November 24, 2025 • 39 mins
Is it bad to eat sweets after 6 p.m.? Will your cookie addiction cause premature aging? Is sugar going to kill us all? Social media definitely has answers to these questions...just not always factual or helpful answers. But today, dietician Vanessa Risetto is here to give us the real truth about sugar. Settle in for a deep-dive into the nutritional facts behind our favorite carbohydrate. Vanessa debunks the biggest myths (yes, all sugar is basically the same), explains why kids are hardwired to chase sweetness, and shares simple ways to balance blood sugar and enjoy dessert without spiraling into a sugar crash.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Today on the bright Side, everything you've ever wanted to
know about sugar with nutritionist Vanessa Rossetto.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
We've done many studies on fat and carbohydrates, but have
we done any studies on sugar. We happen not to
the degree that we need to do it to prove something,
because that would literally someone collapse entire industries.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
I'm simone voice and this is the bright Side from
Hello Sunshine, Welcome back to the bright Side. I am
going to make a bold prediction ahead of this episode.
This conversation with Vanessa Rossetto is about to blow your mind.
We get into all of it, the science of sugar.
We're busting the sugar myths that have been fed to
(00:47):
us by corporations for decades, and Vanessa will show us
how to give ourselves the sugar reset our bodies need.
And speaking of sugar addicts, I happen to live with
a few. These are my boys say Hi Hi and
Keenan Hi, Betty Bertie. Okay, that's that's Keenan's made up
language that he likes to use, but he says Hi.
(01:10):
I wanted to bring my kids into this episode because
I've realized the way we eat is generational. It's something
we get into with Vanessa today. The research shows us
that eating patterns formed in childhood shape eating patterns in adulthood.
Do you know what sugar is, kngy, Yes, it's in candy.
You said something interesting the other day, Logan. You said
(01:33):
you're trying to cut back on sugar.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I'm cutting off sugar because I am I because when
I eat sugar it makes my tommy not feel good.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Oh really well, I think it's really wise that you
decided that you want to cut back on sugar.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
It also does it's not good for us because when
we eat lots and lots of candy and we don't
brush our tea for a long time, all of our
keys will come out, and our and our adult cheese
will not come in, and we will not have any
teeth when we are dune. Kelly, bake a cake.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
You want to bake a cake? I love baking cakes together.
That's honestly. That's one of the things that I love
about sugar is the memories that we get to make together.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Hello, we can bake a cake and we can eat it.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Allah, I think that sounds like a great plan. Hey,
thanks for joining me on my podcast today, guys House one. Sure, Okay, So,
no matter how my kids define sugar, there's clearly plenty
of it in our house and I don't mind that.
But should I, I mean, should I feel guilty about that?
(02:46):
I mean, sugar was a huge part of my childhood
and it remains a big presence in adulthood. Is that
so bad? Well, let's find out, Vanessa Rosetta, Welcome to
the bright Side. Hi, thanks for having me. I'm a
little nervous. I have to be honest because your girl
loves sugar like I am that girl who orders crumble cookies.
(03:07):
I have a crumble cookie problem and I know it's
so bad for me, but I can't stop. Sugar makes
me happy. So just level set with me before we
dig into this, Vanessa, what should I expect from this
conversation today? Is it all bad when it comes to sugar? No,
it's not all bad.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
I always tell people that I'm not here to take
anything away from you, but instead I'm gonna show you
how to do it. So I'm gonna show you how
you can still have crumble cookies if that's what you want.
But also we're gonna have like a very frank conversation
about how are you eating throughout the day? Yes, are
you not eating enough carbs in the beginning of the day.
Is this why you tend to crave sweets? Is it
(03:43):
a habit? Does it recalled joy? For example, I love
chocolate so much. But the reason that I love it
so much, I think or I know, is also in
part of how my relationship with my grandmother was. And
she always had chocolate for me, and so it makes
me happy. But I can think about that and it's like, oh,
it's because of my grandmother and like what she meant
(04:04):
to me and all of those things, So like where
does it fit in?
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Wait, you're so right. I never thought about the stories
that are attached to sugar, the recipes like my mom's
apple cobbler that she makes exactly that brings back so
many memories for me. And then when I really think
about it, I probably love cake so much and sweet
so much because it takes me back to my childhood
one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
So like my grandmother and her sister, so like my
great aunt, they lived both in Manhattan, and they would
fight over me. I really loved like Nestley crunch bars
and kit kat bars and my Aunt Alice, who lived downtown.
She would know I was with my grandmother and she'd
be like, bring her here, and my grandmother would be
like no. And then I'd been on the phone with
(04:47):
Aunt Alice and she'd be like, but I have Nestley
crunch bars for you.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
And I'd be like, I need to go an They're
just like good. Our relationship with sugar starts when we're young,
and as we're gonna hear today, it's something that we
have to can continually be aware of as we age
because it can impact the aging process. But before we
get there, I want to start with just the basics.
So when we say sugar, we are really talking about
(05:12):
the molecules glucose, fruitose, and sucrose. Right, Can you start
by explaining the basic function of sugar in the body,
Like what happens when it enters? What's going on there?
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yeah, So sugar or like carbohydrates in various degrees, Right,
you have like complex carbohydrates, you would think like beans
or like rice and beans for example, although that's also
a complete protein. And then you would also think about
chocolate chip cookies. That all falls into the world of carbohydrates.
So do vegetables, my friends. So many times someone will
have a plate and you're like, show me the carbs,
and it'll be like a piece of chicken and broccoli
(05:43):
and they're like, there are no carbs on this plate.
I'm like, no, the vegetables are a carbohydrate. But the
benefit of the fiber and the vitamins and the minerals,
how it gets digested, that is what we really care about.
So you would think about something that's more complex and
has higher fiber that is digested slower, and then it
keeps you full for longer, and so then you aren't
(06:04):
actually craving more of those, like I call them junky carbohydrates.
But when you just eat an Oreo cookie by itself,
or you eat Swedish fish by themselves, it just gets
digested really quickly and then you're hungry again. But we
use carbohydrates as our main energy source, so it is
very normal. That's the first place your body is going
to go looking for energy. This is what we need.
(06:24):
It's what every cell recognizes as the main energy source,
and that's what it wants. So that is a carbohydrate.
It gives you fuel, It helps your brain, it helps
you exercise, right, like when banana equals about ninety minutes
of exercise if we want to get down to it.
Although they get a bad rap a lot of times
because people feel like there's too much sugar in them, etc.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Well, I'm glad you brought that up because I am
curious how you would rank the different forms of sugar,
because there's so many different types of sugar, especially now
with you know, technology as it continues to advance. So
how would you rank all the different kinds of sugar
from candy and cookies to the sugar content of a banana?
What's the worst and what's the best?
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Yeah, and so not all fruit is created equal, right,
So if you're thinking of like berries, the next book
that I write is gonna.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Be called Raspberries Are for Rich People.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Raspberries one cup is sixty eight calories and it costs
you eighteen dollars eighteen dollars and nine but nine grams
of fiber, right, So like that that's awesome, Like.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
That's what we want.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
That's what we want, Like nutrient density, the most bang
for our buck, That's what I'm always looking for. So
it doesn't matter that it comes in the form of
the raspberry or the beans or the oats. It's all
also about the serving size. And so if you were
coming to me and you wanted to lose weight, but
you love to eat raspberries every day, I'd be like, great,
the raspberries are great. We're gonna pair them with call
(07:44):
it fifteen almonds. Or actually, you're gonna have a quarter
cup of oats, and you're gonna put one cup of
the berries, and you're gonna have chia seeds. I'm gonna
bulk up the fiber here so that you don't have
these spikes in your blood sugar, so that you maintain
good glucose levels and you're not kind of instantly craving sugar.
What happens when sugar carbs come into the bloodstream, you
(08:06):
have to get it into the cells. So how do
you do that? It's insulin, right, So the pangreas mobilizes
the insulin and then that helps us to absorb the carbohydrate.
