The Health Dangers of Refined Sugar!

Where We're Getting Our Sugar

Carbonated sodas are the single biggest source of refined sugars in the American diet. "Energy drinks" are no better. And even commercial fruit juices are working against us. Some of these fruit drinks are more additives and sugars (as much as 90% and more) than actual fruit juice.

Sodas are made with refined sugar and damage tooth enamel, and yet they are purchased wantonly to the tune of $69 billion dollars in revenue in 2005.

Are we doing it to ourselves? The answer is yes. And, we're being helped. In 1993, a Colorado Springs school district signed a contract with Coca-Cola® that would allow them to put signage on their school buses and at all their varsity games and throughout the school and events. They put drink machines in the locker rooms and the teachers encouraged students to drink Coke®, even during class, to meet their quotas of beverage sales. The athletics directors emptied the machines regularly to buy equipment.

There has never been any substantive benefit from drinking sodas other than the immediate sugar rush that some people feel, after which they generally crash. Is there a benefit to the student body for brain activity? No, there was no health value involved. It was just business.

So, parents and caregivers must be constantly vigilant because when it comes to business, you and your children may get the short end of the deal. You have to know and teach your children at home, what is in the interest of their best health. When you are grocery shopping, read labels of drinks and sugary snacks carefully as the manufacturers will often mask the sugar content as something else.

When you review snack and drink labels, be on the lookout for the following:

The Health Dangers of Sugar:

We have a 1957 definition of a poison from Dr. William Coda Martin. "Medically: Any substance applied to the body, ingested or developed within the body, which causes or may cause disease. Physically: Any substance which inhibits the activity of a catalyst which is a minor substance, chemical or enzyme that activates a reaction." Dr. Martin classified refined sugar as poison because during the refinement process it is depleted of all that makes it useful to the body.

A daily dosing of sugar causes altered internal pH levels resulting in a more acidic body. To correct the imbalance, the body draws on minerals from deep within.

For example: to protect the blood, calcium is drawn from the bones and teeth, so much in fact that it tends to weaken and decay the bones. This precipitates osteoarthritis. Refined sugar in the diet can damage the digestive tract and over time every organ in the body.