How Sweet It Is...Not

Too much sugar in your diet may raise your risk of dying
of heart disease, even if you are not overweight.

Let’s face it – eating sweets is a huge part of life. When we celebrate, we eat cake. When we are sad, we eat ice cream. When we get together with friends for coffee, we eat cookies. When we were kids and had a boo-boo, mom made it feel better by offering us a treat. 

As a nation, we certainly love our sweets. However, we never see most of the sugar we are consuming because it is hidden in the foods we eat. To give you an idea of how much we are actually eating, if you sat down with a plate in front of you, piled with 22 teaspoons of sugar, you would be looking at the amount consumed by the average American.

While moderate amounts of sugar are fine, too much can lead to health problems such as weight gain, mood swings, tooth decay, and even cardiovascular disease.

A study, “Added Sugar Intake and Cardiovascular Diseases Mortality Among US Adults,” published by a group of researchers about a year ago in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that too much sugar in your diet may raise your risk of dying of heart disease – even if you are not overweight.

The rigorous study followed participants over the course of 15 years. Participants who took in 25% or more of their daily calories as sugar were more than twice as likely to die from heart disease as those whose diets included less than 10% added sugar.

Sugar-sweetened beverages like sodas, energy drinks, and sports drinks account for more than one-third of the added sugar consumed by the average American. Other major sources of added sugar include cookies, pastries, and similar treats; fruit drinks; ice cream and frozen yogurt; candy; and ready-to-eat cereals.

Is sugar consumption actually boosting the risk of heart disease, or is the real problem that people are eating sugar-laden foods instead of healthy foods? To answer that question, researchers measured the participants’ Healthy Eating Index, showing how well their diets compared to dietary guidelines.

The study found that no matter how high someone scored on the Healthy Eating Index, if they ate more sugar, they had higher cardiovascular mortality. In other words, too much sugar leads to heart problems, no matter how healthy the rest of a person’s diet may be.

How much sugar should we be eating every day? The American Heart Association recommends that women consume less than 100 calories of added sugar per day (about six teaspoons) and men consume less than 150 per day (about nine teaspoons).

A 12-ounce can of regular soda contains about 9 teaspoons of sugar, so even one can will put all women and most men over the daily limit.

If you need something sweet, consider a fruit-based dessert. That way you are not just consuming empty calories and you are at least getting some nutritional benefit. Trying to cut down on soda? Try mixing a little fruit juice with seltzer water. Holding a meeting or hosting a party? Offer some healthy alternatives without added sugar, like fruit or fresh veggies. Less sugar is a good thing.

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035734193@N01/434504171">Sunday</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">(license)</a>

Fresh Air Drives Fresh Thinking

Members of Healthier Fosston committee, Michelle
Landsverk, Mark Nohner, Barbara Muesing,
Chuck Lucken, and Kirsten Fageland practice
what they preach.

How many of us have experienced the drudgery of sitting around a table at a meeting while secretly wishing we could be outside, enjoying the beautiful weather?

Well, there is a growing trend in our country that is literally moving people out of the board room and onto the sidewalks – walking meetings.

Yes, from the sidewalks of Fosston to the hills and dales of Silicon Valley, people are re-imagining what a productive meeting looks like; realizing that it is not necessary to sit slumped around a table for hours on end.

Walking meetings have become the norm at LinkedIn, the professional social media platform. On any given day, you can find workers strolling and talking together on the bike path at the company’s Mountain View, California, headquarters. The path takes about 20-25 minutes to circle — perfect for a half-hour one-on-one with a colleague.

The first and most obvious benefit is the exercise. Desk-bound office workers are prone to sitting disease – sitting too much is killing us. (See the Healthy U blog for more on Sitting Disease).

One of the less expected results is the way it amps up creativity and out-of-the box thinking. Walking together breaks down formalities, removes barriers, and fosters camaraderie. It also minimizes distractions like phones, emails, texts, and other interruptions.

Business innovator, Nilofer Merchant, has been helping to grow businesses -- from Fortune 500s to web startups -- for 20 years, working for major companies like Apple, Autodesk, Logitech, Symantec, HP, Yahoo, and many others.  

Merchant was recently featured on a TED talk and shared the impact that walking meetings have had on her life. Merchant was started out as an unlikely advocate for walking meetings, but found that social interaction was what got her moving.

“Someone invited me to a meeting,” Merchant said, “but couldn't manage to fit me in to a regular sort of conference room meeting, and said, "I have to walk my dogs tomorrow. Could you come then?" It seemed kind of odd to do, and actually, that first meeting, I remember thinking, "I have to be the one to ask the next question," because I knew I was going to huff and puff during this conversation. And yet, I've taken that idea and made it my own. So instead of going to coffee meetings or fluorescent-lit conference room meetings, I ask people to go on a walking meeting, to the tune of 20 to 30 miles a week. It's changed my life.”

In recent weeks, I have become an advocate of walking meetings, too. I do business out of my home office, and though I work alone, I spend quite a bit of time on the phone each day. In an effort to get moving, I decided to use a headset for my phone and walk while I talk. I have found that it increases my energy, creativity, and in general – it just helps the conversation flow.

Merchant concluded her TED talk with “Walk and talk. Walk the talk. You’ll be surprised at how fresh air drives fresh thinking, and in the way that you do, you’ll bring into your life an entirely new set of ideas.”

Check out our other articles and please share your comments with us! We would love to hear your thoughts, your story, or your healthy recipe!

HealthyU is being brought to you by SHIP, Polk County Public Health, the City of Fosston, Essentia Health, and several other private partners. Launched in 2008 as part of Minnesota’s bipartisan health reform effort, SHIP works to help Minnesotans live longer, healthier lives while building healthy, vital communities. SHIP encourages healthy eating, active living, and avoiding commercial tobacco by working with schools, communities, workplaces, and healthcare to make healthy choices easier.