Curiously Awesome

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So, what happens when you eat a piece of chocolate cake?

First, your teeth come into contact with sugary foods. Tooth decay affects almost every person in the U.S. Sugar in the diet influences the sort of organisms that can colonize and grow on tooth surfaces. Everyone has some of these organisms, but people who consume a high-sugar diet have much more dental plaque.

When your chocolate cake reaches the small intestine, the sugar content of the cake passes quickly through the intestinal walls. This causes a fast and dramatic rise in the body’s blood glucose levels… your blood sugar level. Glucose is blood sugar and is the energy source for each cell in our bodies. Every move of our muscles burns glucose and the brain needs glucose for all of its activities.

When this is working properly, we have a constant and even amount of glucose circulating in the bloodstream. Want to hear something amazing? This amount is only approximately 2 teaspoons! Your chocolate cake contains 10 teaspoons. Far too much for your bloodstream to absorb and use. Insulin, which controls the amount of glucose in your blood, is secreted from the pancreas. As it attempts to regulate this excessive amount of sugar, more insulin is issued. The insulin does its job, but frequently does it too well. Your blood glucose level will drop back to normal and will actually continue to drop until too much glucose has been removed from the blood stream. This means that now our muscles, tissues, brain, and other vital organs will not have enough glucose available to perform the necessary functions that they need to accomplish.

Your piece of chocolate cake disrupts the normal blood glucose levels and actually leaves you hungrier in the long run.

Over consumption of sugar has been directly linked to the following conditions:

Anemia, kidney lesions, fat deposits in the kidney, hypertension, arteriosclerosis, duodenal ulcers, asthma, common cold, obesity, gout, gall stones, inflamed gall bladder, allergies, tooth decay, pyorrhea, infectious diseases, indigestion, hypoglycemia, dermatitis, heart disease, and diabetes.

Scientists theorize that humans are born with a preference for sweet foods. This preference likely remains with us for our entire lives. However, there are healthy alternatives that do not wreak the havoc that sucrose does on the human body. The two most readily available and healthy alternatives to processed sugar are raw honey and pure maple syrup. Give your body a chance to wean itself off the drug of processed sugar and give either honey or maple syrup a chance in your diet. You will be thankful both in the short and long term!