Top 10 Foods That DAMAGE Your Blood Sugar!

Hello, all champions. Today we're going to talk about the top 10 foods that destroy your blood sugar and your ability to regulate blood sugar. And the reason it's so important to understand blood sugar is that it is part of a process that has to do with insulin resistance. And that is when you make a hormone called insulin to control blood sugar, but your cells stop responding appropriately to it. And this is mostly because we overuse sugar and carbohydrate over a long period of time. We overwhelm the system and now the cells become resistant to the action of insulin and will become insulin resistant. And once this insulin resistance progresses a little bit, it's called pre-diabetes. And when it progresses even further, it's called type 2 diabetes. And the reason it's called pre-diabetes is that most people who have pre-diabetes will become type 2 diabetics unless they watch videos like this one and learn how these foods work and how our lifestyle works. And they make some significant changes. Then it is pretty easy, pretty straightforward to reverse it and become insulin sensitive and metabolically healthy again. But this is so important that we start understanding because 50% of the United States population are either pre-diabetic or type 2 diabetic. And the rest of the world is catching up very, very quickly. We don't have as good a number on pre-diabetes around the world, but there are several countries around the world who have surpassed to our worse in terms of type 2 diabetes than the United States is today. So this is truly a global problem. And if you get type 2 diabetes, it will double your risk of heart disease and liver cancer. It will triple your risk of stroke and it will quadruple your risk of Alzheimer's dementia. And then I want to point out something that's really critical to understand. And that is that insulin resistance is a causative factor in all disease, but it is not the only cause of disease. So this means if you have insulin resistance, then that will contribute. It will exacerbate every other disease process. However, it is possible to have a disease, to have a problem, to have a condition and not be insulin resistant. And the first food that will destroy your ability to regulate blood sugar is sugary drinks. And here we have things like soft drinks, we have energy drinks, sports drinks, coffee drinks, we have sweet iced tea, and we have fruit juice. And the reason I put them in different colors is to reflect people's perception. So soft drinks are in bread because everyone agrees that soft drinks are garbage. They're not good for you. They know to avoid those. However, the orange here is not so clear cut. A lot of people drink energy drinks because they think, well, energy is good for you, right? And sports drinks, that's for sports. So that's got to be good. And coffee drinks, that's just coffee and sweet iced tea. It's been around forever. It's just tea. And then a lot of people drink fruit juice. They add orange juice to their breakfast thinking that they're getting something really, really important for their health. But when we look at what's in these drinks, we see that a soft drink on average will have about 40 grams of sugar. And energy drinks 40 grams, then we see 35 grams, 50 grams, 30 grams, 35 grams. So you see there's not really much difference in how much sugar is in these things. And the serving size is going to vary a little bit. And I just try to keep it simple. But some of these things, you're going to be drinking a whole lot more. Like a sports drink, you'll probably drink a whole lot more volume than an energy drink. And same thing with sweet tea, people drink it because it's hot in the summer and they want to quench their thirst. And they might get twice or three times as much sugar as that. And for some reason, there's this big deal about added sugar versus natural sugar to the point where the nutrition label is listing them separately. If there was a world of difference between them, but let me assure you that the sugar in fruit juice is 100% sucrose. It is 50% glucose, 50% fructose on average plus minus 1 or 2%, which is the same exact molecule as there is in everyone of these other drinks. So we're going to give a big red X to every one of these drinks. This is not something that you want to drink if you want to control your blood sugar. And you even want to be careful when you go look at things like electrolytes. Because I went to Amazon and I looked for a recommendation on electrolytes and it says, "Here is a natural one that's good." And it went by, this was the robot called Rufus that Amazon has now. And it only went by the claims. If the product said it was natural, then Rufus says, "This is natural." Now this product had virtually no electrolytes, but it did have 4 grams of sugar in it, but 0 added sugar. So I looked at the list of ingredients and it had coconut water powder. I mean, that sounds so healthy, so natural. And in reality, it is just another name for sugar. So I tried to have a conversation with Rufus and ask why they were listing it separately. And if Rufus understood that this was actually added sugar. And Rufus argued a little bit back and forth, but in the end, I told Rufus that these molecules are identical. There is no difference. And finally, Rufus agreed that yes, you're right, they are identical and it really shouldn't be listed as zero added sugar because this is really all added sugar. So you want to become familiar with these other names that they call sugar. And if you see anything like that, then you put a big red ax on it also. And then when it