The Sugar Involved With Our Declining Health Is Great For Business.

Whatever that’s great for business isn’t necessarily that good for human health.

Wherever we go today, we are bombarded by advertisements for various sugar-rich foods, much like how scantily dressed women are seen in many different advertisements today.

We know that consuming too much sugar isn’t good for our health (and for that matter, neither is it good for us to let our gazes linger longingly on beautiful human bodies), but yet there is a strong draw to this style of advertising because aesthetics and making people feel good are extremely good for business.

And of course, it doesn’t help that the feedstocks for producing sweeteners such as high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) can come really cheaply - there are political and economic motives behind using HFCS that far outweigh the health benefits.

Hence it is getting even more common these days to see HFCS being used as sweeteners in various types of processed foods.

Unfortunately, HFCS does contain a high proportion of fructose sugar.

HFCS is manufactured as a solution of sugar in water. They normally produce 42% fructose (HFCS 42) or 55% fructose (HFCS 55) solutions, while the rest of the solution comprises glucose and water.

According to the US Food and Drug Administration, HFCS 42 is mainly used in processed foods, cereals, baked goods, and some beverages. HFCS 55 is used primarily in soft drinks.

Now, glucose exists as 3 different anomers in equilibrium at pH 7 — α-glucose (37%), γ-glucose (0.003%), and β-glucose (63%). The γ-glucose anomer contains the reactive carbonyl group that can react with the amino groups on the protein, which we can also term as an aldehyde.

Enzymatic activity in the body will convert fructose into glyceraldehyde. In any case, glucose can also be converted into glyceraldehyde.

When we are overconsuming processed carbohydrates comprising mainly glucose and fructose, the danger is the accumulation of all these aldehyde carbonyls in our bodies.

These aldehydes are highly reactive and can cause the Maillard reaction to occur within our body internally, where the carbonyl group on the sugar/aldehyde reacts with the amino group on a protein:

The Maillard reaction has three stages. First, the carbonyl group of a sugar reacts with an amino group on a protein or amino acid to produce water and an unstable glycosylamine. Then, the glycosylamine undergoes Amadori rearrangements to produce a series of aminoketose compounds. Last, a multitude of molecules, including some with flavor, aroma, and color, are created when the aminoketose compounds undergo a host of further rearrangements, conversions, additions, and polymerizations.

This Maillard reaction is one of the factors that are responsible for the non-enzymatic browning of foods.

The slightly browned potato chip that comes out of a freshly opened pack of potato chips? That’s the Maillard reaction right there. Freshly baked brown bread? Roasted brown coffee? Grilled brown steaks? All that browning comes from the Maillard reaction.

The initial step that sets off the Maillard reaction chain is the reaction of a carbonyl group on a sugar molecule reacting with an amino group on a protein or amino acid.

And when the carbonyl group reacts with the amino group on the protein, the protein’s 3-dimensional structure can be altered, which results in the protein losing a fraction of its original activity in carrying out certain tasks.

Much like how haemoglobin proteins can be glycated and induce the fear of amputation in a diabetic patient.

Of course, these aldehydes can react with other biomolecules to form Advanced Glycation End-products (AGEs), which are defined as:

a group of proteins and lipids becoming glycated and oxidized after persistent contact with reducing sugars or short-chain aldehydes with amino group and/or high degree of oxidative stress.

If these AGEs existed just as AGEs and did nothing else to our bodies, then we wouldn’t have to be so concerned about it.

However, our body also contains RAGEs or Receptors of AGEs. As it is mentioned in this article,

RAGE was discovered as a receptor for advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs), such as carboxymethyl lysine (CML). AGEs, the products of nonenzymatic glycation and oxidation of proteins, form to an accelerated degree in hyperglycemia. AGEs, largely via RAGE, activate signaling mechanisms that cause cell stress, contribute to cellular dysfunction, and damage target organs, leading to complications.

When one has hyperglycemia, they would have a higher than usual glucose concentration in their blood, leading to more AGEs.

AGEs signal RAGEs to produce more inflammatory signals, which results in an accelerated transcription of the pro-inflammatory cytokines interleukin 1-beta (IL-1β), interleukin-6 (IL-6), interleukin-8 (IL-8), and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α).

These four pro-inflammatory cytokines contribute to insulin resistance, where they signal cells in the body to take in less glucose than usual based on the prevailing insulin signal sent out.

And while inflammation is a necessary immune system response to deal with associated threats and injuries that the body experiences over time, too much of it is not good for our immune system at all.

So while it is common knowledge that excessive refined sugar consumption can lead to Type 2 diabetes, the link isn’t as direct as most of us believe it to be.

But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out.

There would be an elevated level of pro-inflammatory cytokines in the blood at the beginning stages from that overconsumption of sugar.

There’d also be a heart health component in all this excess carbohydrate consumption.

It was mentioned in this article that:

the hearts of diabetic mice subjected to ischemia/reperfusion in the isolated perfused mode displayed increased damage as assessed by release of higher levels of lactic dehydrogenase (LDH), reduced ATP levels in the heart, and higher left ventricular developed pressure (LVDP), the latter a marker of cardiac dysfunction, compared to nondiabetic mice, and that in the presence of soluble RAGE or by RAGE deletion, these parameters were greatly improved.

Therefore, the activation of RAGEs by AGEs can directly influence heart issues among people with diabetes.

With reduced ATP levels in the heart, the heart muscle’s ability to generate energy is reduced… wouldn’t that lead to people with diabetes feeling fatigued more easily and having much less stamina than a healthy person?

The deleterious effects of AGEs and RAGE activation are highlighted here. It is known that the AGEs that accumulate in the body are reactive and will also have the propensity to alter the structure of our extracellular matrices (ECMs) via crosslinking.

These ECMs will become stiffer, and their mechanical properties and functions will be affected.

Of course, one of the common ECMs in our body is our joint cartilage — so do you suppose, then, that excessive carbohydrate consumption can eventually lead to the development or complication of osteoarthritis or joint pain issues?

It will, because joint cartilage strength is dependent on an aldol condensation reaction — two aldehydes on different collagen protein strands MUST condense and cross-link to provide that structural support.

Imagine what happens if a glucose aldehyde were to condense with a collagen protein aldehyde. There’d be no cross-linking structure whatsoever.

Unfortunately, what’s good for business isn’t necessarily good for human health.

But if we can rely on unhealthy processed foods for emotional comfort after a long day of work? Or if we’re lazy to prepare healthy meals, we go after app-based on-demand (unhealthy) food deliveries, such as UberEats, DoorDash, or Deliveroo.

We’d be opening ourselves up to unwanted addictions to these foods.

Which in turn leads us to get all these unwanted aldehyde reactions in our blood.

This, in turn, leads us to the doctor’s office, where we may end up on prescription subscriptions for drugs that are designed to control symptoms but which may not necessarily deal with the root cause of the issue.

But it’s a great business model.

Only if you’re living a lifestyle far away from these addictions… amassing those profits from either the processed food industry side or the pharmaceutical industry side would be pretty lucrative, though!

From a diet perspective, we’d be able to reduce the risk of developing heart disease if we were more careful about consistently including certain nutrients in our diet — but as I listed in 10 Nutrients That Support A Healthy Heart, how many people are even consuming these nutrients in the first place?

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