A high-sugar diet may make you look older, as well as fatter

Nicest of the Damned · Post by **Nicest of the Damned** » Tue May 03, 2011 7:07 pm

Just some extra incentive to stick to "no sweets":

http://www.prevention.com/9aginghabits/list/2.shtml

cjgoodson2 · Post by **cjgoodson2** » Tue May 03, 2011 8:10 pm

Do you think that would include fruits? I tend to have a banana with my breakfast and two or three pieces with/as my lunch. It's just sooo good!

gk · Post by gk » Tue May 03, 2011 8:29 pm

Yikes! If that's the case, it's a good thing I found No S....with my love for chocolate, I'd be looking like I was 80 when I hit 50!

NoelFigart · Post by **NoelFigart** » Tue May 03, 2011 8:35 pm

Hmmm...

I do have a sweet tooth and am regularly mistaken for being about 30 or so. (I'm 42).

I think genetics plays a part. The members of my family that did not smoke are notoriously baby-faced.

Nicest of the Damned · Post by **Nicest of the Damned** » Tue May 03, 2011 9:17 pm

cjgoodson2 wrote:Do you think that would include fruits? I tend to have a banana with my breakfast and two or three pieces with/as my lunch. It's just sooo good!

The article only talks about limiting added sugar, not limiting foods that are naturally higher in sugar.

It's a huge pain in the butt to totally eliminate any one ingredient from your diet. I just went through Passover, where you're not allowed to eat wheat except as matzo, I know. Or you could ask someone who has a life-threatening allergy to some common food. They very strictly avoid whatever it is because they could die if they don't. I doubt most of them would do what they do just to make themselves look a little younger.

Now, reducing the amount of some substance in your diet, that's another story. You can just go for the big sources of it, and leave the little ones alone. Unless you're eating a very unusual diet, it's unlikely that fruit is the major source of sugar in your diet. It's much more likely that you're getting most of your sugar from processed foods, restaurant foods, and sweets. Cutting down on those is going to be a much more effective way to get sugar out of your diet than cutting out fruit. If you actually don't eat any of those things, you probably eat so much less sugar than the average American that you really don't have to worry much. Either way, I wouldn't worry about the sugar in fruit, unless you've got a metabolic disorder of some kind and your doctor has told you that you have to worry about the sugar in fruit.