comes to blood sugar, then we have to understand that there's two factors. There's a short term, immediate effect. And then there's a long term, delayed effect. So the immediate effect that spikes blood sugar today is when we have high glycemic index foods. And even if you're metabolically healthy and you eat something that has a high glycemic index, then you're going to spike your blood sugar. And these are things that contain starch, for example, like rice and wheat, especially if it's processed. And it's also products and things that have sugar and high fructose corn syrup in it because they both spike blood sugar and create long-term damage. And even though these foods are going to spike your blood sugar, a healthy person can handle this. If it happens once in a while and you stay healthy and you eat mostly real food, then this is not going to hurt you short term. But if you keep eating things like this over and over on a daily basis, if it becomes the foundation of what you eat year after year, now you create some damage. And now there are also a few other factors that promote insulin resistance, which is this metabolic damage we're talking about. So the high glycemic foods we saw on the previous slide, they show up again, because if you use these over and over, it kind of wears the body out to some degree. But even more important are the foods that cause fatty liver that puts an enormous stress on the liver and these are fructose and alcohol. These are by far the two biggest categories, the two biggest items that create a fatty liver. And then to add insult to injury, we also have other types of inflammatory foods that create inflammation in the body and therefore also put stress on the liver and move us toward insulin resistance. And these are primarily seed oils, but also all of the junk that they put in processed foods like additives, like preservatives, emulsifiers, flavor enhancers, and the list goes on and on. Food number two that destroys your blood sugar is grains. And that's especially refined grains, but it does not mean that unrefined or whole grains are some type of health food that will maintain and stabilize your blood sugar. When they say that, whole grains are good for you. All they mean is that it's better than the white flower, but it doesn't make it a great food. So here we have things like white flower, we have wheat bread and most people know that white bread and white flour are bad for you, but a lot of people, or even most people think that wheat bread or whole grain bread is good for you. If you buy sprouted bread, most people think that's a health food. And there's some confusion on sourdough because it's white, but it's supposed to a little better, right? And then we have white rice, everyone knows, that's bad, that's just pure starch, and we have brown rice that a lot of people think are good for you. And there are differences between these items, but not as much difference as most people think. So we're going to look at the glycemic index, which is a measurement of how quickly after you eat something, it turns into blood sugar. And pure glucose is the reference, it's the index at 100. And in my opinion, a low glycemic number would be in the 20s or single digits. That's what you get from meat and fish and eggs and cheese and leafy greens, et cetera. And the glycemic index of white flour and white bread is 75 to 85. And wheat bread is a little bit lower, but 65 to 80, you see it can still get up all the way into the middle of the range for white flour. Sprouted bread is a good bit better, 45 to 55, but remember, low glycemic really is about 20 or below. And then sourdough is about the same, it's about 48 to 54, it's about the same as sprouted. And white rice is right up there with white flour, 73 to 89, and brown rice is a good bit better. But remember, all of these are high glycemic foods. If you're having trouble, if you want to control your blood sugar, these are foods you should stay away from. If you're metabolically healthy and you tolerate grains well, then I would suggest getting sprouted or sourdough once in a while. But again, if you're trying to control blood sugar, then we put a big red X on all of these. Food number three is cereals and porridge. And here we have things like fruit loops, we have frosted flakes, corn flakes, rice crispies, plain oatmeal, instant flavored oatmeal, and we have cream of wheat as examples. And most people know that the fruit loops and the kid cereals, they are terrible, they're like cookie crumbles basically. Frosted flakes, a lot of people don't realize quite how bad that is, because it's just cornflake with this little frosting, right? But most or a lot of people still think that the others, cornflakes, etc, are part of a healthy breakfast. So we're going to compare them, we're going to look at a hundred grams of the dry ingredient, the dry raw material. And we look at the net carbs, how much of the hundred grams is actually net carbohydrate, things that become absorbed and become blood sugar. And for fruit loops, it's 85 grams per 100 or 85 percent. Frosted flakes, 83, cornflakes, 81, rice crispies, 87, we have plain oatmeal at 50, we have instant flavored oatmeal at 64, and cream of wheat at 70. So again, there are some differences, but they're all high carbohydrate foods that will turn into blood sugar. So how do they differ then? Because the numbers are relatively similar, that is in how much sugar they have. So the kid cereals, the sweet stuff, they have almost half, they have 37 grams of sugar per 100, so almost half of the carbs are added sugar. In cornflakes, it's much less, it's only 8 