At the top of the list of consumed "non-food"... that is actually a "negative food" is sugar.

Sugar does not provide any vitamins, minerals or fiber except in the tiniest amounts and thus is considered by nutritionists to be an 'empty' calorie food.  Source

For sugar to be processed by our bodies health has to be pulled from other areas to simply get this non-food through our system.

With the development of crops and farming came major changes to our diet in the form of ingesting large quantities of starches and sugars.  Believe it or not, in the millions of years prior to 10,000 years ago, starches and sugars were almost totally absent from our diet.  If you look at the span of human history, 10,000 years is the blink of an eye compared to millions of years.  In fact, by the time we developed agriculture 10,000 years ago, 99.99% of our current genes were fixed.

What does all this mean?  It means we were not programmed to eat starches and sugar, and our bodies still have not evolved to handle it.   Our body is still programed to be a hunter-gatherer, living on wild game, nuts, and a few seasonal berries.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 65% of all adult Americans are overweight, and 27% are obese.  When you eat a significant amount of either sugar or starch, it spikes your blood sugar, which prompts your pancreas to release insulin.  This is why you feel sleepy and tired in the mid-afternoon after a pasta lunch, or at mid-morning after a breakfast of doughnuts and orange juice (Note: orange juice 100% pure fruit sugar.)

Label reading is a must!

You can find grams of sugar listed right under "carbohydrates" on the nutrition facts panel. If it's a dairy product or has some real fruit and/or vegetables, you can assume some of the sugar is natural.

You will know a product contains added sugars if you take a peek at the ingredient list. Be on the lookout for "hidden names" of added sugar, such as:

• Cane juice
• Corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup
• Dextrin, dextrose
• Fructose
• Glucose, maltose, sucrose
• Honey
• Barley malt
• Turbinado
• Brown sugar
• Sucanat

Also know that sugar can lurk in places you may not expect, including fat-free foods. These may have more calories and sugar than their higher-fat counterparts.

The not-so-sweet truth about sugar by By Jane Harrison, R.D.,

Love your sweets? Most Americans do, even though we know that sugar causes tooth decay and contributes to diabetes and obesity. But evidence is mounting that a diet high in sugar may be linked to other chronic conditions, such as high blood pressure and heart disease.

In response, the American Heart Association (AHA) has updated its guidelines in a new scientific statement: Dietary Sugars Intake and Cardiovascular Health. Before, the AHA advised simply limiting sugar intake. Looking to be more proactive, the new guidelines state that:

• Added sweeteners (sugars that aren't naturally part of the food we eat) should not account for more than 100 calories a day for women or 150 calories for men.

For the average adult, that's roughly five to nine teaspoons, or 20 to 36 grams of added sugar per day. With about eight teaspoons of added sugar, a regular 12-ounce soft drink will put most women over the suggested daily limit. Read more

Why Sugar is Poison?

Dr. Abram Hoffer said, “Refined sugar and all refined foods such as polished rice, white flour, and the like are nothing else than legalized poisons”, and that “sugar is the basic addictive substance from which all other addictions flow”.  We certainly know that this is true with alcohol.  Many foods have a high glycemic index, which is to say that they break down rapidly into sugar in the blood.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    The pancreas is then stimulated to produce insulin and gets worn out by too much demand.  The body also goes into hyperactivity to store the sugar as fat, to produce cholesterol, and to conserve water.  This is happening with all sugar, fruit, or carbohydrate you take in.  Simple sugars (to include fruit) and carbohydrates have higher glycemic indices.

You can use several visualizations here.  One is to conjure up a two year old into whom you have just inserted a large piece of chocolate cake with frosting and ice cream all made with white sugar and flour.  You are surely all familiar with the hyperactivity of such a child.  The body of that child has just experienced blood sugar shock and is trying desperately to process the sweets.  It involves the entire body but impacts the blood vessels, which lose their oxygen carrying capacity, the pancreas which struggles desperately to produce enough insulin to deal with the sugar, the insulin which is trying mightily to bring the sugar into the cells to be used as energy. 

Another helpful image is the sugar-in-the-gas-tank vision.  When, in the old days, before the sophistication of police detection, opponents to clear cutting of redwoods would sneak up in the night and pour sugar into the gas tank of the logging trucks.  It was remarkably effective in stopping the engines of the trucks by causing them to seize up, which is the same effect it has on the two year old or you.

Lower sugar (glucose) levels allow insulin to promote amino acid uptake in almost all cells and tissues, promotes more efficient degradation of glucose by oxidation (fewer free radicals for one), promotes healthier liver function, and helps your body in many other ways.  Read more

Refined Sugar - The Sweetest poison of All...

Why Sugar Is Toxic To The Body

In 1957, Dr. William Coda Martin tried to answer the question: When is a food a food and when is it a poison? His working definition of "poison" was: "Medically: Any substance applied to the body, ingested or developed within the body, which causes or may cause disease. Physically: Any substance which inhibits the activity of a catalyst which is a minor substance, chemical or enzyme that activates a reaction."1 The dictionary gives an even broader definition for "poison": "to exert a harmful influence on, or to pervert".

