System overload!

How many teaspoons of sugar are you consuming in your food, snacks and drinks, and what are the health implications of this? NJOKI CHEGE explores

What is the first thing that comes to your mind on a hot, sunny day in March? Probably ‘I need something cold to drink’ and so we rush to the fridge or to the shop and grab a cold soft drink. But as you gulp down that drink, the last thing on your mind is how many calories you could be consuming. All you want is to quench that thirst.

Sugars are vital for energy giving, but too much of it is a perfect recipe for health issues, such as heart problems. There are two types of sugars, intrinsic and extrinsic sugars. Intrinsic sugars are mainly from natural foods for example in fruits and milk. These are not harmful, as they are provided by nature and they are meant for us to take.

Extrinsic sugars, on the other hand, are the unhealthy sugars — the ones which we do not need too much of but, unfortunately, that many of us delight in. These are the sugars added to foods such as ice creams, cakes, biscuits, and worse of all, soft drinks. Added sugars can also appear in sweetened yoghurt, soups, spaghetti sauces and other items where you wouldn’t suspect it unless you check the list of ingredients.

Calorie limit

What many of us do not realise is that we all have a certain limit of calorie intake per day, depending on our age, weight, body-mass index, activity level, breastfeeding and whether we have a chronic condition.

For instance, women and older adults need upto 1,600 calories per day, which translates to 22 grammes of sugar or six teaspoons of sugar per day. In other words, women are not allowed to take more than eight teaspoons of sugar a day. For the men, super active women, children and teens, you need up to 2,200 calories daily which translates to 44 grammes of sugar and 12 teaspoons of sugar a day. Teenage boys and super active men need upto 2800 calories which translates to 66 grammes and 18 teaspoons of sugar every day.

Typical diet

Sample these; if in the morning you take tea with two teaspoons of sugar in it, then you are left with six teaspoons to have through out the day. At lunchtime, you wash down your meal with soda, which already contains at least over six teaspoons of sugar per half a litre.

By now, you have already taken sugars way above your daily recommendations, and the day is not done yet. You will probably take another snack at 4pm, such as a packet of sweetened yoghurt, which may contain six to eight teaspoons of sugar, depending on the manufacturer, and a cake or chocolate to go with it. By now, you are on your twenty-something teaspoon of sugar...and counting. You will probably take another cup of tea after dinner, with two or three teaspoons of sugar, and go to sleep afterwards.

If this is your lifestyle, you need to rethink every time you feel like grabbing that bottle of soft drink or energy drink or adding yet another teaspoon to your coffee. You are sitting on a time bomb.

According to Hellen Baliach, Senior Nutrition Officer at the Kenyatta National Hospital, you are prone to a myriad of diseases due to the nature of your sugar intake. Immediate effects of high sugar intake include obesity, diabetes mellitus (2), and lifestyle diseases such as hypertension and cardiovascular diseases.

The food pyramid is a tool that helps you make healthy food choices. The food pyramid can help you choose from a variety of foods so you get the nutrients you need, and the suggested serving sizes can help you control the amount of calories, fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sugar or sodium in your diet. Fats, oils and sugars form the tip of this pyramid, meaning that they should form the smallest quantities of our diets. However, this is never the case.

Empty calories

Refined sugar contains no fibre, no minerals, no proteins, no fats, no enzymes, only empty calories. What happens when you eat a refined carbohydrate like sugar? Your body must borrow vital nutrients from healthy cells to metabolise the incomplete food. Calcium, sodium, potassium and magnesium are taken from various parts of the body to make use of the sugar. Many times, so much calcium is used to neutralise the effects of sugar that the bones become osteoporotic due to the withdrawn calcium.

Likewise, the teeth are affected and they lose their components until decay occurs and hastens their loss, hence the tooth decay we get from eating too much sugars.

Refined sugar, being void of all nutrients, consequently causes the body to deplete its own stores of various vitamins, minerals and enzymes. If sugar consumption is continued, an over-acid condition results, and more minerals are needed from deep in the body to correct the imbalance. If the body is lacking the nutrients used to metabolise sugar, it will not be able to properly handle and rid itself of the poisonous residues.

These wastes accumulate through the brain and nervous system, which speeds up cellular death. The bloodstream becomes over-loaded with waste products and symptoms of carbonic poisoning result.

Sugar also makes the blood very thick and sticky, inhibiting much of the blood flow into the minute capillaries that supply our gums and teeth with vital nutrients. Therefore, we wind up with diseased gums and starving teeth.

Beer limit

But it is not only sugars that cause all these mayhem to our bodies. Beer too, is a culprit. The Kenya National Diabetes Educator’s manual recommends two beers per day because alcohol has health benefits. Moderate intake of alcohol is healthy because this aids in the prevention of peripheral cardiovascular diseases. However, due to the high nature of calories contained in a bottle of beer, too much beer is equivalent to taking too many soft drinks.

Ethical standards

You may wonder, with such information in the public domain and with such adverse effects of sugars to our bodies, how come companies still produce extremely high calorie drinks. Even with bodies such as the Kenya Bureau Standards ( Kebs) tasked to ensure that whatever reaches the shelves is healthy for the public, how come such products are still in our shelves?

Woman’s Instinct spoke to Patricia Kimanthi, the Corporate Communications Manager at Kebs. The statement she sent reads in part: ‘The quality of the soft drinks is guided by the Kenya standard specification for carbonated or noncarbonated beverages – KS 358, which among other parameters has compositional quality requirements that include sugars and limits for microbes and contaminants. These parameters help in determining the quality and safety of the product.’

Asked to comment about Coca Cola, she responds with a statement from Kebs that reads: "The sugar levels are determined using degrees brix where one degree brix is equivalent to one gramme of sugar per 100ml of solution. The Kenya standard specification specifies a minimum of five degrees brix so where we have a drink with 10 degrees brix this will translate to 30g which is equivalent to four teaspoons of sugar for a 300ml bottle of soda . For the can of soda that was mentioned (Coca Cola) we would have to determine the degrees brix, which at 12 degrees for a 250ml can, translates to around 4 teaspoons of sugar per 250ml and eight teaspoons for 500ml.

Unsafe for diabetics

According to Kebs, the sugar consumed from foods is eventually metabolised into energy expressed as kilocalories and does not remain as sugar per se. A 300ml bottle of a carbonated or non carbonated soft drink contains 163 Kilocalories and this is safe considering the recommended daily energy levels for an average person is 2100 Kilocalories. It becomes a concern if it’s consumed in quantities, which are excessive. The statement adds the consumption of these soft drinks can be unsafe for diabetics whose sugar metabolism is impaired as they are unable to metabolise the sugar into energy.

The statement says: "The products have the Standardisation Mark because they meet the minimum quality and safety requirements of the Kenya standard (KS 358) and the regulations in the Food, Drugs and Chemical Substances Act."

The statement ends by stating, "It is important to note that there are other products like jams and sweets, with high sugar content, which are manufactured for human consumption. The spirit is that these products should be consumed in moderation as excessive consumption of any food can be dangerous to one’s health."

So, if you have a sweet tooth, moderation is the way to go. Better still, ensure you substitute those sugars for fruits and vegetables — you can never go wrong with those.