If insulin is always up in the bloodstream, we see
that so is weight. And when insulin is always up,
we also see that we have a propensity to certain
types of cancers and so on and so forth, and
(08:27):
so telling people, we're teaching them how to eat. So
when I have a patient that will be like I
love to have ice cream at ten o'clock at night,
I'm like, okay, you can sell have ice cream, but
you have to have it adjacent to your meal, because
presumably in your meal you had adequate amounts of protein,
adequate amounts of fiber. For me, when you're thinking about
like sugar and carbohydrates, I actually put it in a
(08:47):
category of starch. And when I think of starch, I
think rice, pasta, corn, peas, potatoes, bread, cookies opposed to carb.
Like I said before, carb is in vegetables, carbon is
in fruit. Right, it's a little nuanced. And because carbs
always get such a bad rap, that's why I always
try to make that distinction so it's easier for people
to understand.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
So on the totem pole of sugars, Vanessa, we have
raspberries right up there at the top. You got that
fiber in it, you got the low glucose content. And
then what's on the other side is white sugar still
the bad guy? Is it still the boogeyman?
Speaker 2 (09:23):
No, it's how much of it you eat, That's what
the problem is. So what are the serving sizes and
I love when people are like, well, I don't eat
till three o'clock and it's just a latte and I
have sucralos, and I'm like, that is not it, guys.
I'm like, the one teaspoon of sugar that you're putting
in your coffee if not what your main problem is.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
So can you explain why that's not it? It's about
the behaviors and everything in aggregate. One teaspoon of sugar
is like sixteen calories. This is nothing to talk about, right, Like,
you you can have sugar in your day. It's when
I hear the people ordering and it's like, can I
have six puns of vanilla steyrup?
Speaker 2 (10:00):
And you're like, wow, okay, now you've taken it to
this place where now we have to be concerned. But
then when you're thinking like white sugar, honey, agave coconut sugar,
sugar in the raw, brown sugar, well.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Like it's just sugar. Your body doesn't know that it
was brown or that it was honey, and one is
not better than the other. Wait wait, wait, wait, Vanessa,
you're telling me that when I was buying sugar in
the raw this whole time, it didn't make a difference.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
No, it didn't make a difference.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Oh my god, I'm so mad right now, I'm so mad.
I'll tell you another one.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
You know, like feta is already low fat, so when
you go out and buy low fat feta, it's just marketing.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Oh so you heard it here first, just buy the
feta as is. This is a big blow. I know,
I was. It hurts here. I was thinking I was
doing the right thing, buying the sugar and the raw
the brown sugars. No, just regular.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Actually, you know, it's so funny.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
The other day I had a convers Yes Friday's Sunday,
my ex husband comes over and he's like, I made
this with brown rice. And I'm like, Michael, you understand,
and that the difference between brown rice and white rice
is actually negligible. Like brown rice maybe has three grams
of fiber and white rice has two grams of fiber.
And if I'm being honest, the brown rice has been
stripped and then refortified enriched, so it's actually more processed
(11:14):
than the white rice. So if you just had your
half a cup of white rice, you'd be fine. And
he was like, are you hearing this? I'm looking at
my producer from the side, because I'm just like, you're
rocking my world right now, Vanessa, I know, and like
for me, it's like less processing is what is better? Yes,
that does make a lot of sense to me, like
getting as close as we can to how the food
(11:36):
grows out of the earth. So you mentioned the marketing
behind a lot of these green washed products, and the
marketing has been so effective. And then when we zoom
out and think about marketing, like the diet marketing that
I grew up with as a childhood the nineties was
fat is bad, Yeah, sugar is good. Yeah. And now
(11:57):
it seems like the tables have turned. And so I'm
wondering from your perspective, what's driving that narrative. Is it
more studies, more information, or is it truly capitalism that part.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
I also grew up in the nineties, and I thought
snack walls were a free food, right. They forgot to
tell us they took the fat out and put sugar
in to give the same feeling. Right, We've done many
studies on fat and carbohydrates, but have we done any
studies on sugar. We haven't, not to the degree that
we need to do it. To prove something, because that
(12:30):
would literally someone collapse entire industries, right, what would happen
to cereal?
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Cereal?
Speaker 2 (12:37):
This is probably why my husband NXE husband I got
divorced because even brings cereal into the house and I'd
be like, what are you doing? Do not put this
cereal here? It's useless? It does nothing, And he's like,
what are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Didn't send the kids here?
Speaker 2 (12:47):
And I'm like, well, I guess they're at school. Another
teacher's problem. But guys, no, no, no, you think a
cereal is healthy? And then you look at the serving size,
it's like seventy grams of sugar for one cup.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Big Cereal. Has it come in? Let's just say that, yes, yes,
the cereal industrial complex is real truly.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Like when I tell people my favorite cereal, I'm like,
I buy that when I'm wanting a treat, and I
would not eat it for breakfast. I like put it
in a baggy, take it with me, and everyone's like,
what do you eat? I'm like, yes, I'm reliving my youth.
Leave me alone.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
So gold okay, okay, you know I had to ask her. Yeah,
corn pops. It was Golden Gram's hired people corn pops,
you know, frosted flakes. The problem with having children is
you wind up eating all their snacks. And so lately
I've been eating the Trader Joe's version of tricks and
it is so good. I'm sure it's delicious.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
But back to kids, though, Right when you are a kid,
your taste buds are bitter. This is why, right when
you're little you don't like tomatoes, but when you're an
adult you do like them. Your taste buds are bitter.
So if you are introduced sweets early on, this is
all you are going to have a propensity towards. This
is why we tried to delay and hold. Not that
(13:56):
you can have something sweet, but just how we do it.
And like instead of apple sauce, like giving the fruit
it is full form and things like that.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Oh my gosh, I have already ruined one of my kids.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Listen, I don't allow juice. I allow everything else, but
I don't allow juice. My kids are thirteen and eleven
and they go to birthday parties and literally mainline the juice.
They don't eat the pizza, and the mother will be like,
h Rocco just had like eighty five twenty ounce cups
of soda?
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Is this gonna be okay? I'm like, it's fine.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
He doesn't get it at home, Like no, geus knows that,
Like that's it.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Wait, this is fascinating. Children are born with bitter taste buds.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah, you're giving them something in there. It's like you're
killing them. Like, oh my gosh, this is so disgusting.
It's like yeah, because this is how they're perceiving it
and changes over time.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Wow. Okay. And then so with my son that I
have ruined in terms of sugar, can I fix him?
Is he fixable? Or yeah? How old is he? He's three? Four?
He's four? Oh girl, we can reprogram him in like
I don't know, four hours. Amazing.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Yeah, this is more of like mommy has a job
and you have a job, and these are our jobs,
and this is how we're going to eat this, and
we're not gonna have this anymore. We're gonna have this
and if you don't want to eat it, you don't
have to.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
We'll be right back with more. Vanessa risetto after this
quick break and we're back. Okay. So I do want
to go back to though this idea of the narrative
around sugar and how it has evolved in the public eye.
Do you see a more intense focus on sugar right now?
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Right now because of a new administration, And like, here's
the thing. It's good, right, like great, expose big business
and highlight how there is a lot of trash in
our food. This is a reason why forty two point
four percent of Americans up until last year were overweight
or obese, and only because of the advent of golp
ones that there was a seventeen percent reduction. And I
(15:54):
was just in France earlier in the summer and I
was like, wow, everyone is thin. And I looked it
up and their obesity rate is fourteen and a half percent.
That was close to ours in the nineties and nineteen
ninety one, the obesity rate was twelve percent. And so
we are smarter and we have more resources, and we're
far worse off. So what is that about. It's a
(16:16):
couple of things. I think it's trying to take the
personalization out of how you will be, you know, seeing
a dietitian or things of that nature. Right, Like why
can't you have a coach in perpetuity? You can go
to a therapist every week? For your whole life. Right,
So why can't you see a dietitian Probably not every
week for your whole life, but like at a regular
cadence to get the help that you need to, you know,
(16:38):
help you have a better outcome. Go see a dietitian.
Your insurance pace for it. Ninety three percent of our
patients exercise their insurance benefits.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Is there a biologically necessary amount of sugar that we need? No, Okay,
you need.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Carbohydrates, right, You need carbohydrates and that this cyber that's
the distinction, right, But sugar.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
I don't need sugar to live.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
I don't I need a carb I should have one, right,
in a fibrous form that's going to be more beneficial
for me. But I don't need sugar.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
I need sugar to live. That's just but that's a
personal issue that I'm working through.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Well, we'll get you on the back end.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Yeah, fix it, we'll fix up. Thinking about a healthy,
realistic daily cap is there a number that you keep
in mind for your clients. Yeah, So when you're looking
at packaged goods, you're looking for five grams of sugar
or less.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
That's what I would be looking for. Added sugar right,
So men should have about thirty six grams of sugar
a day, right, and women is like twenty five. It's
like six teaspoons for a woman and nine teaspoons for
a man, or like around one hundred calories.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
But if you think about a twelve ounce can of soda,
that is forty grams, So you just blew.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
It out of the water. You just blew your daily allowance.
