This substance increases the risk of cancer and is hidden in the drinks you drink every day

The harm of a high-sugar diet is well known to everyone. In addition to increasing our likelihood of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, a high-sugar diet is also a high-risk factor for gout and cancer.

Many people not only pay attention to the sugar content in food, but also pay attention to the sugar content in beverages. However, many beverages that do not taste so sweet or do not contain sucrose or white sugar in their ingredients also contain "invisible sugar" and the sugar content is very high, becoming our "sugar control killer".

The sugar hidden in drinks is far more than you think

1. Many drinks have a lot of sugar in them

In a broad sense, "invisible sugar" refers to the sugar hidden in beverages. In a narrow sense, "invisible sugar" refers to the sugar in beverages other than the sugars we are familiar with, such as sucrose and white sugar. Most beverages contain a lot of sugar. For comparison, let's take the sugar cubes commonly added to coffee as a reference. One sugar cube contains 4 grams of sugar. Here are a few examples:

A 500ml bottle of rock sugar pear contains 60g of sugar, about 15 sugar cubes;

A cup of normal sugar milk tea contains about 45-50 grams of sugar, which is about 11-12 sugar cubes.

A 500ml bottle of iced black tea contains about 48.5g of sugar, which is about 12 sugar cubes;

A 300ml can of cola contains about 32g of sugar, about 8 sugar cubes;

A 300ml cup of regular coffee contains about 16.5g of sugar, about 4 sugar cubes;

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According to the recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2022 edition), we should control the intake of added sugar to no more than 50 grams per day, preferably less than 25 grams. 25 grams of sugar is about 6 sugar cubes. I'm afraid everyone will always feel a little stressed if you eat it all at once, but drinking a 500 ml bottle of beverage in one go seems much easier. It can be imagined that if you have the habit of drinking beverages on a daily basis, drinking two more bottles of beverages a day may already be several times the recommended amount of sugar!

2. Some "0 sugar" drinks are fake

From the perspective of beverage production, the sweetness brought by adding sucrose alone is not rich and pleasant in taste, while adding other "sugars" at the same time will make the beverage more delicious. In addition, the sweetness of some fructose syrup is about 1.5 to 2 times that of sucrose. To achieve the same sweetness, the amount used will be much less than sucrose, and the stability is also higher than sucrose. This type of beverage sometimes advertises "0 sucrose", but in fact it also contains sugar.

The good news is that in recent years, as people pay more and more attention to health, a number of beverages that do not add any sugar or only use relatively healthier sweeteners for flavoring have gradually emerged on the market, which you can consider when choosing.

3. “No Additive” Drinks Contain Sugar

Here we also need to mention a special type of drink - pure fruit juice. Whether it is pre-packaged pure fruit juice or freshly squeezed fruit juice, usually no extra sugar is added, which seems to be healthier. However, due to the "freshly squeezed and concentrated" processing, the content of sucrose and fructose in the fruit juice will also be quite high. In addition, the fruit is processed from a solid state containing rich pectin and dietary fiber to a liquid state containing only fruit juice, which makes it digested and absorbed faster.

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Therefore, drinking too much pure fruit juice will also cause a rapid rise in blood sugar, which is not very healthy for patients with high blood sugar and diabetes. It is recommended that friends who need to control blood sugar and weight should pay attention to the intake of pure fruit juice drinks, or directly choose tea, lemonade, warm water and other sugar-free drinks.

“Invisible sugar” vs. “visible sugar”

Who is more harmful to health?

High-sugar foods are harmful to health in all aspects. So which is more harmful to health, sucrose, white sugar, soft sugar, which are commonly known as "visible sugars" or fructose, which are "invisible sugars"?

Sucrose is composed of one molecule of glucose and one molecule of fructose. As the name suggests, high fructose corn syrup is a syrup with a high fructose content and a certain proportion of glucose, usually extracted from corn starch. Therefore, the composition of high fructose corn syrup and sucrose is very similar in nature. The health hazards of sucrose, such as increasing the risk of obesity, diabetes, high blood lipids, and dental caries, are all present in high fructose corn syrup.

