Rough sugars are bad for your health, which everyone knows by now. Fruits, grains, and vegetables give us natural sugars that we need, but the sugars in processed foods are bad for our health and make us gain weight for no reason.
If you bought a pack of Skittles at the store, they would have a lot of sugar, 251 calories, 13% of your daily saturated fat needs, and only 7.4 mg of potassium. So full that you could eat the whole pack and not even notice because your stomach needs certain vitamins to be full.
On the other hand, a whole potato has 168 calories, no fat, no extra sugar, 4 grams of fiber, 28% of your daily value of vitamin C, 27% of your daily value of vitamin B6, 26% of your daily value of potassium, 12% of your daily value of niacin, 12% of your daily value of folate, 12% of your daily value of magnesium, and more.
Also, the potato’s protein would keep you full for a while. It’s likely that a diet high in refined sugar will also be low in the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that your body needs to stay healthy and happy.
So, what do you think would happen if you stopped eating all processed sugar? Scientists say that there are a number of health perks. These are 8.
1. Reduced cholesterol
It’s not true that cholesterol is the only thing that causes bad cholesterol to build up in the body. That doesn’t mean cholesterol doesn’t matter, but sugar does. Researchers have found that eating too much sugar makes our good cholesterol drop, which then makes our bad cholesterol rise.
2. Better heart health
Too much sugar can also raise cholesterol, which can make us more likely to get heart disease or a stroke. When you cut back by just 20%, your risk of heart disease goes down a lot.
3. Improved dental health
There’s a reason why your doctor tells you to eat less sugar. As much sugar as you want may taste good, but it can destroy your teeth. Sugar gives food to the bugs in your mouth that cause cavities and infections.
4. Lower weight.
If you eat more calories than you burn for a long time, you may gain weight. And foods that are high in processed sugar, like the Skittles we talked about above, tend to be higher in calories and not very healthy.
5. Improved nutrition
When we eat less refined sugar, which is mostly just empty calories, we can eat more healthy foods like fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, grains, legumes, and nuts. These things all give your body the nutrients it needs to stay healthy.
6. Skin got better
There’s something interesting to me about people who spend millions and millions of dollars on fancy skin care also spend millions and millions of dollars on bad food.
If you just stopped eating refined sugar, your face would probably look better and you would save a lot of money on skin care products.
7. Decreased chance of disease
People who eat a lot of refined sugar are also more likely to get diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, liver disease, and a lot of other dangerous illnesses. For many diseases, taking out sugar makes you less likely to get them.
8. Happier mood
A study from 2017 found that eating sugar is bad for our mental health. To this end, eating a lot of sugar can make you more likely to be depressed or even anxious.