And then so twenty five grams of sugar, twenty.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Five grams of added sugar, right, sugar per day, per day,
per day.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Peanut butter is a really good example. The best peanut
butter brand is that Costco. It's the Kirkland Organic Natural
peanut butter. But because of how peanuts are grown, the
volatility of it, they don't always have it.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
However, it is literally just peanuts, oil, salt, awesome peanut.
Once in a while they don't have it. And I
go to the supermarket across the street and I just
pick up a thing of peanut butter and then I
taste it. I'm like, why is this so sweet? And
I turn it around and it's like six grams added sugar.
I'm like, why why is that here? So it's sneaky
in different things. But then if you're somebody who just
(18:35):
has a daily propensity towards sweet things, you are likely
exceeding that threshold on a daily basis. And then how
does that negatively impact you? Like I said before, right
when you're eating too much sugar, it tills the liver,
make calories, store fat. So it can affect like your triglycerides,
your cholesterol, your LDL, which is the biggest predictor of
stroke or heart attack. It can cause dysregulation of your
(18:55):
endocrine systems. Sort're thinking of like type two diabetes, Like
maybe your weight isn't managed proper. And then what's long
term like is it cancer, is it dementia? All of
these things because we know that sugar also erodes the cells.
So what is the balance? Because I'm definitely not saying
not to have chocolate or sugar, that's not it. It's like,
can you play within that box?
Speaker 1 (19:17):
What if you eat a lot of fruit. We know
that fruit has natural sugars in it. Is there a
cap that you would suggest to your clients in terms
of how much fruit they eat in a day?
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Yeah, so I just teach them how to do it.
So like I said before, some fruits are better than others, right,
Like the raspberry example, it has a fair amount of fiber.
So if you told me you had a cup of
raspberries by themsells or blueberries or strawberries, I'd be like,
it's not like amazing, but it's fine because there is fiber,
et cetera. But if you pair something that does have
(19:49):
sugar or maybe is like a little bit heavier in
a carbohydrate with a fat or end or protein, that's
going to stabilize your blood sugar and you're not gonna
get this spike, right, So you will just really like reap.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
The benefits and get the energy source.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
But you're not going to be like you know, when
you eat a cookie and then you're looking for more cookies,
or then you're looking you have ice cream and then
you're looking for the candy. You just don't feel like
you can stop. Where in those scenarios you can stop,
you will be appropriately satisfied. What are some of the
other factors that drive sugar cravings? Like I said earlier,
what are you eating in the day? When are you
(20:24):
eating in the day? Honestly, if you are somebody that
gets up in the morning, runs three miles. You know,
you're taking your kids out and you don't eat your
first meal until two o'clock and it has no carbohydrate
in it. How are you going to make it to
nine o'clock at night?
Speaker 1 (20:42):
You're not. You're going to be tired, exhausted.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
And once the day is over and your kids are
in bed and you're just sitting on a couch watching
TV with your partner, then the defenses are down and
you don't even know what you're doing, and you're just
going into the pantry and you're just pulling.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Whatever it is to fill you up.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
And so that is always like you know of fence
number one. You just aren't eating it off throughout the
day and you're not front loading your carbohydrates, and carbs
are not the enemy.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
You do not have to be scared. What about stress
and cortisol levels? Does that drive sugar cravings at all?
It can?
Speaker 2 (21:15):
But the thing is the stress that you think you
might be under might not really be that stressful. Does
that make sense?
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Like you're like, oh, I'm stressed out. Your body is
handling it just fine.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
So really, people having increased cortisol I have not seen
it that much. I know it's like all over the
internet and all over TikTok, and it like checker cortisol level.
And I swear to God, if I've counseled twenty thousand
people in my career, maybe like five of them have
had elevated cortisol for real.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
So you're saying we shouldn't be taking our medical advice
from TikTok.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Probably not, that's probably not it. I do think though,
there are people that do stress eat, So there's that again.
It's like, what are the behaviors, what are the habits?
How do you deal with stress?
Speaker 1 (21:59):
That is the culprit You deal with stress, You associate
and you just eat cookies and it makes you feel better.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Okay, great, let's now work around that. And that's something
that you do every day.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Every day.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
You might notice that you come home and you just like, whoop,
eat a sleeve of cookies. Okay, great, Now we're gonna
reframe it.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
They're gonna go outside for a walk, and you're gonna
have a breakfast, a small breakfast, and you're not gonna snack,
and you're gonna eat regular meals and you are going
to be helped.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
It's going to take time, but you can do it.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Vanessa, there's a conversation about sugar and aging that I
really want to learn more about from you. I honestly
didn't really know that there was a connection between sugar
and aging until I was preparing for this interview. But
let's get into some specifics. So first of all, how
does over consumption of sugar advance or quicken the process
(22:46):
of aging?
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Well, it causes inflammation, right, So you could just think
about it like that, and if you have skin issues
to begin with, like maybe it's going to make egzema
flare up more, maybe you're gonna have acne more. Like
I said, it degrades the cells. And if you're constantly
eating sugar and you aren't somebody who's eating vegetables and
lots of fruit, right, That's the thing when we hear
these like studies kind of nuanced, it's like, well, the
(23:10):
reason why it accelerates aging is because people like this
likely are not going to the gym cold plunging their
face and eating vegetables.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
So it's like habit stacking, painting a picture of all
the habits together.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
That's right, that's right, all the habits together.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
But again, like it's just like if you drink every day, right,
Like people are like, oh, that person looks really old,
and you're like, yeah, they drink a lot of alcohol.
So that's why they look old because of the constant inflammation.
And so, yes, I get it.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
The sugar it like floods dopamine into the brain and
it makes you feel good and it makes you feel happy,
But there are other things that can make you happy.
And if you set yourself up for success eating adequate
amounts of protein, fat, carbohydrate, fiber at every single meal,
then you won't crave the sugar as much. You'll be
able to just have the one cookie or the one
(23:59):
can or whatever it is. You won't have to do
it in excess. So what about brain fog?
Speaker 1 (24:04):
What does current research show about the relationship between over
consumption of sugar and brain fog.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Yeah, it is a real thing, right, It's affecting those
brain cells. And when you are, for example, like my
friends and I are hall paramount and puzzle and a puzzle,
it's lowered estrogen, right, And so when your estrogen is lowered,
you're looking to feel happier, so then you crave more sugar.
It's a whole cascade. But you're not doing yourself any
favors and you're not protecting your brain. It also is
(24:30):
going to affect your sleep. So when you're eating sugar
like well into the layer part of the evening, your
body's going to take time to metabolize and so then
you wake up at two three o'clock in the morning.
This is the same thing with alcohol. Your body has
to sacrifice all metabolic process in order to push it
away from the bloodstream. Even though alcohol is a macronutrient,
it's like a selfish one. You don't really get any
(24:52):
benefit from it, and so your body has to do
this work. Let's say it's wine. It has to break
everything down, all the sugars, et cetera, and get it
to it's natural state, which is ethanol, and then it
could be moved out as a byproduct. And so what
happens to everything that you ate, You ate, it gets
stored as fat. This is why you feel hungover, the
sugar hangover. That's a real thing.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
It's very bad. It's very bad. Wait, describe what's happening
when we feel that sugar hangover.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
So everything you ate got stored as fat, right, and
so now you didn't actually reap any benefit of what
you were ingesting. So it's like you didn't eat anything, right,
imagine what the whole day and you ate nothing. That's
me after a crumble binge. Yeah, it's not good. This
crumble thing is so funny. The other day my daughter
ordered it to the house and I was like, what
(25:39):
is this? How is it getting here?
