Its good for muscle growth

Sugar isn’t necessarily bad for muscle growth, but it may not provide your body with the nutrition it needs for muscle building. And eating too much candy before lifting can cause abdominal distress. The most common forms of sugar also contain little to no nutritional value.

While it is true that our bodies need carbohydrates, we’re “completely capable of getting all the natural sugars [we] need from a healthy balanced diet.”

Sugar causes diabetes

Even though sugar does not cause diabetes directly, diabetes and other serious health problems are absolutely related to sugar consumption, and reason enough to cut back on the amount of sugar you consume.

Fructose in fruit is bad for you

The fiber in whole fruit contributes to a sense of fullness. Eating fiber also results in less carbohydrate being absorbed in the gut. In addition fiber consumption allows the brain to receive a satiety signal sooner than it would otherwise, so we stop eating sooner.

“You’ve heard of the ‘fog of war’? What about the ‘fog of food’? Can you wade through the flood of the soft drinks aisle? Or through the tundra of the frozen food aisle? Can you extricate yourself from the debris in the chips aisle? We lost 50,000 lives in Vietnam. But we lose hundreds of thousands every year from the damage done in the supermarket.”

— Robert Lustig, MD, MSL

Sugar is poison

This one is a little less clear, but studies have shown that excess sugar is treated as poison inside the body. Unrefined sugars show no impact on health. However, sugar both drives fat storage and makes the brain think it is hungry. According to Robert Lustig, it is the fructose in sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup that is most harmful to our bodies. Lustig believes that fructose generates greater insulin resistance than other foodstuffs, and that fructose calories, therefore, fail to blunt appetite in the same way as other foods.

This means, no matter how much fructose you eat, you never feel full. Therefore, the more sugar you eat containing fructose, the less full you will feel. That’s why drinking sodas filled with fructose makes your body fill like it is starving.

Healthcare Concerns

Consumption of added sugars has been implicated in increased risk of a variety of chronic diseases including obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) as well as cognitive decline and even some cancers.

Americans are eating and drinking too many added sugars, which can contribute to health problems such as weight gain and obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease. To live healthier, longer lives, most Americans need to move more and eat better, including consuming fewer added sugars.