The sugar experiment: 40 teaspoons of sugar for 60 days
What does sugar do to our body?
40 teaspoons of sugar a day? No one can do that, I believed at the beginning of the documentary "Voll sugared". The reality, however, is that this amount corresponds to the Australian average of sugar consumption. The daily consumption jumps by already supposedly "healthy" food in the air.
How much sugar we really absorb and how it affects our body is shown by director and protagonist Damon Gameau on the basis of a self-experiment. 40 teaspoons of sugar for a total of 60 days? hidden in low-fat foods such as yogurt, cereal or juices. The industry often replaces unwanted fat with sugar.
Before the experiment, the Australian lives sugar-free, his values are still below the average. 76 kilograms weight, 84 centimeters belly circumference, a blood pressure of 121 to 79. After two months of sugar consumption, however, this changes abruptly. The result: 8.5 kilos of weight gain, ten centimeters more belly circumference, a beginning fatty liver and the precursor of insulin resistance.
The bitter side of the sugar industry
In addition to this self-experiment, the film is the sugar problems in Australia and America to the bottom. Damon Gameau visits an Aboriginal village, where there was a lot of diabetes due to the enormous sugar consumption. And that, even though the inhabitants were able to do without sugar a few decades ago. Even more frightening is a visit to a small town in Kentucky, where already three-year-olds in their vial take the strong caffeinated lemonade Mountain Dew. The result: The 17-year-old Larry all teeth were pulled. He continues to drink Mountain Dew anyway.
"Fully sugared" exaggerated, complains, polarized. For my taste, the film exaggerates in some places with its brightly colored animations, which lead the protagonist in his sugar-plagued body. Infotainment is the keyword. And even with some statements such as "who knows life only so, does not know what it means to really live" shoots the Australian a little beyond the goal.
Nevertheless, one must leave this film one thing: So vividly was the excessive consumption of sugar in our society probably rarely staged. Even if the scientific findings are rather thin.
What to do about the sugar overdose?
That 40 teaspoons of sugar correspond to the daily average in Australia makes you think. But what can one do against excessive sugar consumption? First, it makes sense to take a closer look at his food. I myself was surprised, where the "white gold" is everywhere.
Screwing sugar consumption completely to zero is easier said than done. But that does not have to be: If you want to live a healthy life, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) should absorb at most ten percent of its daily calories in the form of sugar. Or reduce it to five percent, that is, at most 25 grams. This amount is equivalent to about six teaspoons a day.
