Sweet honey, sugar is killer

Sugar Can Damage Your DNA

Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute is Australia 's first health and medical research institute tackling the deadly trio of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease (http://www.bakeridi.edu.au/). Among the research they have done were:

1. Human cells can ‘remember’ and reproduce the effect of a poor diet on the body. Very specific molecular events occur after the consumption of food high in glucose, causing chemical changes to genetic controls. El-Osta, an associate professor at the institute, said: We now know that chocolate bar you had this morning can have very acute effects, and those effects continue for up to two weeks later, this is what we refer to as the burden of memory. The changes initiated by diet create a kind of ‘ghost’ that lives within our genes, and that these epigenetic changes remember the effects of glucose and continue to respond to them for days or even weeks. El-Osta and his team found that cells that showed profound changes in a high-glucose environment continued to exhibit those changes even when taken out of that environment. In fact, the cells demonstrated a ‘memory’ of that high glucose event even when the same cells were returned to their previous state. Eating a single chocolate bar can cause problems for future generations .

2. For the first time, scientists have proved that by following wrong eating practices, fat people reprogram controls over their DNA and pass on fatness and disease not only to their children, but also to future generations. The damage done by unhealthy eating is "remembered" in genetic controls - epigenetics - and turns off good genes needed to prevent diabetes, heart disease and other complications – good genes are switched off and bad genes switched on. Imagine how this affects us when we don't ever give our bodies a break from the sugary onslaught. The genetic damage could go on for months, or even years.