Speaker 1 (25:41):
She was like, it's delicious.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Mom, Okay, okay, it's kind of funny.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Your daughter and I would get along. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
she's she loves the well she's not mine, and she's like,
I don't like chocolate.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
I'm like, wait, really, what is this? But she loves
a good sour patch kit. That's where she's at.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
She is my people. How about sugars and hormones. I'm
guessing they're not friends.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
It's not really that. It's just depends, right, like where
are you in the cycle? Right, different parts of the cycle,
like your period or whatever, it will require you to
eat more or eat less of something, or you're going
to create something. Not like that is actually a very
real thing, and you can pay attention to your body
in the different phases as it relates to like menopause.
(26:21):
For me, I think the sugar needs to be kept
to a minimum because you don't have the protective effects
of the estrogen, so you are very much exposed. Women
in menopause because they don't have estrogen, their propensity towards
heart disease goes up. And like I said earlier, if
you're eating too much sugar, what happens tells the liver
make calories, store fat, so it's clogging the arteries. So
you have to be paying attention and other things that
(26:44):
affect it. Right, it's the alcohol, it's when you're eating.
Don't omit things. Put pair things together because then you're
going to be better off.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
We've got to take a quick break, but we'll be
right back.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Back.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Well, Vanessa, you have been such a truth teller throughout
this conversation. Don't stop now. Now I need to talk
to you about artificial sweeteners. I need the truth. Yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
We don't actually know the mechanism of action, but we
do see that people who tend to over consume things
with artificial sweetener have more of a sweet tooth. So
like you're drinking Die Die coke like crazy, and then
you're like also eating so many cookies. It's okay, I
guess if you're not diabetic, but our diabetic friends like,
(27:35):
we got to pay attention to that.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Yeah, I'm feeling super vulnerable and exposed right now. I
drink a lot of Coke zero.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
And then you see like and then here I'll blow
your mind about the Coke zero.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
And please, I love a Coke zero guys. I love
to go to France and be like, can I have
a salt soup? And they're like, yes, you can.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
But when you think of a sugar molecule, right, it
has three water molecules and one on hydrogen. And we
with sucralows, we remove the three water molecules and we
use chlorine. One of my professors in school, he was
on the team that created Slinda, and then we would
have to recreate things in the lab to be like
sugar free or whatever. He would taste it and then
(28:16):
he would spit it out and.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
He created He was one of the Wow. I was like,
I'm not having it.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
And then you think about the plant based ones, so
like monk fruit and stevia, and you can even think
also like erythritol. So erythrotol is very interesting because it
doesn't come into the bloodstream, so you are not adversely affected,
and the glycemic index is zero. The monk fruit and
the stevia it's okay too, but it could bother your stomach,
(28:42):
so you have to like watch if you can tolerate that,
even a diabetic right, If I teach you how to
carb account, you probably don't need sugar free things unless
you are deep into the sodas, et cetera. And this
is the only way for you to be able to
still have it. But we can get you to a
place where your blood sugar is stable because how much
(29:03):
how many cakes are you eating and how many cookies
are you having, and how frequent is it?
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Like, who cares if you have two cookies? That's okay.
I'm so happy that I get to have this conversation
with you because it's really confronting for me to take
a step back and look at my own nutrition because
I have this image of myself as being very healthy,
and for the most part, I am, but I do
have these vices that I allow in like coke zero
and crumble and cake. And it's really interesting to see
(29:29):
how quickly just a little treat here, a little treat
there can really cumulatively add up.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Yeah, I think it's always about the sum of the average,
Like are you having diet coke and cookies and cakes
every day? Then okay, maybe we need to take a
closer look and make some adjustments. And it's not that
you can't have a diet coke or a coke zero
every day. I mean you probably can. We just have
to track and pay attention and see where we could
(29:55):
make some improvements. Like the rules are not hard and fast.
You just need to make sure that you're giving yourself
the best chance and that it's sustainable.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
And when we think about solutions, a lot of people
are turning to these GLP one type drugs, right it's
on the top of everyone's mind. What the GOLP one
is doing is delaying gastric emptying so you feel full
for longer, and then you should lose weight because your
Frohlinds purpose is eating less. It's an interesting thing because
(30:26):
people tend to underreport, so everyone's like, I don't know,
I'm not doing anything different, But I always think it's
interesting because if somebody's problem is not over consumption, then
do they see benefit when having a GOLP one? Is
there a place for GLP one one thousand percent. It's
very promising because a lot of these people have a
(30:47):
lot of food noise. And if you're not somebody with
food noise, you can't understand. But they just think about
food all day, every day. So that's what food noise is.
It's the internal dialogue about food.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Yeah yeah, And like I don't have that, but I
have patience that have told it to me, and I'm like,
this is really fascinating.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Like you just wake up and like all you do
is think about every meal to the point where it
could like impact how they do work. And so a
GLP one is amazing for them because they don't think
about it and they just they can execute and that's it.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
And I think also we can think about if you're
five hundred pounds and you live in a housing project
and you only ate fast food, you were not going
to have like taste buds to eat Cigy's plain yogurt. Guys,
you're just not. So so let's level set here. The
GLP one can very easily help someone menopausal women. I
(31:34):
have so many manipeazal women that come to me that
do so much hard work and they're like it's not working.
I'm like listen, you gave it an honest try. So
now this is a tool to help you. So doesn't
say that you're not going to eat sugar, but you're
going to eat it less and you're not going to
think about it as much as you probably had done previously.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
What are the questions that come to your mind as
a nutritionist about the long term effects of these drugs. Yes,
they are well researched.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
We've used them for years, but we've used them at
a certain dose on a certain population. And so what
I think about first is at the higher dosages, what
does that mean?
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Long term?
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Doesn't mean cancer, doesn't mean like you're ruining your GI tract.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
I have no idea.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Then I think about the compounded drugs because that's a
lot of what's out on the market right now, and
we didn't do any trials on those drugs. So what
is going to happen to people who use them and
also got result from it? What does that mean are
they on it long term?
Speaker 1 (32:32):
What goes down?
Speaker 2 (32:32):
And so I'm not saying it's something the farious is
going to happen, but I'm also not saying that it's not.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
And none of us actually really know well GLP ones
are just one of the things that people are talking
about on the internet when it comes to diet and nutrition.
We pulled a few other clickbait claims from TikTok and
we want to run these by you. First. One, we
have carbs after six pm turned straight into fat? Is
that true? No? Who says this don't know?
Speaker 2 (33:00):
It's like so in a blanket statement. I mean, I
guess it is to try to like get you not
to eat any sugar at night, is probably.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
The reason for it. But that is not true. That's
very nuanced.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
So no, but remember, like I said, if you ate
one hundred calories of cookies, it spikes your blood sugar
and it tells your liver make calories and store fat.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
So you could follow the logic kind of, but it's
not one hundred percent true. Sugars cause yourselves to mutate
when they regenerate, leading to aging. We talked about sugar
and aging, but I don't remember you mentioning that. No,
it's not mutation, it's inflammation and degeneration. That's what it's causing. Okay,
(33:43):
just seventy five grams of sugar, which is about the
same in one of those prepackaged smoothies suppresses neutrophil immune
function for up to five hours. I don't even know
what half of that meant. Why is that even actually
like important? Right?
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Like I don't no.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
And also seventy five what did you say said? If
I have grams of sugar? Yeah, that's a lot.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
I think that's the thing we should talk about. Why
are you eating seventy five grams of sugar in one
sitting because you're having a smoothie?
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Like okay, but don't we all know not to do that?
Don't we all know?
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Don't go to those juice places and get one of
those things because it's gonna be semi ninie grams of
sugar and you're gonna feel terrible. It's kind of like
this high feructose corn syrup thing and soda or the
red dye. Like how many skittles are your kids eating?
