Sugar and Cancer

Question one: sweets are one of the biggest treats for Valentine’s, talk about sugar and its connection to cancer. Why is it important for cancer patients to control blood sugar levels?

Here are my thoughts on that:

• Sugar is a flavor enhancer, one reason why food manufacturers use it in their packaged foods, to entice us to eat their food, and eat lots of it
• Sugar in itself is not a forbidden food - it becomes a problem because we tend to consume it in excess, the wrong kind and from the wrong sources
• Consuming too much sugar, creates imbalances in our bodies and that leads us to developing diseases
• Overloading our body with “cheap sugar” (chief culprits: refined carbohydrates) elevates our blood sugar and insulin levels too high, overwhelming our bodies with too much sugar and all at once, placing a huge burden to our pancreas as it needs to produce lots of insulin in an effort to bring the levels down.

The above is not a sensible practice for anyone, but most detrimental for cancer patients. Why?

• Most cancer patients and caregivers will be familiar with the sound bite     “ cancer feeds on sugar”
• There is plenty of evidence that cancer cells need more sugar than normal cells (healthy cells) to grow
• Another issue to keep in mind is insulin levels.  High levels of glucose (sugar is the generic term) trigger the production of insulin, people who have high blood sugar levels tend to have high levels of insulin. This scenario is an ideal environment for cancer to grow.
• Additionally, high levels of insulin also make cancer cells resistant to radiation and chemo treatment, it makes the cancer cells resistant to the treatment
• So keeping sugar and insulin levels at a healthy range key for cancer patients undergoing these type of treatments

How do we control our blood sugar level? Certain food can help with that (complex carbohydrates), while others will actually elevate it (refined carbohydrates). I have written a blog explaining how food that we consume turns into sugar, and which are the best sources. See blog. “Know your carbohydrates”.  As in addition to limiting our overall intake of sugar, we need to watch the kind of sugar you eat.

Question number two: What are the different ways sugar appears in the typical American diet and how we can make smart food choices that reduce the amount of sugar in our bloodstream?

According to the USDA, Americans are consuming 150 pounds of sugar each year.  By the way, our body needs very little added sugar. The dietary recommendation is 32 grams per day (4 grams=1 teaspoon), so roughly 8 teaspoons of added sugar, supposedly keep you in the safe.
• Most of the overconsumption is from sugar hidden in packaged foods and drinks.  Some unsuspected foods that you may think are healthy, such as yogurt, cereals, canned vegetables, canned fruits, peanut butter, crackers, ketchup and salad dressing are all loaded with sugar, often in the form of high-fructose corn syrup.
• It is important to read labels when buying packaged products, as sugar may not be listed as sugar. Sugar takes on so many other names: high fructose corn syrup, fructose, maltose, syrup, sucrose, lactose, fruit juice concentrate, dextrose, cane juice, almost everything that ends with ose.
• If you are buying prepackaged foods, choose food where any of these sugar names is not one of the top 4 ingredients.

• Other culprits are low-fat products, as most contain plenty of sugar to make up for the lack of tasty fat.
Here are some recommendations for using natural sweeteners, instead of refined sugar products. An excess of the sweet flavor from any source will create an imbalance in your body, weaken your immune system, deplete minerals from your body and make you more susceptive to developing diseases, even the natural alternatives you need to you them with moderation.
• If you crave for something sweet, try fruits and/or dried fruits. Try using agave to sweeten tea, drinks, and coffee. Try using rice syrup to sweeten your oatmeal for example.  If rice syrup is not your thing, try stevia, it comes in a powder form, is very sweet, and you need to use only a little. It regulates blood sugar levels, so it is good for diabetics.
• Use Fruit juices to sweeten desserts for example, not as highly concentrated as fruit syrup.

Question number three: is it ok for chemo girls to eat chocolate?

The short answer is yes, chocolate is good for you!

And sweets are OK too as a treat for special occasions. In times of celebration like valentine’s or a birthday, there is a call for sweet and you can enjoy it guilt free. But let it be that, a treat, and not an everyday occasion. 

• Cocoa, the main ingredient in chocolate contains Flavonoids, which are anti oxidants, which help prevent heart disease and cancer.  The more cocoa in the chocolate product, the higher the antioxidant flavonoid content.  Dark chocolate is more concentrated in cocoa content, for this reason, dark chocolate is a better choice than milk chocolate.  One caveat; other ingredients added to some chocolate products, like syrup, milk, other dairy products, sugar coated fruit, etc can change their nutrition impact and cancel out the nutritional value of cocoa.
• What do you do if you do not like dark chocolate as it is too bitter? Use it in your desserts, use it as a dip for strawberries, dust it in fruits, add a bit of sugar (here you control the amount of sugar you put into it) rather than leaving it to the food manufacturer control the amount
• If you want to drink it, buy the one that has the most cocoa concentration and add the amount of natural sugar you put into it

To finish our conversation, I share with the listeners this thought,
the traditional idea of valentine is all about love, and what better way to love yourself than learning to make the right food choices, and hopefully they learned that eating healthy does not equal to feeling deprived from your favorite food, it is all about moderation….