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In addition, many studies at home and abroad have shown that consuming too much fructose syrup will increase the risk of fatty liver. On the one hand, this may be because excessive intake of fructose will greatly promote the synthesis of visceral fat such as the liver; on the other hand, because fructose syrup has a weak sense of satiety, people will eat more foods containing fructose syrup without knowing it. In this way, calorie intake increases, fat conversion increases, and fatty liver, obesity, high blood sugar, cardiovascular disease, etc. will follow.

Another threat that cannot be ignored is that excessive intake of fructose syrup has a direct impact on the occurrence and development of gout. The liver's metabolism of fructose increases the production of uric acid precursors, leading to the accumulation of uric acid in the body, inducing or aggravating gout.

At the same time, a large amount of fructose will increase the body's insulin resistance, increase the uric acid content in the serum, and further increase the risk of gout. A US study found that the sharp increase in the consumption of fructose corn syrup in the United States coincides with the increasing trend of gout prevalence in Americans, which indirectly confirms the above conclusion.

Considering that people currently have a low level of awareness of the harm of high fructose corn syrup and that high fructose corn syrup is extremely widely used in commercially available beverages, it can be said that the harm of this "invisible sugar" is no less than that of "visible sugar".

Learn these tips for choosing drinks

Easily reject "invisible sugar"

In order to avoid being accidentally hurt by "hidden sugar" drinks, we can pay attention to the following aspects when choosing drinks:

1. Avoid at the source: choose natural and healthy drinks

It is especially recommended that you develop the habit of drinking light tea, warm water, lemonade, and scented tea. These natural drinks do not contain sugar and contain a small amount of tea polyphenols, vitamin C and other nutrients that are beneficial to health. People's taste can be developed. For heavy lovers of sweet drinks, if you are not used to quitting sweet drinks at the beginning, you can start by diluting sweet drinks with warm water and gradually transition to the above-mentioned healthy drinks.

2. Learn to read the ingredient list: Identify "invisible sugar"

When choosing a drink, take half a minute to look at the ingredient list. If it contains sucrose, white sugar, fructose syrup, corn syrup, maltose syrup, etc., you should choose it carefully. You should also pay attention to drinks marked with "0 sucrose" or "sugar-free".

Ingredients list of a beverage

3. Learn to read the nutrition facts table: estimate added sugar intake

For beverages, carbohydrates in the nutrition facts table generally represent the added sugar content. By observing the carbohydrate content in 100 ml of a drink, we can calculate the actual added sugar intake of drinking the drink. Then, we can compare it with the daily added sugar intake of 25 grams to determine whether to choose this drink.

4. Learn to make your own healthy drinks

Homemade drinks can better control the sugar content. If you like sweetness, you can directly add fruit pieces, such as pears and grapes, for flavoring. As long as you make sure to drink it right after mixing it, or keep it in the refrigerator and drink it on the same day, it will generally not go bad. You can also add mint leaves, fresh lemon slices, green tea and other auxiliary flavorings to make the taste richer while reducing your dependence on sweetness.

References

[1]Jensen T, Abdelmalek MF, Sullivan S, Nadeau KJ, Green M, Roncal C, Nakagawa T, Kuwabara M, Sato Y, Kang DH, Tolan DR, Sanchez-Lozada LG, Rosen HR, Lanaspa MA, Diehl AM, Johnson RJ. Fructose and sugar: A major mediator of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. J Hepatol. 2018 May;68(5):1063-1075.

[2]Choi HK, Willett W, Curhan G. Fructose-rich beverages and risk of gout in women[J]. Jama, 2010, 304(20): 2270-2278.

[3]Angelopoulos TJ, Lowndes J, Zukley L, Melanson KJ, Nguyen V, Huffman A, Rippe JM. The effect of high-fructose corn syrup consumption on triglycerides and uric acid. J Nutr. 2009 Jun;139(6):1242S-1245S.

[4]Rho YH, Zhu Y, Choi HK. The epidemiology of uric acid and fructose. Semin Nephrol. 2011 Sep;31(5):410-9.

Author: Wang Lu, registered nutritionist in China

Review丨Zhang Yu, researcher/PhD, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, national health science expert