grams, rice crispies is 9, plain oatmeal has 1, and that is if you cook it and you don't add a bunch of sugar or honey or syrup on it afterwards, because then it can write up to the kid cereals in terms of how much sugar it has. Instant flavored oatmeal have a bunch of sugar, usually 22 grams sugar added, and cream of wheat would have 14, and this is again per 100 grams. So if you're trying to control blood sugar, we're going to put big red axis on the first four. We're going to put a question mark on plain oatmeal, and if you do that once in a while, then especially if you use steel cut oats that are absorbed slower, then that is something that you could do once in a while, or if you're doing a carb cycling or something, or if you're metabolically healthy. But again, realize if you have trouble controlling blood sugar, then all of these are very high carbohydrate foods. And the instant oatmeal and the cream of wheat also get big red axis. The fourth thing that will destroy your blood sugar is healthy snacks, and I put the quotation marks on healthy, because this is people's perception. Usually they think of these things as something healthy, as an alternative to candy. So we have granola bars, we have protein bars, then we have trail mix, and most trail mix soul has some dried fruit and some M&M's for sweetness. But if you make your own, or if you looked very carefully, you might find some plain trail mix that only has nuts and seeds in it. So let's compare these and per 100 grams of product, the granola bar has 60 grams of net carbs, the protein bar has 56, the trail mix has 66. So again, we think of the trail mix as something much healthier, but the numbers are right there in line with the other two. Now if you have a plane, that's going to drop the numbers significantly down to 26 grams. And if we look at the amount of sugar in here, then the granola bar is going to have 29. So half of the carbs are added sugar, the protein bar is going to be about the same a little bit lower, because there's a higher percentage of protein, but other than that, they're basically just a sweet. And the trail mix are going to have 25 grams of added sugar. But here's where you see the big difference, that if you just use the nuts and seeds, then you're going to have four grams of sugar that occurs naturally per 100 grams of product. So we're going to say no to the first three, because they're way too high and they're way too much sugar. They will both spike a blood sugar, and they will contribute to fatty liver with all of that fructose in them. And with the trail mix, I'm going to put a question mark there, because these are basically very healthy things, the nuts and seeds. But if you notice that the net carbs are kind of high here, they're 26. And that's because virtually all of these trail mixes are going to have cashews in them, typically cashews and sometimes pistachios. And those two nuts have the highest amount of carbs of any nut out there. So if you make your own and you don't have any cashews in there and no pistachios, now you'll have 5% net carbs. And this is if you use things like almonds and pecans and walnuts and macadamias and maybe some seeds like sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds in there as well. And with that, you're going to get 1 gram of sugar. So the plain trail mix that has a little bit more carbs is probably not going to be an issue for most people. But if you're very sensitive to controlling a blood sugar or if you're trying to stay even on a ketogenic diet, then you want to watch for things like that. Number five is candy. And here we have regular candy, the chocolate and the hard candy and the chewy stuff and the gummy stuff. Then we have sugar free sweetened with multitall, which is the sugar alcohol that tastes the closest to regular sugar. So if you're looking for a chocolate that's not regular, this one's going to taste the best. And everyone knows regular candy is bad, but a lot of people think that the sugar free, that's probably okay. And then most people still believe that the artificial sweeteners, the sugar free, but with sucralose and aspartane are good for you that you could eat that without restriction and it's okay. And then we're also going to compare dark chocolate. So regular candy, that's pure sugar. We just want to stay away from that period. But the multitall actually has about half of the impact of sugar, both in terms of calories and in blood sugar spikes and in insulin responses and all of that. It's about 50 to 60% of the impact. Now even though there are no calories in that artificial sweetener, it is a neurotoxin and it is a biome toxin. So it's really really bad for your brain and your nervous system and it's really really bad for the bacteria in your gut that are closely involved with metabolic signaling and with metabolic health. And it has also been found in research that it stimulates appetite. The people that drink a lot of these artificially sweetened drinks and a lot of these artificially sweetened candy, they just make up. for it somewhere else and they overeat on something else. So all of those three, we're gonna get big red X's. Now what about dark chocolate? Well, it depends because dark is not just the color of the chocolate because you could have 50% cocoa in that chocolate, but what that means is the other 50% are sugar. That's basically how that works. So it is almost as much sugar as in milk chocolate and therefore we put a big red X, we say no to that one. 70% cocoa means that there's 30% sugar, but now you're also, it's a little richer, so you're gonna eat less. So that one's kind of questionable. I