Dr. Martin classified refined sugar as a poison because it has been depleted of its life forces, vitamins and minerals. "What is left consists of pure, refined carbohydrates. The body cannot utilize this refined starch and carbohydrate unless the depleted proteins, vitamins and minerals are present. Nature supplies these elements in each plant in quantities sufficient to metabolize the carbohydrate in that particular plant. There is no excess for other added carbohydrates. Incomplete carbohydrate metabolism results in the formation of 'toxic metabolite' such as pyruvic acid and abnormal sugars containing five carbon atoms. Pyruvic acid accumulates in the brain and nervous system and the abnormal sugars in the red blood cells. These toxic metabolites interfere with the respiration of the cells. They cannot get sufficient oxygen to survive and function normally. In time, some of the cells die. This interferes with the function of a part of the body and is the beginning of degenerative disease."2

Refined sugar is lethal when ingested by humans because it provides only that which nutritionists describe as "empty" or "naked" calories. It lacks the natural minerals which are present in the sugar beet or cane.  Read more

SUGAR AND MENTAL HEALTH

In the 1940s, Dr John Tintera rediscovered the vital importance of the endocrine system, especially the adrenal glands, in "pathological mentation"-or "brain boggling". In 200 cases under treatment for hypoadrenocorticism (the lack of adequate adrenal cortical hormone production or imbalance among these hormones), he discovered that the chief complaints of his patients were often similar to those found in persons whose systems were unable to handle sugar: fatigue, nervousness, depression, apprehension, craving for sweets, inability to handle alcohol, inability to concentrate, allergies, low blood pressure. Sugar blues!

... when Tintera dared to suggest in a magazine of general circulation that "it is ridiculous to talk of kinds of allergies when there is only one kind, which is adrenal glands impaired...by sugar", he could no longer be ignored.

Today, doctors all over the world are repeating what Tintera announced years ago: nobody, but nobody, should ever be allowed to begin what is called "psychiatric treatment", anyplace, anywhere, unless and until they have had a glucose tolerance test to discover if they can handle sugar. Read more

The Scary Truth About Sugar

By Carolyn Dean, MD, ND

So what's wrong with refined sugar? Many things. First, sugar compromises immune function. Two cans of soda (which contain 24 teaspoons of sugar) reduce the efficiency of white blood cells by 92 percent-an effect that lasts up to five hours, according to Kenneth Bock, M.D., an expert in nutritional and environmental health. Since white blood cells are an integral part of your immune system, if you happen to meet a nasty virus or bacteria within five hours of drinking a few colas, your immune system may be unable to fight off the invader.

Refined sugar also overworks the pancreas and adrenal glands as they struggle to keep the blood sugar levels in balance. When you eat sugar, it is quickly absorbed into your blood stream in the form of glucose. This puts your pancreas into overdrive, making insulin (which carries glucose to your cells to be used for energy) to normalize blood sugar levels. But this rapid release of insulin causes a sudden drop in blood sugar. In reaction to the falling blood sugar, excess adrenal cortisone is stimulated to raise blood sugar back to normal. A constantly high intake of simple dietary sugar keeps this roller coaster going and eventually overworks or "burns out" normal pancreas and adrenal function leading to early menopause, adult-onset diabetes, hypoglycemia, and chronic fatigue.

The purpose of eating is to provide your body with nutrients. But since sugar is devoid of nutrients, the body must actually draw from its nutrient reserves to metabolize it. When these storehouses are depleted, the body becomes unable to properly metabolize fatty acids and cholesterol, leading to higher cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Drawing on the body's nutrient reserves can also lead to chronic mineral deficits, especially in magnesium (a mineral required for more than 300 different enzyme activities) and chromium (a trace element that regulates hormones such as insulin), putting you at risk for dozens of diseases, from depression to attention deficit disorder to asthma.

A recent study, for example, found that kids who eat significant amounts of junk food are much more likely to develop asthma than kids who don't eat junk food. While the researchers didn't tie asthma to sugar itself, they did point out that a diet full of candy and other highly processed junk foods is deficient in a number of nutrients essential to health. And as I explained earlier, such foods further deplete the body of nutrients once consumed.

In fact, children are the biggest consumers of nutritionally void junk food at a time when their brains and bodies are growing rapidly and in need of a nutrient-dense diet for proper development, both physically and mentally. Criminologist Stephen Schoenthaler has been conducting nutritional studies on delinquents and public school children for almost thirty years. In a paper from 1986 he describes how one million kids improved their test scores when they eliminated sugar and white flour from their diets. Read more

This goes on and on!  And we do not require one bit of dietary carbohydrate, AKA; sugar.

If the excessive consumption of sugar leads to disease... then it follows... that the avoidance of sugar (in all it's forms) leads to the avoidance of disease!