young again - helping you feel younger
The article library of


Sugar Is Sugar Is Sugar -Roger Mason

Americans swill down about 160 pounds of various sugars every year. We get 13% of our calories from added sugar. This is in addition to the sugars found in fruit and fruit juice. Fruit juice has as much fructose as a soft drink. No one else on earth does this. That comes to almost a HALF POUND of sugars every day of the year. One third of American children will now grow up diabetic. One third of our kids will have diabetes, but this is accepted somehow as normal. No one on earth stuffs this much sugar down their throats. All sugars are basically the same. It doesn’t matter whether you eat white sugar, brown sugar, raw sugar, corn syrup, honey, molasses, maple syrup, fruit juice, dried fruit, fresh fruit, cane syrup, agave syrup, or any other form of sugar. It’s all sugar folks. All sugar is “natural”. Ethical vegetarians, vegans, and raw food advocates are the worst sugar addicts of all, and their health is generally dismal. You’re just kidding yourself if you think, for example, honey is any different in effect from white sugar. Agave syrup is just expensive fructose- right, the same as high fructose corn syrup. Science proves that sugar substitutes, like sucralose and stevia, are just as harmful. Please read the article Sugar Substitutes.

In macrobiotics sweeteners are rarely used, you don’t drink fruit juice, and fresh fruit is limited to 10% of your diet. Fruit is eaten more in summer, rather than winter, when fresh fruit is not naturally available. Read the article Fruits Have Almost No Nutrition to see that no fruit on earth has any nutrition to speak of. If you eat a mere two ounces of any kind of sugar every day you will get 46 pounds every year. A 16 ounce serving of any fruit juice or soft drink will give you two ounces of sugars. That’s right, fruit juice has just as much sugar (fructose) as soft drinks. Yes, the same fructose you find in high fructose corn syrup. If you eat a mere four ounces of any kind of sugar every day you’ll get almost 100 pounds of sugar every year. A friend in his sixties was on a macrobiotic diet, ate two meals a day, fasted every week, walked two miles a day, played soccer three times a week, took the 20 proven supplements, and the seven hormones he needed. However, he liked various fruit juices, and had just one 16 ounce bottle every day for five years. Just one bottle. Finally the damage kicked in, and he gained five pounds right in his waist, his triglycerides shot up over 100, and his fasting glucose went from 85 to 100.  This is just from two ounces a day of sugar. This is clinical insulin resistance. He would have eventually come down with outright diabetes. Now imagine what happens to people who hog  down over 160 pounds of sugars every year, eat a lousy diet, don’t exercise, don’t take supplements or hormones, and have never fasted in their life.

Sugars are everywhere. Sugars are even in the health food stores. Most all soy milks (especially vanilla and cocoa) are sweetened with sugar (unsweetened soymilks are readily available). How can you keep your sugar intake as low as possible? Take the concept of desserts out of your life. Most Asian cultures do not have the concept of dessert. Limit your intake of fresh (local, not tropical) fruit to 10% of your diet. Do not drink fruit juice. Some people are sugar sensitive, and should not even eat fruit. Fruits contain sucrose (the same as white sugar) and fructose (the same as high fructose corn syrup). Don’t eat dried fruit. Don’t sweeten your tea, and you shouldn’t be drinking coffee anyway. Read your labels. You’ll find sugar in bread, soup, ketchup, salad dressing, cereals, crackers, and all kinds of foods you would never expect to find it. You find sugar everywhere in our society. One hundred and sixty pounds a year per person. No one else on earth does this. In 2020 you now find toxic sucralose in everything.

If you eat more than one ounce of any kind of sugar every day you can expect a world of health problems. Blood sugar dysfunction starts with high blood sugar, insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, and then type 2 diabetes. (Insulin resistance means your cells don’t react to insulin properly, so the pancreas keeps making more and more insulin to compensate.)  Just having high blood sugar levels causes more cancers of all types, heart disease, strokes, Alzheimers, liver disease, kidney disease, hypertension, osteoporosis, prostate disease, female cancers, erectile dysfunction, high triglycerides, and a long list of other illnesses.

What if you really feel the need to eat something sweet? Eat fresh fruit. Get a macrobiotic dessert book and make desserts out of whole grains and whole fruit with no other sweeteners. Do not make this a permanent practice though. You don’t need desserts in your life. This is merely a transition technique, or for occasional use. You will learn to be happy with less sweeteners. You will learn to be happy without desserts. Sure, you can have an occasional macrobiotic dessert as a treat.

You must keep your blood sugar level under 85mg/dl. You can buy TRUEtest meters for $15 in any chain drug store or on eBay.. Remember that just one daily dose of caffeine can also raise your blood sugar dramatically. Read the article Caffeine is Poison.

Don’t even think of using sucralose, aspartame, stevia, and those other  substitutes. Sucralose is now cheaper than sugar, and is used everywhere to save money. It is 600 times sweeter than white sugar!!! You only need one pound compared to 600 pounds of sugar. Stevia is natural, but it is not good for you. Science has now shown that people who substitute chemicals like sucralose and stevia get just as much insulin resistance and diabetes. The receptors in our bodies accept these just as they would regular sugars such as sucrose. All sugar is sugar is sugar.

Click here to return to the article library.