There are a number of reasons that refined, processed sugar and concentrated sweeteners are extremely unhealthy.
Some sweeteners such as natural raw honey, raw agave, maple syrup and sugar that’s contained in fruits and starchy vegetables are not harmful if they’re not consumed in extreme excess. They are “good sugar.” But refined, processed sugar is a different story—it’s “bad sugar.” I’ll attempt to briefly describe the difference between the two in layman’s terms.
Your chemistry is designed to pick up sugar and deliver it to the cells of the body. This sugar breaks down into smaller and smaller components. In fact, anything that you eat, whether it’s fat, protein, or carbohydrates, is broken down and in part converted into glucose, which is a form of sugar. Glucose is the substance that the brain can absorb and use for fuel.
Your body has a hormonal system that secretes substances that keep blood sugar levels in balance. When you eat fruits and starchy vegetables, the sugars that they contain are coming into the body along with companion nutrients that help regulate things. The sugar is not intense on the body, because it isn’t concentrated.
If I extract the liquid juice from a sugarcane plant and drink it, it's not poison, it’s not harmful, and in fact it’s beautiful. But if I process that sugar, it would change the entire chemistry equation. Processing would consist of taking the liquid and heating it at a very high temperature, reducing it down and evaporating the water, adding more and more and more of the substance, and then drying it out until I was left with a substance that was pure sugar.
This pure sugar would have been isolated and concentrated from its original form. If you ate that sugar, the concentration of it would be too great a burden on your chemistry. The body would have to release more and more insulin to pick up that sugar, and get it where it needs to go or get it out in order to maintain homeostasis. All that work that your body would be doing would cause a spike in your alertness and a spike in your sense of existence. It might even feel euphoric. The concentrated sugar would set up the phenomenon of craving, because it tasted good and it felt good.
But meanwhile you’d be wreaking havoc on your chemistry. One of the bad things that happens with concentrated sugar is that you can develop insulin resistance. That means that you’re not producing enough insulin to pick up all that powerful sugar. That excess sugar in the system also causes fermentation in the chemistry, which converts to alcohol. That alcohol in the bloodstream puts the immune system to sleep to a degree.
There’s a difference, though, when you eat an apple, banana, orange, or plum. The sugar in the food isn’t concentrated, and the food is pure. It contains vitamins, minerals, water, antioxidants and other substances that are vital to the immune system. You can’t live without those compounds. And if you stay away from fruit and starchy vegetables, you’ll also be depriving healthy cells of needed sugar for energy, which they need to perform their various functions.
Another disturbing thing needs to be mentioned. All human bodies have cancer cells within them, and they are either dormant or active. When dormant, the cancer cells are in effect hanging back and waiting for the perfect conditions to be fruitful and multiply.
These cells can thrive in an acidic environment, they can thrive in a high protein diet, and they can thrive in a diet loaded with processed food—in particular, processed sugar. Cancer cells mutate to have more insulin receptors. This means that they will pick up the sugar in the bloodstream, taking nourishment away from the body.
By this point you should understand that processed sugar is bad, bad sugar. But natural sugar that occurs in natural foods is good. We need it. Get away from the foolish modern paradigms of high protein diets and high fat diets. Stay away from diets that concentrate on protein while eliminating fruits. Such diets are dangerous.
What about people with diabetes? This is a bit more complex. But I’ll just state what I understand and what I observed very closely during my time at Juice Press. The problem for the diabetic, either type one or type two, is not fruit and it’s not starchy vegetables. It’s generally too much protein, and other dietary mistakes, including but not limited to processed food.
A person with this particular chemistry problem will experience immediate, positive, beneficial effects if they eliminate all dietary mistakes. If a person wanted to test that, they should attempt to do a completely plant-based diet for 30 days. They wouldn’t really have to change their calorie intake much. They could eat a little bit more than they might think they need to so that they wouldn’t be hungry, as long as they were entirely plant-based and stopped eating all processed foods. No potato chips, no Doritos, no candy, no cake, etc. The diet would need to include salads and a plethora of fruits.
The results would be miraculous. But anyone doing it should discuss the process with their physician; not because it would be dangerous, but because the changes that took place might be so positive as to cause confusion. It might make it so that it wouldn’t be necessary to take as much insulin.
A person shouldn’t attempt to do this on their own—someone should work with them. The before and after results for a diabetic doing a plant-based diet for 30 days would be very impressive. I’ve seen it happen many, many times. I met a great many diabetics working at Juice Press. When they implemented their diets from a 360° healing approach, they got their diabetes under control very quickly. It was then and is now clear that diabetics have to be more concerned with eliminating processed food and reducing or eliminating animal protein from their diets than they do about eating anything from the plant kingdom.