Betrayed from birth

We are all born to prefer things that taste sweet. This could have been an evolutionary tool for survival, since sweet tasting foods are calorie dense and give us the energy we need to perform the work of survival. As civilization has progressed, humans have become adept at creating ways of making survival easier, and less work. We don't need as much energy as we once did to survive, but we still have that preference for sweet things. We've also discovered and cultivated plants that produce concentrated sweetness. We've created refining processes that concentrate that sweetness in to forms that can be stored for long periods of time and shipped over long distances. As a result, we are eating much more sugar than evolution ever designed us to eat. According to the USDA, Americans eat over 157 pounds of sugar per year. 29 pounds of sugar comes from the sugar bowl and almost 52 pounds comes from soft drinks. Those sources could be easily controlled by eliminating the sugar bowl and the soft drinks, but 40 pounds of sugar is hidden in things like catsup, peanut butter, canned fruits and vegetables, crackers and even low fat yogurts and low fat salad dressings.

Now there are some people who would say, o.k, we should cut down on the amount of sugar, but sugar is still an important source of calories and as long as we have it in moderation it won't really harm us. Maybe there is truth to that, but I believe that refined sugar is unnecessary in our diets and even harmful because of the way the body responds to it. When you eat a large amount of refined sugar and white flour (which becomes sugar in the blood) it raises the amount of sugar in your blood very fast. You feel increased energy and improved mood for a short period of time, but the body prefers to keep blood sugar constant so it sends out insulin to bring the sugar levels in the blood down. That quick drop in sugar levels can lead to feeling tired and hungry. That is not what we want to feel after we eat, and all those extra calories end up getting stored as fat. If you deal with that hunger by eating more refined sugar and white flour, you put yourself on an express elevator that never leaves you on top long enough to get off. You will always be feeling tired and hungry. You may recognize that I'm describing a condition that most Americans are suffering from. It's an addiction.

Obviously a situation like I just described can set a person up for obesity and diabetes, but what has that got to do with cancer? Well most people don't realize that sugar causes inflammation in the body. Inflammation is something we usually associate with injury, or infection. It is a way the body uses to heal something that can destroy the body. When your body becomes inflamed as a response to an upper respiratory infection, or a sprained ankle, that is called acute inflammation. Prolonged inflammation is called chronic inflammation and that can lead to all kinds of problems that I'm really not qualified to describe or explain, but the short story here is that chronic inflammation is linked to cancer. It's a huge jump to suggest that sugar causes cancer. I'm not suggesting that. Sugar does cause inflammation, and if chronic inflammation causes cancer, and you eat too much sugar on a regular basis, it follows that you could be increasing your risk for cancer. There is no doubt about the link between obesity and cancer.

If you have cancer already, too much sugar will cause your body to produce insulin and that helps cancer cells to grow. Cancer patients have to be careful to balance their reduced sugar intake with protein, fat and fiber, which will help the body process the sugar more slowly and reduce the amount of insulin produced. What ever your situation may be, the best choice to satisfy the urge for something sweet is to choose foods that are naturally sweet. The truly interesting thing about foods with natural sugar is that they don't cause nearly as much inflammation as foods high in processed sugar and white flour. A cup of super sweet ripe pineapple chunks are delicious and are actually mildly anti-inflammatory. It also contains 131% of your daily recommended allowance of vitamin C, which will do a lot more for your immune system than processed sugar. You get the delicous taste and the added benefit of energy that lasts a long time and doesn't leave you feeling tired.

It's not our fault we were born with a taste for sweetness, and in times when most of our labors are relatively easy and our food is with-in easy reach. It's something to be grateful for, but also wary of. Where much is given, much is required. We have a responsibility to educate ourselves and change our ways of doing things so that we have the health that all humans deserve. Wealth shouldn't be a curse if we make wise use of it. The first step in fighting cancer with food is managing the amount of refined sugar and white flour you eat.