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For decades, health practitioners have talked about fats and cholesterol as the villains of ill health and heart disease. The fats were a strict no-no as diet plans grew around their exclusion and an entire medical and wellness industry went around believing that cholesterol reduction was the goal.

All this while, sugars stayed quietly in the background, hiding their presence in food like breakfast cereals, bakery biscuits or in the form of desserts, candy chocolate and even some health-food bars. sugars even found their way into sauces, juices, tonic water and dressings. research suggests that billions of dollars have been spent by the sugar lobby globally for governments and doctors to NoT talk of sugar as a major contributor to ill health and to keep the fats and cholesterol association the only thing we talk about.

But though a diet that is high in animal protein and unhealthy fats is not a healthy one, sugar worsens the lipid (fats) profile, increasing the levels of low-density lipoprotein (ldl, the bad cholesterol) and triglycerides. It also lowers levels of the good cholesterol—high- density lipoprotein (hdl). a poor lipid profile can indeed increase the risk of heart disease, but the role of sugar remains unpublicized. Excessive sugar may also be associated with insulin resistance and eventually lead to diabetes.

Sugar was only associated with diabetes. Its connection with dysbiosis (by fueling unfriendly colonies of yeast and candida) is only recently being recognized. as is the villainous role played by hidden and invisible sugar in our diet (see more in Chapter V, ‘Glucose: The dark side’). It is this aspect of sugar that provokes inflammation, starting from dysbiosis and leaky gut, and resulting in chronic inflammation.

Girth

our bodies should have some fat. but how much of it, and where it is stored, is crucial. It’s all about location Visceral fat is the kind that’s stored deep in the abdomen (stomach region)—and that is the one you don’t want. It’s wrapped around the abdomen and its internal organs such as the kidneys, pancreas and liver.

To be continued....