Author:Deng Qingyue[1]Li Xu[2]
Reviewed by Tan Liming[2]
Units: [1] School of Public Health, Nanchang University [2] The Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University
The well-known actress quit sugar for ten years, did not eat a mouthful of sugar, in exchange for beautiful skin; Australian directors took themselves as experimental subjects, ate high-sugar foods every day for two consecutive months, recorded their own body changes and made a documentary to reflect the threat of sugar to human health, teaching people to be shocking.
The trend of abstinence from sugar and anti-sugar has been stirring in the folk for several years. In recent years, driven by some celebrities and Internet celebrity bloggers, many people have witnessed the miracle effect of anti-sugar, and the prejudice against sugar has also mushroomed. The concept of "anti-sugar" has also quietly completed the semantic transformation, from the original technical term for treating diabetes to the abbreviation of "anti-glycation" in daily life.
In this verbal attack on the harm of sugar, anti-sugar not only transforms into a symbol of weight loss and fat loss, but also seems to have become the only way to maintain a beautiful face and resist aging. For a while, people are willing to pay for anti-sugar recipes and anti-sugar products. So is sugar really a "health killer"? Is sugar abstinence really effective in preventing skin aging? Is sugar resistance a necessary test on the road to health, or is it a false proposition that is overcorrected? How do we control sugar correctly? Let's take a look.
Is sugar really a health killer?
In the Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents, it is recommended that the intake of added sugars should not exceed 50 grams per day, and it is best to control it within 25 grams). But if we were to add up the sugar content of all the foods we ate in a day, we would probably eat far more sugar than the recommended amount without knowing it.
The dangers of excessive sugar intake are clichés: obesity, dental caries, diabetes, heart disease, emotional instability, accelerated aging... This is not only the consensus of the general public, but also the result of countless authoritative data tests - high-sugar diet is an important factor affecting physical health and causing aging of the body.
The "anti-sugar" articles on the Internet like to use the contrast between raw meat and braised meat as an intuitive evidence of "saccharification". The metera reaction formed by the collision of sugar and protein on the surface of the reddish-brown surface of braised pork is produced at a high temperature of at least 140 degrees Celsius. Although this degree of saccharification is almost impossible to occur at human temperature, we still cannot ignore the harm caused by saccharification to the skin. But we can't generalize about glycation, and not all saccharification is harmful to the human body.
The "glycation" reaction of the human body can be divided into two types: one is glycosylation, that is, under the action of enzymes, sugars bind to proteins to produce glycoproteins needed for life activities. Such proteins participate in the development, differentiation and metabolism of normal cells, have an important immune effect on the human body, can help the human body resist germs, as well as blood clotting, repair trauma and other functions, is necessary for the human body.
However, when excess sugar is ingested, a second "saccharification" reaction occurs in the body: non-enzymatic glycosylation, that is, without the action of enzymes, excess sugars directly bind to proteins. Late glycosylation end products produced by non-enzymatic glycation reactions, abbreviated as AGEs (Advanced Glycation End Products). AGEs are constantly accumulated in the body, so that the collagen in the skin "mainly plays the role of filling and enrichment" and elastin "plays a role in maintaining skin elasticity" crosslink degradation, the structure inside the protein is difficult to maintain, resulting in a decrease in fullness, a decrease in elastic tension, resulting in yellowing, wrinkles, sagging and dull skin, which is what we usually call "skin killer".
The factors that affect skin aging are various, and sugar is not a flood beast for the skin. In addition to non-enzymatic glycosylation, free radical oxidation and photoaging are also important factors in skin aging. Therefore, to prevent skin aging, it is not just a matter of anti-sugar. What we need to pay more attention to is the organic combination of sunscreen, antioxidant and anti-sugar, so as to achieve a better anti-skin aging effect.
Second, how much sugar should I consume?
