Sugar earns its bad reputation because it is always associated with the main factor that causes the spike of blood sugar level in diabetic patients, obesity and tooth decay. However, do you know that no human could live without sugar? Even your tongue knows better that everything sweet always win over others flavors. It is because there are a lot of benefits of sugar for health, so no one will survive without consuming sugar. The main compound of sugar is glucose and even in the tartest fruit you could find on earth may contain glucose. In other words, there is no way you could avoid sugar unless you eat nothing.
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What is Sugar?
You may say that you cannot live without sugar but you will be surprise that not everyone knows how sugar could be available in their table or in their coffee every morning. As mentioned above, sugar could be found in almost every plant you could find on earth but commercially, sugar is extracted from sugarcane or sugar beet. Sugar is the English word but the etymology comes from Arabic sukkar. As you may have known there are a lot of types of sugar and some of them are mostly found in every home as the list below:
- Granulated sugar is the most common type of sugar that usually available in your table to be mixed with tea or coffee and added to foods.
- Brown sugar is mostly used in baking because it gives more texture and color.
- Powder sugar is actually used in baking as well especially types of baking that required sugar to be quickly dissolved.
- Sugar cubes are available in two types, white and brown. Sugar cubes actually made from granulated sugar or brown sugar which are pressed in block shape and usually serve with coffee or tea.
- Liquid sugar is just another type of granulated sugar that is dissolved in water.
Those are only some types of sugar that you commonly find around you. Those are mostly already refined because they have through several process that affect its purity until they arrive in your table.
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Nutritional Value of Sugar
| Sugar (Granulated Sugar)
Serving Size: 3 grams – 1 serving package |
|
| Calories | 10.6 – 1% |
| Total Carbohydrate | 2.7 g – 1% |
No matter how many articles you have read about suggestion to quit sugar but you know better that quitting sugar is not an easy task especially you who love sweet stuffs. If you want to quit sugar, you should avoid ice cream, candy, most types of cake and many more. In short, you should stop eating most of foods that are considered as delicious foods in the world. Are you ready for that? Well, to find out more about the benefits of sugar for health, some list below may open your mind that sugar is not a scary thing.
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Sugar for Healthy Living
Healthy living is not always about avoiding sweet stuff but much more about managing to eat foods in diversity not avoiding them.
- Sugar is Excellent Calories Source
Calories are always associated with weight gain and obesity. That’s why a lot of people are spending most of their times counting calories they consume. However, calories are the reasons why you have energy to do some activities, that’s why whenever you consume calories is better to find a way to burn it.
Also read: Foods and Drinks Calories Table
- Sugar for Insulin Benefits
Insulin is essential to the production of energy. Without which, glucose will remain in your bloodstream and cause the spike of blood sugar. Insulin will turn glucose into energy that you could use to do all the activities all day.
Also read: Most Dangerous Foods for Diabetes
- Sugar is Excellent Energy Source
If you need immediate energy booster, sugar is the excellent source. That’s why, when you add sugar to your coffee in the morning, the combination of caffeine and sugar will give you the energy booster you really need. However, you need to careful because too much sugar will give you too much energy but only for a while, so you should spend the rest of the day being sluggish and unfocused.
- Sugar to Store Energy
Sugar has prominent role in human body metabolism because glucose found in sugar if it is not used or turned into energy will be stocked in your body cells as glycogen. This compound is excellent source of energy wherever you need it. However, too much stored glycogen in your body cells will be turned into fat that will lead to conditions like weight gain and obesity.
- Sugar is Solution to Instant Mood Booster
Whenever you feel sad or moody, try to eat candy or add more sugar to your herbal tea. It is because sugar contains some compound that will send certain signal to your brain to produce more dopamine, a hormone that is responsible to euphoric feeling. It will improve your mood and make you a little happier.
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Sugar for Healthy Skin
Well, you must be surprised if you make a list of how beneficial sugar for the health of your skin is. The list below may tell you some but actually there are more.
- Sugar Contains Glycolic Acid
If you are not familiar with glycolic acid; it is type of acid compound that responsible to protect your skin from sun-damaged and premature aging and sugar is the natural source of this glycolic acid. However, since covering your skin with sugar is not the solution to protect it from bad effects of UV rays, using sunscreen is still highly recommended while sugar is only used for regular treatment.
- Sugar for Natural Skin Scrub
How much money you should spend to go to spa or purchasing expensive skin scrub products? Well, you could save more money if you know how to make homemade and natural skin scrub made from sugar. Sugar contains AHA or Alpha Hydroxy Acid which is an excellent exfoliant. It will exfoliate the top layer of your skin to eliminate the dead skin cells and reveal the natural skin glowing.
Also read: Benefits of Ginger for Skin
- Sugar for Kissable Lips
Well, just like sugar is effective to remove dead skin cells in your body, sugar is also excellent to remove dead skin cells in your lips. Just by applying the mixture of sugar and honey to your lips every day, you could kiss goodbye peeling and chapped lips for good. Instead, you will get smooth and kissable lips.
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- Sugar to Eliminate Blackheads
Not only for your body skin and lips, you could also apply sugar as face scrubs. However, since skin face is more sensitive than body skin, you should mix it with some ingredients that give more benefits to your skin face like sesame oil. Applying them to your skin face and then rub it slowly in circle to help removing the blackheads and then wash them off with warm and then cold water to close the open pores after the scrubbing.
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- Sugar to Lighten the Toned Skin Areas
It is very annoying when your skin products cannot deal with some toned skin areas like in your armpits, elbows and knees. However, you don’t need to worry anymore because the same natural skin scrubs you have made for your body could be applied to those tone areas as well for smoother and healthier skin.
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Cautions of Sugar
If you make the list of bad effects of sugar, the list is probably much longer than the benefits of sugar for health but still, you cannot just judge sugar to be the bad guy that cause harms to your body. Sugar will do its job excellently if you only consume it in moderate amount. If you cannot control your appetite toward sweet stuffs and got all the bad effects of sugar, it is not sugar’s fault but yours. The list below only occurs when you consume sugar without consideration.
- Too much sugar in your body could cause weight gain that could lead to obesity. However, consuming too much sugar for those with underweight issue is not recommended because though it may help them gaining weight but more harmful effects may likely to occur as well.
- Sugar is giving benefits to insulin but too much sugar will cause the spike of blood sugar that will lead to diabetes.
Also read: Diabetes Treatment
- Sugar is never friendly for heart especially in high dosage. Not only that, sugar also responsible to the increase of cholesterol level.
- The excess insulin in your blood stream could be harmful for your blood vessels too that will lead to high blood pressure. Uncontrolled blood pressure could be really fatal because it will lead to conditions like stroke or heart attack.
- The most dangerous thing that sugar could do to your body is when it starts to give you addiction, so be careful with the amount of sugar you consume.
- Too much sugar in your body could turn you into someone else because it could be an excellent energy booster but if it is too much, you will feel energized for no reason and hyperactive in a very bad way.
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So, sugar is probably making your coffee sweet, your mood better and your skin smoother but too much of it will give you nothing but harmful and scary effects. Furthermore, if you really want to avoid sugar, you could avoid all kinds of refined sugar and instead consume the raw or natural sugar only for all the benefits of sugar for health. For sweetener alternative, don’t fall to some commercials that said about corn-sugar is better than sugar, well corn-sugar is much worse than the actual sugar. Honey and natural fruit juice are still the best sweetener alternative in this matter.