10 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Sugar

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Many of us love sugar. This is just a fact.

Indeed, sugar is making us craving for more and more. We all know that sugar is sweet, that sugar can be found in doughnuts or in Nutella.

We love to have some when we feel good or bad. As kid we received sugar as a reward for instance. Many of us love to finish our meals by a sweet stuff.

Sugar is fundamentally found in sweetened beverages and soft drinks, fast food, candy, cakes and baking products. But also in fruits, which is good this time. Refined or added sugar can be dangerous as it’s everywhere and too much consumed by many people.

Thus, we all know that sugar is added in many products that lot of us consume daily. So, like everyone, there are many things that you probably know about sugar. Instead of repeating what you’re already know. In today’s post, we are going to talk about things that you probably don’t know about sugar.

Where does the sugar come from?

Before telling you the surprising things that you probably don’t known about sugar. We’d like to start by telling you where the sugar comes from. Natural sugar (the good one) is found in fruits which can provide great nutrients that our body needs. Refined or added sugar (the bad one) are coming from sugar canes by 80% and the other 20% come from sugar beets. Refined sugar doesn’t necessarily provide good nutrients for our body but as we know, we can crave for it. And as we are going to see it’s a huge industry.

So now let’s get deep in it:

1 – We only need 25gr of added sugar a day

Let’s start by an important fact that you might probably don’t know. No more than 5% of the calories that we get should come from free sugar said the NHS (National Health Service) of UK. Before it was 10 (sorry for that). In fact, the WHO (World Health Organisation) recommend us strongly consume less than 10% from the whole thing that we should consume daily. Roughly the equivalent of 25gr should come from free sugar. No more than that.

2 – Sugar is a stimulant

As his well-know consumed friend coffee, sugar is a stimulant as well. In fact, sugar plays with the neuro transmitter in our brain: the dopamine. To make you understand quickly why it’s addictive, dopamine is the one who says to the brain: “it’s really good that, let’s have some more”.

The neurotransmitter serotonin (happiness hormone) is also well affected so then you feel good when you eat that but when it disappears you can feel very bad. This is the yo-yo effect.

So, sugar or any drug, excite this feeling good hormone (dopamine), so our brain and ourselves crave for more in euphoria. It excites us then and make us feel good, different, but then bad, and then good. So then, we can act and behave differently as drugs do like coffee or the worst of all that we know… cocaine. Sugar stimulates the brain so, that’s the reason why many people can’t found the way to their dreams at night or kids make time to found their sleep? Could it be the case, right?

Read –> What’s a stimulant and its effects on you

3 – Sugar have many names

Do you know that many companies find ways to hide sugar?

Thus, they play with the name of sugar. As we consume more and more like something that we are addicted to. Huge industries has to put it everywhere so you can find different names of sugar in their label which can make us confused.

The most well known names for sugar are glucose, saccharose and fructose. Surprisingly as it is, if we refer from Healthline, it could exist more than 50 different names for sugar. You will find all the sources at the end of the article.

4 – Vegetables contain sugar

Real and good sugar is in all plants. We all know that the good sugar can be found in fruits. However, do you know that many vegetables contain sugar and some of them have good amount like the one found in fruits. For instance, carrots have 4,7gr/100 and strawberry have 4.9gr/100.

Funny fact, right?

5 – 160 million tones of sugar are produced every year

As Wikipedia mentioned: “around 160 million tones of sugar is produced every year.”

Wow! That’s a huge number right? As we said from the beginning of this article, sugar is very well consumed and too much. So finally, it’s a huge industry which makes also tons of money.

6 – 77 billion per year – global market

Wikipedia is making us aware one more thing: “the global market from sugar and sweeteners was 77.5 billions in 2012”.

Not too bad for an industry which should be normally bad for our health. Moreover, the market is growing more and more then…

7 – The largest producers of sugar

Brazil and India are the two largest producers of sugar.

In fact we’ve found in Investopedia that 52% of the world’s sugar market is produced by Brazil. But business insider had recently report that India is getting over Brazil as the biggest world producer of the little crystal sand.

8 – Sugar does not make people gain weight

Not really but…

It’s not the fact that sugar cause weight. It’s the calories that you consume daily. The problem as seen in the introduction is that sugar makes you crave for more and it’s found in many caloric stuff that you can consume daily.

Sugar is not the obvious guilty one but, let’s try something to see if you follow us: Eat just one cake from a box of it, it’s fine, but can you eat just one and then stop?

1 chocolate digestive (17gr) biscuit contains 84 calories when the 100gr (6 biscuits) of it contains 493. The thing is, it will be hard to fill you up with that compare to eat 100gr of potatoes which contain 75 calories.

Note that a healthy adult needs around 2000 to 2500kcal a day. It could be too bad to use around 25% of what you need in 7 biscuits.

Thus, sugar doesn’t necessarily make you gain weight, but it could make the process faster.

9 – Christopher Columbus the first man

It said that Christopher Columbus was the first man to bring sugar canes to the new world. Thanks Chris you’ve been known for many things but in this one, you’ve changed our world forever.

10 – Men are luckier than women concerning sugar

To finish, sorry girls, that’s right that you have some advantages on guys, like having the sixth sense. But concerning sugar, not really. Sorry to make you aware that guys could consume more sugar than you. Indeed, the American Heart Association (AHA) recommend no more than 100 calories a day to come from refined sugar. Moreover, women should have 6 spoons, when men could have 9.

But don’t worry, you will still be the one who delivers birth and make the world turning around. Strawberries and other fruits can be consumed largely as well, so don’t worry.