The 2021 Chinese National Dietary Guidelines recommend that the daily intake of added sugars should not exceed 50g, preferably less than 25g. A bottle of 330ml cola has a sugar content of 37.5g. As a result, some unscrupulous merchants have begun to develop various business opportunities through anti-sugar: anti-sugar pills, anti-sugar masks, etc., emerging in an endless stream. At first glance, it seems quite reasonable, but in retrospect, isn't it enough to drink less milk tea and eat less sweets? Why do you have to do this? Moreover, according to this deduction, the sugar content of 330g of coarse grain rice is 75g, the sugar content of 330g of whole wheat bread is 120g, and the sugar content of 330g of nutritious cereal is 200g. If one more sip of Coke a day exceeds the prescribed sugar intake, then it is obviously unreasonable to eat more cereal a day than it is serious.
So, what exactly does the recommended added sugar intake in the guidelines refer to? Is it the sugar you put in your cooking? Or is it sugar written in the product ingredient list? - Not really. The guide actually recommends that we stop eating more sugar when eating three meals a day. If you want to look, it is more accurate to look at the carbohydrates in the ingredient list, which account for about 50% or less of our total dietary energy.
Combined with their own BMI "weight (kg)/height square (m2)", it is recommended that friends with a BMI between 18.5 and 24 should consume no more than 250g of carbohydrate per day; the daily carbohydrate intake between 24 and 27.9 should not exceed 200g; and friends with a BMI greater than 28 should consume less than 150g of carbohydrate per day. And friends with a BMI below 18.5 should gain weight well, and don't want to control sugar to lose weight. Here we should also remind everyone that blind control of sugar weight loss, carbohydrates are important functional substances in the human body, extreme lack of serious will lead to hypoglycemia, coma, ketoacidosis, liver function damage and other phenomena. Obesity is caused by excess calories, more caused by exogenous fried foods, relying solely on sugar control, without reducing calorie intake is only half the effort. Therefore, reasonable control of carbohydrate intake is the key to controlling sugar.
Third, how to control sugar healthily?
The addictive nature of eating sugar has also gone viral on the Internet. It is said that eating sugar makes the brain secrete dopamine, making you dependent on it. But in reality, people's dependence on carbs should be much stronger than their dependence on sugar. Not eating carbs for a day and not eating sugar for a day, you don't have to think about it, and not eating carbs is more painful. Therefore, it is better to say that it is sugar control, but it is better to control carbon water. Here are a few small ways to control carb water.
1. Extend the meal time, it is recommended to control the meal time to 20 to 30min. The feeling of being full is determined by the level of blood sugar, and the content of blood sugar will peak 30 to 60 minutes after meals. Eat too fast, the blood sugar has not yet risen, there is no feeling of fullness, so you can only experience hunger and eating, and there is no feeling of fullness.
2. Choose foods with low GL (blood glucose load = GI× carb content per 100g / 100). GL can reflect the amount of blood sugar that rises per 100g of food ingested.
3. Eat some low-sugar or sugar substitute foods in moderation. For milk tea, fruit tea and other foods, sugar-free is only in addition to the carbure of the food itself, without additional sugar, the real sugar-free is impossible to do. Sugar substitutes are sugar-free, and their sweetness comes from sweeteners (such as aspartame, acesulfame potassium, sucralose, etc.). Although the same amount of sweetener and sugar are comparable in calories, only a small amount of sweetener can achieve a very sweet effect, so it has fewer calories. And sweeteners do not affect blood sugar concentrations, diabetics can also eat. But to be on the safe side, people with diabetes should not consume too many sweeteners. And patients with phenylketonuria can not eat products containing aspartame, aspartame decomposition products contain phenylalanine, patients can not handle. The daily intake of aspartame in normal people should not exceed 40 to 50 mg/kg.
IV. Conclusion
Finally, whether it is weight loss or skin care, we should control sugar scientifically. Health and happiness are the foundation of everything. Being happy is the most important thing, ignoring your own health in order to achieve the goal, which is also what we don't want to see.
Editor: Ren Mileage Reviewer: Xiao Ran