We all know that sugar is bad for us. It makes us fat, sick, pale, depressed, moody, and it rots our teeth.
So why are we consuming it in such ridiculous quantities? In 2013, Americans consumed over ten million metric tons of sugar.
To break it down for you, that’s between 80 – 100 pounds of sugar per person, per year. Can you imagine eating nearly half of a one-pound bag of sugar every few days?
Well, if you’re anything like the average American surviving on the modern diet, you are doing just that.
No, you’re not sitting under the table with a bag of sugar and a big spoon. The sugar is hidden in all of the processed convenience foods that have replaced the slow-cooked real meals that were the diet mainstay of generations that came before us.
Processed white sugar has been stripped of any nutrients it may have once contained, then it’s concentrated until it’s very sweet. While half of your average sugar intake is from the obvious items like soda, cookies, candy, and ice cream, the rest is deeply hidden in foods you may never suspect—yes, even the “organic” and “natural” ones.
Some of these alternative names for sugar include:
- Brown rice syrup
- High fructose corn syrup
- Fructose
- Lactose
- Maltodextrin
- Malt syrup
- Dextrose
- Demarara sugar
- Molasses
- Raw sugar
- Sorbitol
- Treacle
Just because the label doesn’t say “sugar,” doesn’t mean it’s sugar-free. That’s the tricky part. Even grape or apple juice concentrate has the same effect on your body as straight-up sugar.
See also: 5 Most Effective Treatments for Dental Issues
Why is sugar so bad? What is really the Bitter truth about sugar? Well, traditional dentistry will defer to the acid and bacteria theory. Your dentist has probably told you not to suck on hard candies or drink soda because the sugar will sit on your teeth and chew a hole through your enamel, thus making way for bacteria to infect the tooth pulp and rot your tooth. Sound familiar?
This is true, and also misleading. A truly healthy and nourished tooth will be able to resist that sugar invasion indefinitely. Even the doctor responsible for developing the acid theory of cavitation, Dr. Miller himself, said that a perfectly healthy tooth would resist cavitation indefinitely.
The problem is that the sugar doesn’t just sit on your teeth. It goes into your body as well. When you combine the sugar sitting in your mouth with the fact that sugar is absorbing into your body, you create a monster.
Sugar, along with all of its pseudonyms, is ultimately processed in the liver, unlike sugar’s healthier counterpart—glucose, which is turned into energy in the body.
If you are consuming the average 80 – 100 pounds of processed sugar per year, you are going to very quickly overload your liver.
Once the liver is overloaded, it can’t do one of its many important jobs:
breaking down the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K!
- If the liver isn’t breaking down those vitamins, they’re not getting to
your teeth.
- If the vitamins aren’t getting to your teeth, your teeth will become
malnourished and weak.
- When your teeth are malnourished and weak, they will not be able to
withstand the sugars sitting on them.
- The result is a vicious cycle of sugar-malabsorption-cavity, sugarmalabsorption-cavity.
Driven almost exclusively by profits, the foods industry knows what it’s doing by filling products full of sugar—they are creating addictions.
The more sugar you eat, the more you want, and ultimately the more of their product you’re going to buy.
It’s a simple supply-and-demand cycle that we have allowed to fundamentally change the way we eat and feed our families.
We have become accustomed to a higher level of sweetness to our foods than nature intended. Our choices are being driven by our taste buds, which is a very bad thing.
An overloaded liver not only contributes to tooth decay, but it also turns sugar straight into fat instead of your body converting it into accessible energy.
So, the simple equation is this: Sugar causes bacteria to produce enamel-eating acid PLUS sugar prevents the absorption of remineralizing nutrients = fragile, malnourished teeth that can’t resist decay.
Now, when your dentist tells you to stay away from sugar, you’ll know the entire reason why—not just one end of the cycle.
Think about it. if sugar is only responsible for bacteria eating holes in teeth, you should be able to brush it off and be fine, but the skyrocketing increase in the rate of dental caries in cultures that subsist on a modern, processed diet proves that it just doesn’t work that way.
See also: How to Cure Gum Disease Without a Dentist: Best 10 Ways