How does sugar affect the body? A registered dietitian breaks it down

Most of us love a sweet treat, and some of us crave it, so how does it affect the body when it comes to natural, added and artificial sugars?

Registered dietitian Molly Barnes explained that there are three main types of sugar.

Natural sugars: You’ll find natural sugars in fruits or in other things that typically do not come with a nutrition label. For example, potatoes, apples and oranges all have natural sugars.
Added sugars: Almost all processed foods have some form of added sugar in them. Added sugars actually are derived from natural foods but then are processed into something that works a little bit more efficiently or effectively in foods. For example, high fructose corn syrup does come from corn, but it’s highly processed, and then it works really efficiently in soda, baked goods and other things that live on the shelves for a long time.
Artificial sweeteners: These are completely chemically-derived and do not come from anything that we grow. But they have their benefits as well. They’re not calorically dense, so a lot of people like them because they sweeten things like diet soda without adding calories.

When perusing the isles of a grocery store, be mindful that sugar also comes in lots of different names.

“Cane sugar is an obvious one here, but things like Maltodextrin, dextrose (and) high-fructose corn syrup, these all sugars that go by a different name and aren’t quite as obvious to people,” Barnes said.

Benefits of protein in your diet with Registered Dietitian Molly Barnes

Natural sugars, which can be found in potatoes, apples and oranges, come packaged with fiber, which helps stabilize blood sugar. But eating high-sugar foods without fiber means that the sugar enters the blood stream and rapidly raises blood sugar, which can make you feel tired or fatigued. On the opposite spectrum, if your blood sugar is too low, you’ll start to get irritable, which is where the term hangry comes from.

“Food is supposed to give us energy,” Barnes said. “If food is making you really tired, sleepy, lethargic, it’s really helpful to go back and look back at that meal and say ‘What can I do differently here that’s going to fuel me from this meal to the next meal?'”