That's the general PSA. I don't care if my kids
have Peeps or Skittles or eminems because it's not an
(34:35):
everyday thing. It's like Halloween. Then you know, Christmas is
basically another Halloween, and then somehow Easter is another Halloween,
and so they have the candy every day, you know,
for two days, three days, and then they forget about
it until the next holiday.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
And the common thread here is consumerism. It's marketing. It's
all marketing.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
It's all marketing. It's all yeah, no, no, no, guys,
do you control what's going on in your house a
little better? Okay, speaking of kids, this one's interesting. It's
not safe to give a baby any refined sugar until
at least.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
One year old. That's totally true. Oh, this is this
is kind of giving you your child the best chance
at success with their relationship with sugar. Yeah, it's even
like I can get really really technical.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
You know, you wouldn't give your baby your infant yogurt
until about nine months ten months because their kidneys like
can't take it. Introducing something very sweet to a baby
like now you're taxing their endocrine system and they're little,
so like that shouldn't be it, right.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
We need to like phase.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Approach the food, get their body used to digestion all
of these things. Also, think about it, the more sugar
you have, the more like gastric disturbances you can have.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
When people were stick in the hospital and they'd be
like they're losing weight, give them boosts, and I'm like,
this patient has tons of diarrhea and the boost is
just going to make more diarrhea.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
So please, like any dietician that's like, And then I
get my patient boots, I'm like, I've written you off
your your this is not it.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Nope. First of all, you look at the nutritional label
on those things. It's disgusting. Awesome thing. If someone is
out there listening to this conversation and thinking, wow, this
is such great information. How can I give my body
a reset from sugar? What would you prescribe them.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
A dietitian, harget, Let's say, yeah, let you do it
by yourself. It's hard. You need to be able to
talk to somebody and ask questions and like send somebody
your food and have this back and forth dialogue so
that you can get corrected in real time. But I
guess the thing I would say if you are going
to do it by yourself, is like one thing at
(36:36):
a time. So if you tell me that you have
six Oreo cookies every single night, well then tonight, let's
have four, and let's eat it adjacent to our dinner,
not at the nine o'clock hour that you have, right,
And so we'll just try that for a week. That
worked great. Now, let's have four orio cookies every other
day for the next week, right, and just phase it
that way so that you break the habit.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
But just quitting sid something cold turkey that is never
gonna work. Guys, Vanessa, what's one fact about sugar? You
wish everyone new that all sugar is the same, white sugar,
brown sugar, coconut sugar, agavet honey. They were like, oh,
it's this somebody fancy honey.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
I'm like, I don't know what that is. Honey's honey's
honey and sugar.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
It's all the same. Your body doesn't know the difference.
So save your money and you don't need to be
having like sugar free things. Let's just work on how
often you're having the sugar.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
What's up, Domino, Sugar, I'm about to pull through. I'm
about to pick you up to take you home with me.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Yeah, that's what I have in my house. I put
in a fancy like glass jar with a like a
gold container. And it's like, yeah, of course, yeah, you
have to put your sugar in a fancy jar. I
mean that's naturally, that's how I can stay here in
this house.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Vanessa, I want to end on this note. We ask
all of our guests this here on the bright side,
because it's your moment to shine. What are you celebrating
in your life right now? I am celebrating that I
have these kids that are really self sufficient. I've got
a thirteen year old and eleven year old that are
actually like nice. There's no drama with them or their
friend groups, and they do things on their own, like
(38:13):
get themselves so they buss on their own, pack their
own bag, and I'm like, all right, we're firing at
all cylinders. There's hope. Vanessa. You deserve a run of
applause for that, because that's you. You know that, Yes,
that's you and your parenting. Yeah, thank you, Thank you, Vanessa,
was so great to meet you. Thank you so much
for just blowing my mind. When it comes to sugar anytime,
I'm happy to work you through however you like you're
(38:35):
viewing it. I don't want to call it an addiction.
It brings joy, so we can get a plan, work
through a plan. It's definitely not an addiction. It's just
joy and pleasure, and like you know what, life is
hard and short and sure, and it's like I'm gonna
die anyways, I might as well enjoy it. Yeah, I
want to be happy. I agree with you. I'm an
eighty twenty girl at the end of the day. Honestly,
(38:57):
that's awesome. You'll be fin You'll live a long life.
I'm sure of it. Vanessa, thanks so much for coming
on the bright Side.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Nice to meet you. Vanessa Rizzetto is a registered dietitian
and CEO and co founder of Colleena Health. The bright
Side is a production of Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts
and is executive produced by Reese Witherspoon and me Simone Boyce.
Production is by a Cast Creative Studios. Our producers are
(39:26):
Taylor Williamson, Abby Delk, and Adrian Bain. Our production assistant
is Joya putnoy Acasts. Executive producers are Jenny Kaplan and
Emily Rudder. Maureen Polo and Reese Witherspoon are the executive
producers for Hello Sunshine. Ali Perry and Lauren Hansen are
the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts. Our theme song is
(39:47):
by Anna Stump and Hamilton Lakehauser.
Today on the bright Side, everything you've ever wanted to
know about sugar with nutritionist Vanessa Rossetto.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
We've done many studies on fat and carbohydrates, but have
we done any studies on sugar. We happen not to
the degree that we need to do it to prove something,
because that would literally someone collapse entire industries.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
I'm simone voice and this is the bright Side from
Hello Sunshine, Welcome back to the bright Side. I am
going to make a bold prediction ahead of this episode.
This conversation with Vanessa Rossetto is about to blow your mind.
We get into all of it, the science of sugar.
We're busting the sugar myths that have been fed to
(00:47):
us by corporations for decades, and Vanessa will show us
how to give ourselves the sugar reset our bodies need.
And speaking of sugar addicts, I happen to live with
a few. These are my boys say Hi Hi and
Keenan Hi, Betty Bertie. Okay, that's that's Keenan's made up
language that he likes to use, but he says Hi.
(01:10):
I wanted to bring my kids into this episode because
I've realized the way we eat is generational. It's something
we get into with Vanessa today. The research shows us
that eating patterns formed in childhood shape eating patterns in adulthood.
Do you know what sugar is, kngy, Yes, it's in candy.
You said something interesting the other day, Logan. You said
(01:33):
you're trying to cut back on sugar.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I'm cutting off sugar because I am I because when
I eat sugar it makes my tommy not feel good.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Oh really well, I think it's really wise that you
decided that you want to cut back on sugar.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
It also does it's not good for us because when
we eat lots and lots of candy and we don't
brush our tea for a long time, all of our
keys will come out, and our and our adult cheese
will not come in, and we will not have any
teeth when we are dune. Kelly, bake a cake.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
You want to bake a cake? I love baking cakes together.
That's honestly. That's one of the things that I love
about sugar is the memories that we get to make together.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Hello, we can bake a cake and we can eat it.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Allah, I think that sounds like a great plan. Hey,
thanks for joining me on my podcast today, guys House one. Sure, Okay, So,
no matter how my kids define sugar, there's clearly plenty
of it in our house and I don't mind that.
But should I, I mean, should I feel guilty about that?
(02:46):
I mean, sugar was a huge part of my childhood
and it remains a big presence in adulthood. Is that
so bad? Well, let's find out, Vanessa Rosetta, Welcome to
the bright Side. Hi, thanks for having me. I'm a
little nervous. I have to be honest because your girl
loves sugar like I am that girl who orders crumble cookies.
(03:07):
I have a crumble cookie problem and I know it's
so bad for me, but I can't stop. Sugar makes
me happy. So just level set with me before we
dig into this, Vanessa, what should I expect from this
conversation today? Is it all bad when it comes to sugar? No,
it's not all bad.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
I always tell people that I'm not here to take
anything away from you, but instead I'm gonna show you
how to do it. So I'm gonna show you how
you can still have crumble cookies if that's what you want.
But also we're gonna have like a very frank conversation
about how are you eating throughout the day? Yes, are
you not eating enough carbs in the beginning of the day.
Is this why you tend to crave sweets? Is it
(03:43):
a habit? Does it recalled joy? For example, I love
chocolate so much. But the reason that I love it
so much, I think or I know, is also in
part of how my relationship with my grandmother was. And
she always had chocolate for me, and so it makes
me happy. But I can think about that and it's like, oh,
it's because of my grandmother and like what she meant
(04:04):
to me and all of those things, So like where
does it fit in?
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Wait, you're so right. I never thought about the stories
that are attached to sugar, the recipes like my mom's
apple cobbler that she makes exactly that brings back so
many memories for me. And then when I really think
about it, I probably love cake so much and sweet
so much because it takes me back to my childhood
one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
So like my grandmother and her sister, so like my
great aunt, they lived both in Manhattan, and they would
fight over me. I really loved like Nestley crunch bars
and kit kat bars and my Aunt Alice, who lived downtown.