would suggest that you get up to 85% or above, because that means there's only 15% sugar and it's very rich. So now in a serving about a third of a bar, you're only going to get about four or five grams of sugar. And because it's very rich and because it has some good fats in it, that's gonna slow down the absorption and not really do much damage. So if you want to do chocolate, then you do 85% or up. The number six food that destroys your blood sugar is yogurt. And it's not the yogurt per se, we're gonna compare three different things. So we have low fat fruit yogurt. That's the sweetened yogurt that is mostly sold in the stores. We have frozen yogurt that you basically buy on ice cream stores and ice cream parlors. And then we have full fat sour yogurt, which is the plain yogurt. And they do sell the plain in low fat as well, but I would suggest you get the full fat because that is what normal milk is. And when you talk about Greek yogurt, the way they have done it forever in the Mediterranean area, theirs is actually a whole lot more fat. It's as much as 10% fat in their yogurt. But the fruit yogurt that most people buy has about 30 grams up to 30 grams of sugar per serving. And it is sweeter than Coca-Cola, 'cause it's a smaller serving. Then frozen yogurt, most people understand that it's a joke. It's basically just another version of a not quite as good version of ice cream. So the top two, we're gonna say no two. And then what about the plain yogurt? Well, I'm gonna put a question mark and a check mark on it. And here's why. If you buy the store version that isn't very sour, then that means they haven't fermented it very long. And the bacteria have started eating away at the lactose, but they didn't get very far. And that's why it's not sour yet. The lactose is sweet and the bacteria turn it into lactic acid, which is sour. So the more sour it is, the better it is for you. So milk has about 12 grams of sugar, of carbohydrate per cup. It's not as bad as regular sugar, 'cause it's lactose. But if you are very sensitive to sugar or if you're on a ketogenic diet, then that type of milk or that type of yogurt that is just a little bit fermented will probably kick you out of ketosis. But what you can do is you make your own. And I like to do this. I use about half regular milk and half, half and half. So that puts the fat percentage right around six or seven. And then I run the fermentation for at least 48 hours, up to 60 hours. And now the bacteria consume virtually all of the lactose in there. So now with that type of yogurt, you could do that even on a ketogenic diet. But again, people are different. So you'd still have to check and measure your ketones to see if you can stay in ketosis with that. Number seven is starchy snacks. And here we have things like potato chips, baked chips, crackers, pretzels, rice cakes, popcorn. We have vegetable chips and sticks. So they proudly say that, hey, this is not from potato or from grain. This is made from vegetables. Well, in the end, it is all starch that turns into glucose. These so-called vegetables, they've just extracted the starchy portion from those vegetables. And then they typically deep fry them in some kind of commercial seed oil. And these are very, very high in omega-6s. And they're basically destroyed oils. So even though everyone knows that potato chips is something that you should stay away from, but people feel like based on marketing, the baked chips seem a little bit better and so forth. Well, they're not. They're all pretty much the same thing. And we get big red excess on all of those. Number eight is fast food and deli. And here we have hamburgers and fries. We have hot dogs. We have fried chicken. We have chicken sandwiches that thanks to very effective marketing makes people think that that fast food is somehow different than the traditional one. And then we have subway-style sandwiches. But in the end, they are all very, very much the same thing. You're getting a bunch of starch that turns into glucose. You're getting a bunch of sugar. Most of these things are served with bread. And they have about 15 to 20% sugar in that bun. You're getting chemicals and flavor enhancers and preservatives in all of these foods. And they all contain seed oils. They're either fried in these oils or they contain them in the buns and in the dressings and in the sauces. The only one that you can argue is ever so slightly better would be a subway-style sandwich because you can choose what goes in there so you can put a bunch of different vegetables so at least offset the other things a little bit. But it's not much of an offset. So all of these foods we're gonna say no because they all spike your blood sugar and they all create long-term metabolic damage. And then what about delimits? Can you eat those? Well, I'll put a question mark here because the delimits that you get if you buy a sandwich, they're not the absolute best. They have a bunch of chemicals, they have some sugar, they have some preservatives and they add all these moisturizers and texturizers and conditioners to get it all uniform and juicy. But if you are selective and you go to a deli counter where they have quality items and you can find grass-fed meat. You can find pork and chicken and turkey that has been raised naturally and hopefully organically and you read the ingredient list and it's not a mile long and it doesn't have a bunch of stuff then that type of deli is totally okay. I wouldn't say that you should eat as much of that as you do of other food that you cook from scratch but you don't have to be super afraid of it and you can certainly eat it once