No Sugar During Lent: What are the Health Benefits of Giving Up?
Created: 03/01/2022 10:28 am
By: Sarah Neumeyer
More and more people are trying to limit their sugar consumption.
Lent is a good time to do this.
(Iconic image) © imago-images
Avoiding sugar is very popular during Lent.
Experiments and studies reveal: The effects on the body are considerable.
Frankfurt – Lent offers many people an opportunity to rethink their own consumption and to forgo it.
This can be meat or alcohol, but there is also a trend towards avoiding sugar.
For Christians, Lent lasts from Ash Wednesday to Maundy Thursday, i.e. 46 days.
Since the six Sundays are excluded, there are 40 days of fasting.
In addition to religious reasons, the focus is now often on the health aspect of fasting.
Documentaries such as “The Big Sugar Lie” by Arte and ZDF* have raised awareness of the need to avoid sugar.
Studies and self-experiments show that giving up sugar can have amazing effects on the body.
Avoid sugar during Lent: WHO recommends a maximum of 25 grams per day
Every German consumes an average of around 35 kilograms of sugar per capita per year. According to the knowledge magazine Quarks, this value has risen by around ten kilograms since 1950.
That's more than three times what the WHO recommends.
According to the WHO, consumption should be limited to 25 grams per day, i.e. less than ten kilograms per year.
Too much sugar can have a negative impact on health: Diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular diseases are among the factors associated with excessive sugar consumption.
Fasting can therefore also be an opportunity to reconsider your own sugar consumption in the long term.
However, it is important to note that there are many factors that contribute to the development of diseases
influence.
There is no negative effect of not eating refined sugar, because the body does not depend on it.
If you want to do without sugar, you have to read the ingredients of processed foods carefully, because sugar has many names:
Fasting: studies on sugar - sweetened drinks increase risk of diabetes
If you want to do something good for your body during the fasting period, you can do without drinks with sugar*, because they have been shown to have a negative effect on your health.
"Sugar-sweetened drinks increase the risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus," warns the German Society for Nutrition.
A study by the University of California in San Francisco also shows that not eating fructose improves the health of severely overweight children and adolescents.
The study participants showed improved insulin metabolism and less liver fat and abdominal fat within the study period of nine days.
designation | description |
|---|---|
glucose | glucose |
fructose | fructose |
lactose | milk sugar |
sucrose | Table sugar (compound of glucose and fructose) |
isoglucose | Made from corn starch, can contain up to 90 percent fructose |
Glucose-fructose syrup | Fructose content up to 50 percent |
Fructose Glucose Syrup | Fructose content between 50 and 90 percent |
The addictive potential of sugar has also been scientifically examined.
In a study with rats, the animals showed abnormal behavior after sugar withdrawal.
According to the head of the study, the psychologist Bart Hoebel, this indicates a sugar dependency, but not a sugar addiction, according to wissenschaft.de.
However, it is questionable how well the results can be extrapolated to humans.
Fasting without sugar: Withdrawal symptoms possible at the beginning
If you want to avoid sugar during the fasting period, you should be prepared for possible negative effects at the beginning.
People who start abstaining from sugar report withdrawal symptoms.
These include headaches, tiredness, difficulty concentrating and irritability.
After some time, positive effects such as better well-being, increased energy and a better feeling of satiety often predominate.
This is also reported by participants in a four-week experiment by the WDR program Markt.
Avoiding sugar during the fasting period can have a positive effect on your health
"Such feel-good factors cannot be well documented in studies," says Stefan Kabisch, study doctor at the German Institute for Nutritional Research on the Quarks show.
But those who do without can feel bad at first: “Initially, the sudden drop in sugar intake creates a stronger feeling of hunger, but this quickly subsides.”
Giving up sugar usually results in weight loss because the calorie intake decreases.
The effect of a low-carb diet is similar to not eating sweets or sugar during the fasting period.
The participants in Markt's four-week experiment also lost weight, whether they just abstained from sweets, any kind of added sugar, or sugar of any kind, reports Die Welt.
Among other things, the participants were able to lower their cholesterol levels and minimize an existing risk of diabetes.
If you don't want to do without sugar, you can also try a different diet* or type of nutrition during Lent.
(Sarah Neumeyer)
*fr.de and
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