She would know I was with my grandmother and she'd
be like, bring her here, and my grandmother would be
like no. And then I'd been on the phone with
(04:47):
Aunt Alice and she'd be like, but I have Nestley
crunch bars for you.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
And I'd be like, I need to go an They're
just like good. Our relationship with sugar starts when we're young,
and as we're gonna hear today, it's something that we
have to can continually be aware of as we age
because it can impact the aging process. But before we
get there, I want to start with just the basics.
So when we say sugar, we are really talking about
(05:12):
the molecules glucose, fruitose, and sucrose. Right, Can you start
by explaining the basic function of sugar in the body,
Like what happens when it enters? What's going on there?
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yeah, So sugar or like carbohydrates in various degrees, Right,
you have like complex carbohydrates, you would think like beans
or like rice and beans for example, although that's also
a complete protein. And then you would also think about
chocolate chip cookies. That all falls into the world of carbohydrates.
So do vegetables, my friends. So many times someone will
have a plate and you're like, show me the carbs,
and it'll be like a piece of chicken and broccoli
(05:43):
and they're like, there are no carbs on this plate.
I'm like, no, the vegetables are a carbohydrate. But the
benefit of the fiber and the vitamins and the minerals,
how it gets digested, that is what we really care about.
So you would think about something that's more complex and
has higher fiber that is digested slower, and then it
keeps you full for longer, and so then you aren't
(06:04):
actually craving more of those, like I call them junky carbohydrates.
But when you just eat an Oreo cookie by itself,
or you eat Swedish fish by themselves, it just gets
digested really quickly and then you're hungry again. But we
use carbohydrates as our main energy source, so it is
very normal. That's the first place your body is going
to go looking for energy. This is what we need.
(06:24):
It's what every cell recognizes as the main energy source,
and that's what it wants. So that is a carbohydrate.
It gives you fuel, It helps your brain, it helps
you exercise, right, like when banana equals about ninety minutes
of exercise if we want to get down to it.
Although they get a bad rap a lot of times
because people feel like there's too much sugar in them, etc.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Well, I'm glad you brought that up because I am
curious how you would rank the different forms of sugar,
because there's so many different types of sugar, especially now
with you know, technology as it continues to advance. So
how would you rank all the different kinds of sugar
from candy and cookies to the sugar content of a banana?
What's the worst and what's the best?
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Yeah, and so not all fruit is created equal, right,
So if you're thinking of like berries, the next book
that I write is gonna.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Be called Raspberries Are for Rich People.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Raspberries one cup is sixty eight calories and it costs
you eighteen dollars eighteen dollars and nine but nine grams
of fiber, right, So like that that's awesome, Like.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
That's what we want.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
That's what we want, Like nutrient density, the most bang
for our buck, That's what I'm always looking for. So
it doesn't matter that it comes in the form of
the raspberry or the beans or the oats. It's all
also about the serving size. And so if you were
coming to me and you wanted to lose weight, but
you love to eat raspberries every day, I'd be like, great,
the raspberries are great. We're gonna pair them with call
(07:44):
it fifteen almonds. Or actually, you're gonna have a quarter
cup of oats, and you're gonna put one cup of
the berries, and you're gonna have chia seeds. I'm gonna
bulk up the fiber here so that you don't have
these spikes in your blood sugar, so that you maintain
good glucose levels and you're not kind of instantly craving sugar.
What happens when sugar carbs come into the bloodstream, you
(08:06):
have to get it into the cells. So how do
you do that? It's insulin, right, So the pangreas mobilizes
the insulin and then that helps us to absorb the carbohydrate.
If insulin is always up in the bloodstream, we see
that so is weight. And when insulin is always up,
we also see that we have a propensity to certain
types of cancers and so on and so forth, and
(08:27):
so telling people, we're teaching them how to eat. So
when I have a patient that will be like I
love to have ice cream at ten o'clock at night,
I'm like, okay, you can sell have ice cream, but
you have to have it adjacent to your meal, because
presumably in your meal you had adequate amounts of protein,
adequate amounts of fiber. For me, when you're thinking about
like sugar and carbohydrates, I actually put it in a
(08:47):
category of starch. And when I think of starch, I
think rice, pasta, corn, peas, potatoes, bread, cookies opposed to carb.
Like I said before, carb is in vegetables, carbon is
in fruit. Right, it's a little nuanced. And because carbs
always get such a bad rap, that's why I always
try to make that distinction so it's easier for people
to understand.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
So on the totem pole of sugars, Vanessa, we have
raspberries right up there at the top. You got that
fiber in it, you got the low glucose content. And
then what's on the other side is white sugar still
the bad guy? Is it still the boogeyman?
Speaker 2 (09:23):
No, it's how much of it you eat, That's what
the problem is. So what are the serving sizes and
I love when people are like, well, I don't eat
till three o'clock and it's just a latte and I
have sucralos, and I'm like, that is not it, guys.
I'm like, the one teaspoon of sugar that you're putting
in your coffee if not what your main problem is.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
So can you explain why that's not it? It's about
the behaviors and everything in aggregate. One teaspoon of sugar
is like sixteen calories. This is nothing to talk about, right, Like,
you you can have sugar in your day. It's when
I hear the people ordering and it's like, can I
have six puns of vanilla steyrup?
Speaker 2 (10:00):
And you're like, wow, okay, now you've taken it to
this place where now we have to be concerned. But
then when you're thinking like white sugar, honey, agave coconut sugar,
sugar in the raw, brown sugar, well.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Like it's just sugar. Your body doesn't know that it
was brown or that it was honey, and one is
not better than the other. Wait wait, wait, wait, Vanessa,
you're telling me that when I was buying sugar in
the raw this whole time, it didn't make a difference.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
No, it didn't make a difference.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Oh my god, I'm so mad right now, I'm so mad.
I'll tell you another one.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
You know, like feta is already low fat, so when
you go out and buy low fat feta, it's just marketing.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Oh so you heard it here first, just buy the
feta as is. This is a big blow. I know,
I was. It hurts here. I was thinking I was
doing the right thing, buying the sugar and the raw
the brown sugars. No, just regular.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Actually, you know, it's so funny.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
The other day I had a convers Yes Friday's Sunday,
my ex husband comes over and he's like, I made
this with brown rice. And I'm like, Michael, you understand,
and that the difference between brown rice and white rice
is actually negligible. Like brown rice maybe has three grams
of fiber and white rice has two grams of fiber.
And if I'm being honest, the brown rice has been
stripped and then refortified enriched, so it's actually more processed
(11:14):
than the white rice. So if you just had your
half a cup of white rice, you'd be fine. And
he was like, are you hearing this? I'm looking at
my producer from the side, because I'm just like, you're
rocking my world right now, Vanessa, I know, and like
for me, it's like less processing is what is better? Yes,
that does make a lot of sense to me, like
getting as close as we can to how the food
(11:36):
grows out of the earth. So you mentioned the marketing
behind a lot of these green washed products, and the
marketing has been so effective. And then when we zoom
out and think about marketing, like the diet marketing that
I grew up with as a childhood the nineties was
fat is bad, Yeah, sugar is good. Yeah. And now
(11:57):
it seems like the tables have turned. And so I'm
wondering from your perspective, what's driving that narrative. Is it
more studies, more information, or is it truly capitalism that part.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
I also grew up in the nineties, and I thought
snack walls were a free food, right. They forgot to
tell us they took the fat out and put sugar
in to give the same feeling. Right, We've done many
studies on fat and carbohydrates, but have we done any
studies on sugar. We haven't, not to the degree that
we need to do it. To prove something, because that
(12:30):
would literally someone collapse entire industries, right, what would happen
to cereal?
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Cereal?
Speaker 2 (12:37):
This is probably why my husband NXE husband I got
divorced because even brings cereal into the house and I'd
be like, what are you doing? Do not put this
cereal here? It's useless? It does nothing, And he's like,
what are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Didn't send the kids here?
Speaker 2 (12:47):
And I'm like, well, I guess they're at school. Another
teacher's problem. But guys, no, no, no, you think a
cereal is healthy? And then you look at the serving size,
it's like seventy grams of sugar for one cup.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Big Cereal. Has it come in? Let's just say that, yes, yes,
the cereal industrial complex is real truly.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Like when I tell people my favorite cereal, I'm like,
I buy that when I'm wanting a treat, and I
would not eat it for breakfast. I like put it
in a baggy, take it with me, and everyone's like,
what do you eat? I'm like, yes, I'm reliving my youth.
