Are “Sugary Foods” the Problem?

by ryan Heeney / April 5th

These days it seems the blame for poor health, obesity and disease is in the world are put on "sugary foods". If you pay attention, you will hear it quite often.

"I need to lose weight, I really have to start cooking back on all sugar..."

"The obesity epidemic drivin by an increase in sugary foods..."

The first thing weight loss experts will recommend to stay away from all those sugary foods like doughnuts, cookies, chocolate, cake, pie, etc... You hear it from personal trainers, nutritionists, doctors, the TV, at work, on your favorite podcast, from your friend over lunch.

But there is a problem. None of these foods are just "sugar’… in fact, by calorie, most of the time there is 3 to 4 more times the fat in foods thought to be “sugary”. Not to mention everyone single one comes with a bunch of starches, gums, thickeners, etc.

First just to add this, by sugar I mean sucrose. This is the disaccharide that is typically extracted from the cane plant or beets. Every time I refer to sugar in this article, I will be referring to sucrose, and not dextrose, glucose, maltodextrin, etc. which are carbohydrates derived from starch.

If you sat down and went through all the junk foods you consider junk, how many of those junk foods are you going to find that are just mainly sugar?

I can maybe name two candies off the top of my head that even come close to just pure sugar and interestingly enough, it's not even real sugar. For example, something like "pixie sticks", those tubes of powdery sweetness, which most people would assume is just flavored sugar isn't even "sugar" at all. It's primarily dextrose and maltodextrin with other additives for flavor and texture that interact with the body much differently than sugar in the form of sucrose.

Note: Dextrose (chemically identical to glucose) differs from table sugar (sucrose) because of the fact that the sucrose molecule contains fructose, along with glucose.  This is important because fructose slows the rate at which sugar will enter the blood stream because fructose is absorbed slower in the intestine than glucose.  With calories being equal, brown rice will actually cause blood sugar to rise more quickly than table sugar itself.  This is because brown rice is nearly all glucose.

Well, what about all those sugary soft drinks that we always hear about?  No, not sugar, actually high-fructose corn syrup. This thick cheap syrup that derive from corn might as well be called “high-starchy corn syrup.” Most sodas switched over in the 1970’s and 1980’s from sucrose to corn syrup.

Even candies like skittles, gummy bears, etc. are usually comprised of both sugar and corn syrup. I would argue that most people would be surprised how much sugar they're actually NOT taking in when eating large amounts of junk food.

So how much of these so called "sugary junk foods" are actually made up of sugar?

Let's find out.  ’ll calculate the sugar content of a few "sugary foods" and show by calorie, how much of these foods are actually sugar. This was actually hard to do by the way because of how many different types of junk foods don't even use sugar, but sugar substitutes like dextrose, which just make things worse.

After searching for quite some time, I found that Entenmann's does in fact use real sugar in their chocolate frosted donuts. So how much of this "sugary food" is actually made up of sugar?

Well as we can see below, one Entenmann's doughnut contains 300 calories total and 17 grams of sugar per doughnut, which means only 68 calories of an Entenmann's doughnut are actually coming from sugar (there are 4 calories for every 1 gram of sugar, so just multiply 4 by the 17 grams of sugar).

That means only 23% percent of an Entenmann's chocolate glazed doughnut is actually sugar.

So where do all the other calories come from in this "sugary food"?

60% of the doughnut is actually pure fat. Not just any fat, either, but vegetable oil. Yes that's right, by calorie, 60% of your "sugary doughnut" is pure vegetable oil. 

The other 17% or so of the doughnut is mostly starch in the form of flour.

What about other "sugary junk foods"?

Chips Ahoy cookie?...  31% sugar and 42% fat.

Snicker's Bar?...  43% sugar and 46% fat.

Oreo's?...  35% sugar and 38% fat.

You can see a lot of these foods we label as "sugary foods" actually contain a larger portion of fat, along with starches and small, trace amounts of protein.

What's really bad though, is the source of these fats. The fat that most of these foods contain is from vegetable oil (polyunsaturated fat). Besides some chocolate products whose fat tends to be more saturated, most of these foods are nearly half polyunsaturated fat by calorie, which is not your friend as outlined in this article here.

With all the polyunsaturated fat and starch these foods contain, the sugar can in fact become a problem. But it is not the sugars fault. Because of the Randle cycle which we’ve learned about in previous articles, polyunsaturated fat renders your cells basically impenetrable for the sugar to enter, causing the sugar to basically "float" around in your blood stream unable to enter cells.

But mainstream and personal trainers everywhere will blame the sugar instead,

This is the case with lots of other junk foods that aren't even "sugary" by the way, too. Potato chips, french fries, lots of packaged foods, even Ramen noodles… nearly half of their calories come from polyunsaturated fat. The starch that comes with the polyunsaturated fat in these foods is even worse than the sugar since starch will cause the blood sugar to rise even quicker because it’s composed of pure glucose.

How is this not the main topic of every single conversation in the health industry today? Polyunsaturated fat is in everything that is considered “junk food” and it's making everyone sick.

If most these foods are more than half fat by calorie, and most of the low fat sweets don't even contain real sugar... are there any foods that are just sugar, that are also full of vitamins and minerals, that taste good and that the body can actually use?

Yes, there happens to be plenty, and they’re actually quite healthy. Fruits.