品包装上的配量表开始吧。