Leave me alone.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
So gold okay, okay, you know I had to ask her. Yeah,
corn pops. It was Golden Gram's hired people corn pops,
you know, frosted flakes. The problem with having children is
you wind up eating all their snacks. And so lately
I've been eating the Trader Joe's version of tricks and
it is so good. I'm sure it's delicious.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
But back to kids, though, Right when you are a kid,
your taste buds are bitter. This is why, right when
you're little you don't like tomatoes, but when you're an
adult you do like them. Your taste buds are bitter.
So if you are introduced sweets early on, this is
all you are going to have a propensity towards. This
is why we tried to delay and hold. Not that
(13:56):
you can have something sweet, but just how we do it.
And like instead of apple sauce, like giving the fruit
it is full form and things like that.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Oh my gosh, I have already ruined one of my kids.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Listen, I don't allow juice. I allow everything else, but
I don't allow juice. My kids are thirteen and eleven
and they go to birthday parties and literally mainline the juice.
They don't eat the pizza, and the mother will be like,
h Rocco just had like eighty five twenty ounce cups
of soda?
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Is this gonna be okay? I'm like, it's fine.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
He doesn't get it at home, Like no, geus knows that,
Like that's it.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Wait, this is fascinating. Children are born with bitter taste buds.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah, you're giving them something in there. It's like you're
killing them. Like, oh my gosh, this is so disgusting.
It's like yeah, because this is how they're perceiving it
and changes over time.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Wow. Okay. And then so with my son that I
have ruined in terms of sugar, can I fix him?
Is he fixable? Or yeah? How old is he? He's three? Four?
He's four? Oh girl, we can reprogram him in like
I don't know, four hours. Amazing.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Yeah, this is more of like mommy has a job
and you have a job, and these are our jobs,
and this is how we're going to eat this, and
we're not gonna have this anymore. We're gonna have this
and if you don't want to eat it, you don't
have to.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
We'll be right back with more. Vanessa risetto after this
quick break and we're back. Okay. So I do want
to go back to though this idea of the narrative
around sugar and how it has evolved in the public eye.
Do you see a more intense focus on sugar right now?
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Right now because of a new administration, And like, here's
the thing. It's good, right, like great, expose big business
and highlight how there is a lot of trash in
our food. This is a reason why forty two point
four percent of Americans up until last year were overweight
or obese, and only because of the advent of golp
ones that there was a seventeen percent reduction. And I
(15:54):
was just in France earlier in the summer and I
was like, wow, everyone is thin. And I looked it
up and their obesity rate is fourteen and a half percent.
That was close to ours in the nineties and nineteen
ninety one, the obesity rate was twelve percent. And so
we are smarter and we have more resources, and we're
far worse off. So what is that about. It's a
(16:16):
couple of things. I think it's trying to take the
personalization out of how you will be, you know, seeing
a dietitian or things of that nature. Right, Like why
can't you have a coach in perpetuity? You can go
to a therapist every week? For your whole life. Right,
So why can't you see a dietitian Probably not every
week for your whole life, but like at a regular
cadence to get the help that you need to, you know,
(16:38):
help you have a better outcome. Go see a dietitian.
Your insurance pace for it. Ninety three percent of our
patients exercise their insurance benefits.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Is there a biologically necessary amount of sugar that we need? No, Okay,
you need.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Carbohydrates, right, You need carbohydrates and that this cyber that's
the distinction, right, But sugar.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
I don't need sugar to live.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
I don't I need a carb I should have one, right,
in a fibrous form that's going to be more beneficial
for me. But I don't need sugar.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
I need sugar to live. That's just but that's a
personal issue that I'm working through.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Well, we'll get you on the back end.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Yeah, fix it, we'll fix up. Thinking about a healthy,
realistic daily cap is there a number that you keep
in mind for your clients. Yeah, So when you're looking
at packaged goods, you're looking for five grams of sugar
or less.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
That's what I would be looking for. Added sugar right,
So men should have about thirty six grams of sugar
a day, right, and women is like twenty five. It's
like six teaspoons for a woman and nine teaspoons for
a man, or like around one hundred calories.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
But if you think about a twelve ounce can of soda,
that is forty grams, So you just blew.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
It out of the water. You just blew your daily allowance.
And then so twenty five grams of sugar, twenty.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Five grams of added sugar, right, sugar per day, per day,
per day.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Peanut butter is a really good example. The best peanut
butter brand is that Costco. It's the Kirkland Organic Natural
peanut butter. But because of how peanuts are grown, the
volatility of it, they don't always have it.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
However, it is literally just peanuts, oil, salt, awesome peanut.
Once in a while they don't have it. And I
go to the supermarket across the street and I just
pick up a thing of peanut butter and then I
taste it. I'm like, why is this so sweet? And
I turn it around and it's like six grams added sugar.
I'm like, why why is that here? So it's sneaky
in different things. But then if you're somebody who just
(18:35):
has a daily propensity towards sweet things, you are likely
exceeding that threshold on a daily basis. And then how
does that negatively impact you? Like I said before, right
when you're eating too much sugar, it tills the liver,
make calories, store fat. So it can affect like your triglycerides,
your cholesterol, your LDL, which is the biggest predictor of
stroke or heart attack. It can cause dysregulation of your
(18:55):
endocrine systems. Sort're thinking of like type two diabetes, Like
maybe your weight isn't managed proper. And then what's long
term like is it cancer, is it dementia? All of
these things because we know that sugar also erodes the cells.
So what is the balance? Because I'm definitely not saying
not to have chocolate or sugar, that's not it. It's like,
can you play within that box?
Speaker 1 (19:17):
What if you eat a lot of fruit. We know
that fruit has natural sugars in it. Is there a
cap that you would suggest to your clients in terms
of how much fruit they eat in a day?
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Yeah, so I just teach them how to do it.
So like I said before, some fruits are better than others, right,
Like the raspberry example, it has a fair amount of fiber.
So if you told me you had a cup of
raspberries by themsells or blueberries or strawberries, I'd be like,
it's not like amazing, but it's fine because there is fiber,
et cetera. But if you pair something that does have
(19:49):
sugar or maybe is like a little bit heavier in
a carbohydrate with a fat or end or protein, that's
going to stabilize your blood sugar and you're not gonna
get this spike, right, So you will just really like reap.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
The benefits and get the energy source.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
But you're not going to be like you know, when
you eat a cookie and then you're looking for more cookies,
or then you're looking you have ice cream and then
you're looking for the candy. You just don't feel like
you can stop. Where in those scenarios you can stop,
you will be appropriately satisfied. What are some of the
other factors that drive sugar cravings? Like I said earlier,
what are you eating in the day? When are you
(20:24):
eating in the day? Honestly, if you are somebody that
gets up in the morning, runs three miles. You know,
you're taking your kids out and you don't eat your
first meal until two o'clock and it has no carbohydrate
in it. How are you going to make it to
nine o'clock at night?
Speaker 1 (20:42):
You're not. You're going to be tired, exhausted.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
And once the day is over and your kids are
in bed and you're just sitting on a couch watching
TV with your partner, then the defenses are down and
you don't even know what you're doing, and you're just
going into the pantry and you're just pulling.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Whatever it is to fill you up.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
And so that is always like you know of fence
number one. You just aren't eating it off throughout the
day and you're not front loading your carbohydrates, and carbs
are not the enemy.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
You do not have to be scared. What about stress
and cortisol levels? Does that drive sugar cravings at all?
It can?
Speaker 2 (21:15):
But the thing is the stress that you think you
might be under might not really be that stressful. Does
that make sense?
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Like you're like, oh, I'm stressed out. Your body is
handling it just fine.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
So really, people having increased cortisol I have not seen
it that much. I know it's like all over the
internet and all over TikTok, and it like checker cortisol level.
And I swear to God, if I've counseled twenty thousand
people in my career, maybe like five of them have
had elevated cortisol for real.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
So you're saying we shouldn't be taking our medical advice
from TikTok.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Probably not, that's probably not it. I do think though,
there are people that do stress eat, So there's that again.
It's like, what are the behaviors, what are the habits?
How do you deal with stress?
