10 Reasons Why You Should Say NO To Sugar

1) Sugar makes you fatter. Sugar causes you to retain more water; to overproduce insulin which causes you to store all food intake as fat; to lower your body’s absorption of nutrients which means you don’t get any metabolic benefits of vitamins, antioxidants, minerals, etc; it disrupts your hormonal system and without balances hormones maintaining a healthy weight is near-impossible; it dehydrates the body which makes it difficult to lose weight; it slows down the absorption rate of your food in your digestion system thereby causing bloating; it causes an extreme rise in blood sugar, causing the body to crave even more food and increase total calories consumed.

2) Sugar makes you more unhappy: it causes irritability, depression, headaches and decreased emotional stability. Less Sugar = More Happiness. 

3) Over-consumption of sugar and/or sugary foods leads Syndrome X (aka Metabolic Syndrome) which then leads to Type 2 Diabetes. 1 on 3 adults in the US now have Type 2 Diabetes or are pre-diabetic.

4) Sugar causes a host of dental problems: caries, plaque buildup, halitosis, and general tooth decay among others.

5) Sugar is linked to autism, ADHD , ADD and other behavioral conditions in young children. Children whose sugar intake is excessive are crankier, more anxious, drowsier and have more trouble concentrating. 

6) Sugar is addictive. Seriously. Sugar and heroin travel along the same pathways in the human brain.The human body responds to sugar the way it responds to heroin: it releases dopamine, causing a feeling of euphoria and when that effect wears off, the body craves more. Just like the bodies of drug-addicts. You experience sugar cravings the same way a user searches desperately for his next high. The only difference is that sugar is legal. 

7) Sugar is linked to various types of cancer: breast, rectal, ovarian, lung and prostate. Sugar literally feedscancer cells. 

8 ) Consuming too much sugar is linked to a decrease in mental learning capacity. Basically sugar can make you dumber and/or less functional in your daily life and at work or school. 

9) There are now so many natural sugar substitutes that are delicious and taste exactly the same in food, beverages and baking. Try Agave, raw honey, coconut palm sugar, stevia, birch-derived xylitol…So no excuses!

10) Processed  white sugar provides ZERO nutrition- no vitamins, no minerals, no trace elements. It is literally a useless food.

Green Queen could list 100 more reasons why sugar consumption is basically getting in the way of a higher quality of life. Hopefully the above 10 are enough to get you to pause for thought before adding the white powder into your food.