Trick-or-Treat: Friend or Foe?

“Trick-or-treat, 

Smell my feet,

Give me something good to eat…”

This may just be a fun kids rhyme to chant while bouncing from house to house, dressed up as your favorite superhero, collecting candy and giggling with friends. 

However, you really should be giving these kids something good to eat. But by good, we don’t mean candy. We actually mean quite the opposite. 

There might be a lot more menace to this fun tradition than rotting teeth and tummy aches.

It may just be sugar, but what it does to your microbiome might be the scariest thing you hear this Halloween. 

The Sweet Spot on Sugar

So we sort of made sugar sound like an evil villain from a comic book. It isn’t — when we eat it in moderation. 

Sugars are a form of carbohydrate. Carbohydrates are used by the body to create and sustain energy. 

Carbohydrates can be fermented and broken down by microbiota in the gut to create both positive and negative effects throughout your body.

Certain gases, short-chain fatty acids, and other byproducts are created through this process and are necessary to sustain life. 

Different sugars, therefore, are necessary to be healthy. Every food group considered healthy can supply your body with some of these sugars we need. 

Some people are more sensitive to sugars depending on their other conditions (like SIBO) and need to be on low-carb diets to avoid them — this is typically for short periods of time. 

People with diabetes also must watch their sugar consumption since their blood glucose (blood sugar) levels can easily get out of whack. 

So what exactly is the “sweet spot” when it comes to sugar consumption?

The CDC recommends that you don’t exceed 10% of your calories being from sugar products.

This means if you’re eating approximately 1,800 calories per day, you shouldn’t get more than 180 of those calories from sugary foods. 

So while a lot of this article will focus on the dangers of sugar, know that you shouldn’t completely cut out sugar from your diet. 

Apples have one of the highest sugar levels, but the saying still says that eating one a day will keep the doctor away. 

If you make sure to get your sugars from healthy foods, you won’t have to fear the problems we mention throughout the rest of this article.  

The Not-So-Sweet Side of Sugar

So there’s a good chance we can all pitch in a horror story that someone (more than likely our parents) told us about what would happen if we ate too much sugar. 

Your teeth might fall out, you’ll get a bellyache, or maybe they went a little crazier and told you goblins might take you away because you’d turn so sweet. 

Regardless of what you’ve been scared with, there are good reasons that you’ve been cautioned against eating too many sweets. 

Excessive sugar intake has been linked to a rise in obesity, diabetes, and several other diseases/disorders. 

Sugar sometimes takes too much of the blame on these, but generally, higher levels of sugar can equate to a higher predisposition for these diseases. 

Sometimes limiting your sugar intake leads to unpleasant side effects which has caused a debate within the medical community. 

The debate is whether or not sugar is addictive in the same way that drugs can be addictive. 

Sugar has been found to create a similar response pattern in your brain to highly addictive drugs.

When consuming sugar, the ‘reward’ center of your brain produces happy chemicals like dopamine — this is comparable to what happens when using highly addictive drugs. 

To further the argument, people trying to limit their sugar intake often experience withdrawal symptoms like:

• Headaches
• Irritability
• Cravings
• Binge eating sugary foods
• Shaking when sugar levels are lowering

Although these make a convincing argument that sugar very well could be considered a highly addictive substance, it does not meet all of the criteria of addiction. 

The main criteria missing in studies of sugar addiction are:

• Social/Interpersonal problems related to the use
• Neglect of important matters

This means that it can be considered more of dependence than addiction, however that may even be stretching. 

Being that sugar is necessary to intake and because drugs are a much stronger and dangerous issue, calling it a sugar addiction is a really touchy subject.

Creating boundaries for your children can help to avoid issues in their futures.

Children have a tendency to have more sensitive sugar receptors, meaning they like sugary tastes better than bitter tastes.

So starting habits when they’re young and limiting sugary foods and especially drinks is important. 

Drinks tend to be a higher source of sugar for children.

Fruit juices, juice pouches, and sports drinks are all very high in sugar and very low in any nutritional quality. 

Some studies found that sugary drinks alter children’s body weight more than food because it doesn’t fill them up so they require more and the sugars are more concentrated. 

Making sure to give your children water is key to keeping their sugar levels in check. 

The Spookiest of All: Non-Caloric Artificial Sweeteners (NAS)

Alternative sweeteners have been created to reduce calorie intake when ingesting sweet foods.

While your body is getting fewer calories, these chemicals aren’t actually good for your body.

While the debate is still up in the air on if NAS contribute to cancer development, studies have linked high levels of NAS consumption to:

• Greater risk of type 2 diabetes
• Making healthy E. coli strains become toxic
• Overeating by stimulating appetite instead of satisfying hunger like glucose
• Microbiome dysbiosis

Avoiding Post-Halloween Tummy Aches

We’ve all been there. Indulged excessively and happily on all of our favorite candies after trick-or-treating (or after your kids went to sleep). We’ve all had those bellyaches afterward. 

What exactly is that from though? Your microbiome is trying to process the excessive amount of sugars and chemicals you’ve just binged on. 

Since they don’t have much fiber, your body has a much harder time breaking them down properly.

Your body is trying to balance out the sugar levels and dispose of them, but there just isn’t enough time or resources to do so.

Your gut bacteria become unbalanced and your whole body feels it. 

Prepping your gut before trick-or-treating is vital to avoid this unpleasant sensation.

Making sure to eat fiber-rich foods, prebiotics, and probiotics can help your gut and body prepare for the fight ahead.

Parents, grab your Atrantil, yogurt, and salads.

Give your kiddos the yogurt and salads as well.

Make sure to try and eat the candies in moderation so you don’t overwhelm your microbiome so you have a happy and healthy body and belly.