in a while. And the ninth item that will destroy your blood sugar is alcohol and there are again two different reasons. Some of them spike blood sugar immediately and some create more metabolic damage. So we have mixed drinks, we have beer, we have dry wines and we have spirits, we have distilled liquor. And what you're getting with these drinks is you're getting primarily alcohol which is a burden on the liver but it depends on the quantity. And a standard drink is typically 14 grams of alcohol and that's gonna vary a little bit with the beer because beer has such a wide range. So 14 grams is if you get a beer that's about 5% alcohol but a lot of new beers like IPAs and imports they go way up like eight or 9%. A glass of wine is gonna have 14 grams of alcohol and a serving of liquor is defined as one and a half ounces of alcohol at 40%, which would be 14 grams. So when it comes to alcohol which is the biggest burden on the liver you're getting about the same amount unless you're getting a stronger beer than you're getting more. But then we also wanna look at the sugar and specifically the fructose because if you're getting the added sugar now 50% of that is going to be fructose which is almost as bad as alcohol gram for gram. And with a mixed drink you can get 20 to 40 grams of sugar. So in terms of liver damage, if you're getting a mixed drink the sugar is worse than the alcohol by far. A beer is typically not really gonna have any sugar, almost zero. Dry wine is going to be very low, like 1 to 3 grams and distilled spirits by definition because they're distilled, they're going to have zero. And then we look at the total carbs also because these are things that can turn into glucose, even if it doesn't have fructose in that part of it. So with mixed drinks, we have about 10 grams in there that could be something else than sugar. And with beer, we could go anywhere from 5 to 15. There are some light beers, there are some micro light beers that could have down to 1 or 2 grams. But for most beers it's going to start at 5 and some of the ones with more flavor, a little heavier beers are going to be up to 15 grams of carbs. And again, that can turn into glucose, but it's not as bad as sugar because it doesn't have fructose. The dry wine is going to have 3 to 4 grams and the distilled liquor, the spirits are going to have zero. So we're going to say no, definitely to the mixed drinks. And then when it comes to beer, there's really no alcohol that's good for you. But if you're going to drink once in a while, then I put a question mark on beer because it does have the alcohol, it does have some carbs that can turn into glucose, but it is virtually zero on the sugar that is the worst for the liver. And then on the dry wines and the spirits, I put both a question mark and a check mark. And the reason is for the check mark is those two are by far the preferred drink. If you're going to drink, then those would be your best choices. But the question mark I put there is because there's really not a health food. It's not something that you're supposed to do or that's good for you, but because it is such a big part of our society, a lot of people are going to drink anyway. So if you do, then go for the dry wine and the distilled spirits. And when it comes to alcohol, it's really mostly about the quantity. So you want to try to keep it to 1 to 2 drinks per day, and typically that's going to be one drink a day for a female or a smaller person, and two drinks no more than two drinks a day for a male or a larger person. And also, you want to not drink every day. So try to keep it no more than maybe four days a week. So you give three days for your body to kind of get a break. And the 10th thing that will destroy your blood sugar is vegan and gluten free. And let me qualify that because I'm not a post to vegan, I'm not a post to gluten free. But when they make alternative products, they're very often worse than the original. So if you go by a vegan ice cream or you go by vegan fast food or you go that the vegan meats, they're always going to spike blood sugar more than the original. And that holds true also for gluten free bread. If they take out the wheat and the gluten, they usually put in something like tapioca starch or corn starch or potato starch or rice starch that spikes blood sugar even more than white bread does. And also be very careful with plant milks. If you get them, make sure you get the unsweetened version because oftentimes they'll compensate for really not having any flavor by pumping a bunch of sugar in there. And also a lot of meat substitutes, whether they be the new founded meat alternatives, there are more or less a franken food in my opinion, or the protein substitutes like textured vegetable protein, etc. They'll always spike blood sugar more. And they'll be more prone for reactions, for allergic reactions than meat wood. So I'm going to say no to all these foods because they're getting into the realm of franken foods. I mean they've even talked about 3D printing meat substitutes. I think I'd rather get it from Mother Earth. And these vegan and gluten free alternatives are usually higher in starch and they're usually more processed than the food that they're replacing. So again I'm not opposed to vegan or gluten free if that is your decision, but if you are vegan, then try to do it as much as you can with whole food. If you enjoyed this video, you're going to love that one. And if you truly want to master health by understanding how the body really works, make sure you subscribe, hit that bell, and turn on all the notifications. So you never miss a life-saving video.