Understanding the Link Between Sugar and Heart Health

Recently, my 6-year-old and I made chocolate chip cookies. These weren’t just any chocolate chip cookies; they were the world’s greatest chocolate chip cookies—the perfect texture, the perfect combination of semi-sweet and dark chocolate, and just the right amount of Maldon sea salt.  These are the kind of cookies that you would find sold in a “shoppe” with a label describing them as “artisanal.”   

These cookies begged to be eaten, and eat them I did.  We first shared more than half of our product with some of our friends, family, neighbors, and teachers.  But the remaining ones had a target on them like a balloon at a carnival arcade, and they were destined to be ‘popped’ into my mouth.  

But this is where the fun stops and reality sets in.  As any heart-health-centered person, I couldn’t simply enjoy the cookie.  Instead, I had to think about that sweet, sweet cookie’s potential impact on my heart.  The article below dives into the connection between sugar and heart disease.

Added Sugar vs. Natural Sugar

Plenty of foods contain sugar, including some recommended for a heart-healthy diet, such as fresh fruit. However, not all sugar is created equal.  

Fruits and to a lesser extent vegetables contain naturally occurring sugar.  They also contain essential nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, fiber, and antioxidants with the fiber acting to slow down the absorption of sugar reducing it’s impact on blood sugar levels. Carbohydrates in foods such as pasta breaks down into sugar by your body’s enzymes.  

On the other hand, processed foods and sodas can contain added sugars to enhance flavor and to act as a preservative.  These provide no nutritional value and are considered “empty calories”…they are the nutritional equivalent to a beautifully wrapped gift box with nothing inside. 

How Much is Too Much?

Regardless of the form – added or natural – sugar tastes good and can be hard not to love.  Sugar also has some addictive tendencies such as increasing the dopamine response in your brain similar to the way drugs do, as reported by the NIH.  Sugar is not all bad.  Sugar breaks down into glucose which provides energy that our cells need to survive, but if we consume too much sugar the glucose gets converted to fat and can lead to medical issues that impact your heart, teeth, bones, and other vital organs.

While we want to be mindful of the amount of sugar consumed in all forms, our primary concern is with added sugars due to their lack of nutritional value.  According to the American Heart Association (AHA), Men should consume no more than 9 teaspoons (36g or 150 cal) of added sugars per day.  Women should consume no more than 6 teaspoons (25g of 100 cal) of added sugars per day.  The FDA’s guidelines, which are what food labels are based on, are a bit looser – their daily value is 50g per day based on a 2,000 calorie daily diet.

Take a look at some of the labels on the foods around your house and you may be surprised by what you’ll find. My daughter occasionally likes to spilt a Nature Valley Oats n’ Honey during our morning quiet time after we wake up and before breakfast.  Sounds healthy right?  Well the two bars in each pack have a total of 11g of added sugar, so each individual bar contains 5.5g.  For reference, a typical sugar pack contains 2-4g.  Ouch.  

Those packets of Trader Joes Oats & Flax oatmeal that I bought for our recent camping trip also sound pretty healthy, right?  They do until you consider that each packet has 11g of sugar…and my appetite can easily eat two.  If you drink Coke, know that each 12oz can contains a whopping 39g of sugar!  Guess what, one gram of sugar contains roughly 4 calories, so 39g of sugar represents 156 calories, just from sugar!

As you can see, it’s pretty easy to hit the AHA’s daily limit, so read labels and be mindful of what you’re eating.

People with diabetes or who are prediabetic or who have other specific health concerns need to be even more mindful of their sugar intake.  Continuous glucose monitors are now failrly common and are used by diabetics and by non-diabetics who are interested in learning how their body responds to the food they consume, providing insight into your body’s blood glucose level.  

However, as noted by UCLA Health and  Vijaya Surampudi, MD, an endocrinologist and assistant professor of medicine in the UCLA Health Division of Human Nutrition, glucose levels are not only influenced by food, but can also be impacted by lack of sleep, coffee, dehydration, exercise, and stress.  The information provided by CGM’s can be overwhelming, so should be used judiciously and ideally under the guidance of a medical professional. 

What Impact Does Sugar Have on Heart Health?

As reported in Harvard Health, a study published in 2014 in JAMA Internal Medicine found an association between a high-sugar diet and a greater risk of dying from heart disease. Over the course of the 15-year study, people who got 17% to 21% of their calories from added sugar had a 38% higher risk of dying from cardiovascular disease compared with those who consumed 8% of their calories as added sugar.  

According to Dr. Frank Hu, professor of nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who was one of the authors of the study, the link between sugar and heart disease is not completely understood, but one connection is that high sugar consumption can overload the liver, leading to fatty liver disease which can lead to diabetes which is a key risk factor for heart disease.

Sugar also increases blood pressure and chronic inflamation which as we at WellTree have discussed in previous posts are linked to heart disease.  Also, since the empty calories in sugar are less satisfying, they can lead to weight gain which is tied to diabetes and heart disease.  

Dr. Hu sums it up perfectly: “Basically, the higher the intake of added sugar, the higher the risk for heart disease.”

How Does the Cookie Crumble?

Well, this is pretty gloomy news as it relates to the tasty cookies that we made.  Am I going to not eat them?  Of course not!  I estimate that each of my chocolate chip cookies contains approximately 10g of sugar, or 28% of the 36g allowed per the AHA guidelines.  The key is to be mindful of your sugar intake and to develop healthy habits that minimize the consumption of added sugars.  Their impact on heart-health is not so sweet.