If you're trading eggs for breakfast cereal instead because you think it’s better for your heart, you might want to reconsider. A very large-scale study, involving tens of thousands of Americans, revealed recently that it’s sugar, not the fat in the egg yolks you crave, that increases the risk for heart disease. It’s hard to find a breakfast cereal that isn’t drenched in sugar and a sugary sweet diet can increase the risk of heart attack by as much as 400%, according to the findings of the study.
Epidemiologists recently examined the dietary, medical, and death records from 1988 through 2006 of 42,880 Americans to determine if added sugar intake contributed to their risk of death due to cardiovascular disease. The connection proved to be undeniable.
This is good news to Mark Hyman, who writes in a blog at The Huffington Post, “It’s over...It’s sugar, not fat, that causes heart attacks.” Hyman is a practicing physician who founded The UltraWellness Center and is a bestselling author and frequent contributor to The Huffington Post.
Some of the not-so-sweet facts about sugar Hyman reveals include:
- One 20-ounce soda raises the risk for heart attack by approximately 30%.
- Americans get most added sugar from sweetened beverages.
- On average, 37% of the average American’s sugar intake comes from sodas.
- The average teenage boy consumes 34 teaspoons (just less than 3/4 cup) of sugar every day.
- A sugar-rich diet puts American kids at risk for heart attacks by age 20.
- There’s more sugar in a serving of tomato sauce than in a serving of Oreo cookies.
- There’s more sugar in fruit-flavored yogurts than in a Coke.
- Most breakfast cereals are at least 75% sugar by weight.
- Sugar calories aren’t merely empty calories, they’re deadly calories.
- So are calories from white / processed / enriched flours.
- Processed flour raises blood sugar levels higher than sugar does.
- The average American consumes about 152 pounds of sugar every year.
- The average American consumes about 146 pounds of processed flour each year.
- Sugar and processed flours are biologically addictive.
- Sugar is 8 times more addictive than cocaine.
- Excess sugar in the diet causes cancer, dementia, heart attacks, obesity, and type 2 diabetes.
- Sugar is the #1 cause of liver failure among Americans.
The American Heart Association recommends no more than 5% to 7.5% of added sugar to a person’s daily diet. According to Dr. Hyman, more than 70% of Americans get 10% of their calories from sugar every day but 10% get a whopping 25% — one out of every four calories — from sugar.
Ready for some scrambled eggs for breakfast? Previous studies indicate people who eat an egg or two for breakfast don’t consume as many calories over the course of a day as people who breakfast on cereal and pastries or who skip this all-important meal altogether. The fats in egg yolks are nutrient-rich and highly beneficial, the egg’s high protein content releases appetite-suppressing hormones that quiet the munchies, and there is virtually no sugar at all in an egg.
Source: Hyman, Mark, MD. “Eggs Don’t Cause Heart Attacks -- Sugar Does.” HuffPost Healthy Living. TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. Feb 9, 2014. Web. Mar 11, 2014.