Speaker 1 (21:59):
That is the culprit You deal with stress, You associate
and you just eat cookies and it makes you feel better.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Okay, great, let's now work around that. And that's something
that you do every day.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Every day.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
You might notice that you come home and you just like, whoop,
eat a sleeve of cookies. Okay, great, Now we're gonna
reframe it.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
They're gonna go outside for a walk, and you're gonna
have a breakfast, a small breakfast, and you're not gonna snack,
and you're gonna eat regular meals and you are going
to be helped.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
It's going to take time, but you can do it.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Vanessa, there's a conversation about sugar and aging that I
really want to learn more about from you. I honestly
didn't really know that there was a connection between sugar
and aging until I was preparing for this interview. But
let's get into some specifics. So first of all, how
does over consumption of sugar advance or quicken the process
(22:46):
of aging?
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Well, it causes inflammation, right, So you could just think
about it like that, and if you have skin issues
to begin with, like maybe it's going to make egzema
flare up more, maybe you're gonna have acne more. Like
I said, it degrades the cells. And if you're constantly
eating sugar and you aren't somebody who's eating vegetables and
lots of fruit, right, That's the thing when we hear
these like studies kind of nuanced, it's like, well, the
(23:10):
reason why it accelerates aging is because people like this
likely are not going to the gym cold plunging their
face and eating vegetables.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
So it's like habit stacking, painting a picture of all
the habits together.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
That's right, that's right, all the habits together.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
But again, like it's just like if you drink every day, right,
Like people are like, oh, that person looks really old,
and you're like, yeah, they drink a lot of alcohol.
So that's why they look old because of the constant inflammation.
And so, yes, I get it.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
The sugar it like floods dopamine into the brain and
it makes you feel good and it makes you feel happy,
But there are other things that can make you happy.
And if you set yourself up for success eating adequate
amounts of protein, fat, carbohydrate, fiber at every single meal,
then you won't crave the sugar as much. You'll be
able to just have the one cookie or the one
(23:59):
can or whatever it is. You won't have to do
it in excess. So what about brain fog?
Speaker 1 (24:04):
What does current research show about the relationship between over
consumption of sugar and brain fog.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Yeah, it is a real thing, right, It's affecting those
brain cells. And when you are, for example, like my
friends and I are hall paramount and puzzle and a puzzle,
it's lowered estrogen, right, And so when your estrogen is lowered,
you're looking to feel happier, so then you crave more sugar.
It's a whole cascade. But you're not doing yourself any
favors and you're not protecting your brain. It also is
(24:30):
going to affect your sleep. So when you're eating sugar
like well into the layer part of the evening, your
body's going to take time to metabolize and so then
you wake up at two three o'clock in the morning.
This is the same thing with alcohol. Your body has
to sacrifice all metabolic process in order to push it
away from the bloodstream. Even though alcohol is a macronutrient,
it's like a selfish one. You don't really get any
(24:52):
benefit from it, and so your body has to do
this work. Let's say it's wine. It has to break
everything down, all the sugars, et cetera, and get it
to it's natural state, which is ethanol, and then it
could be moved out as a byproduct. And so what
happens to everything that you ate, You ate, it gets
stored as fat. This is why you feel hungover, the
sugar hangover. That's a real thing.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
It's very bad. It's very bad. Wait, describe what's happening
when we feel that sugar hangover.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
So everything you ate got stored as fat, right, and
so now you didn't actually reap any benefit of what
you were ingesting. So it's like you didn't eat anything, right,
imagine what the whole day and you ate nothing. That's
me after a crumble binge. Yeah, it's not good. This
crumble thing is so funny. The other day my daughter
ordered it to the house and I was like, what
(25:39):
is this? How is it getting here?
Speaker 1 (25:41):
She was like, it's delicious.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Mom, Okay, okay, it's kind of funny.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Your daughter and I would get along. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
she's she loves the well she's not mine, and she's like,
I don't like chocolate.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
I'm like, wait, really, what is this? But she loves
a good sour patch kit. That's where she's at.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
She is my people. How about sugars and hormones. I'm
guessing they're not friends.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
It's not really that. It's just depends, right, like where
are you in the cycle? Right, different parts of the cycle,
like your period or whatever, it will require you to
eat more or eat less of something, or you're going
to create something. Not like that is actually a very
real thing, and you can pay attention to your body
in the different phases as it relates to like menopause.
(26:21):
For me, I think the sugar needs to be kept
to a minimum because you don't have the protective effects
of the estrogen, so you are very much exposed. Women
in menopause because they don't have estrogen, their propensity towards
heart disease goes up. And like I said earlier, if
you're eating too much sugar, what happens tells the liver
make calories, store fat, so it's clogging the arteries. So
you have to be paying attention and other things that
(26:44):
affect it. Right, it's the alcohol, it's when you're eating.
Don't omit things. Put pair things together because then you're
going to be better off.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
We've got to take a quick break, but we'll be
right back.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Back.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Well, Vanessa, you have been such a truth teller throughout
this conversation. Don't stop now. Now I need to talk
to you about artificial sweeteners. I need the truth. Yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
We don't actually know the mechanism of action, but we
do see that people who tend to over consume things
with artificial sweetener have more of a sweet tooth. So
like you're drinking Die Die coke like crazy, and then
you're like also eating so many cookies. It's okay, I
guess if you're not diabetic, but our diabetic friends like,
(27:35):
we got to pay attention to that.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Yeah, I'm feeling super vulnerable and exposed right now. I
drink a lot of Coke zero.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
And then you see like and then here I'll blow
your mind about the Coke zero.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
And please, I love a Coke zero guys. I love
to go to France and be like, can I have
a salt soup? And they're like, yes, you can.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
But when you think of a sugar molecule, right, it
has three water molecules and one on hydrogen. And we
with sucralows, we remove the three water molecules and we
use chlorine. One of my professors in school, he was
on the team that created Slinda, and then we would
have to recreate things in the lab to be like
sugar free or whatever. He would taste it and then
(28:16):
he would spit it out and.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
He created He was one of the Wow. I was like,
I'm not having it.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
And then you think about the plant based ones, so
like monk fruit and stevia, and you can even think
also like erythritol. So erythrotol is very interesting because it
doesn't come into the bloodstream, so you are not adversely affected,
and the glycemic index is zero. The monk fruit and
the stevia it's okay too, but it could bother your stomach,
(28:42):
so you have to like watch if you can tolerate that,
even a diabetic right, If I teach you how to
carb account, you probably don't need sugar free things unless
you are deep into the sodas, et cetera. And this
is the only way for you to be able to
still have it. But we can get you to a
place where your blood sugar is stable because how much
(29:03):
how many cakes are you eating and how many cookies
are you having, and how frequent is it?
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Like, who cares if you have two cookies? That's okay.
I'm so happy that I get to have this conversation
with you because it's really confronting for me to take
a step back and look at my own nutrition because
I have this image of myself as being very healthy,
and for the most part, I am, but I do
have these vices that I allow in like coke zero
and crumble and cake. And it's really interesting to see
(29:29):
how quickly just a little treat here, a little treat
there can really cumulatively add up.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Yeah, I think it's always about the sum of the average,
Like are you having diet coke and cookies and cakes
every day? Then okay, maybe we need to take a
closer look and make some adjustments. And it's not that
you can't have a diet coke or a coke zero
every day. I mean you probably can. We just have
to track and pay attention and see where we could
(29:55):
make some improvements. Like the rules are not hard and fast.
You just need to make sure that you're giving yourself
the best chance and that it's sustainable.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
And when we think about solutions, a lot of people
are turning to these GLP one type drugs, right it's
on the top of everyone's mind. What the GOLP one
is doing is delaying gastric emptying so you feel full
for longer, and then you should lose weight because your
Frohlinds purpose is eating less. It's an interesting thing because
(30:26):
people tend to underreport, so everyone's like, I don't know,
I'm not doing anything different, But I always think it's
interesting because if somebody's problem is not over consumption, then
do they see benefit when having a GOLP one? Is
there a place for GLP one one thousand percent. It's
very promising because a lot of these people have a
(30:47):
lot of food noise. And if you're not somebody with
food noise, you can't understand. But they just think about
food all day, every day. So that's what food noise is.
It's the internal dialogue about food.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Yeah yeah, And like I don't have that, but I
have patience that have told it to me, and I'm like,
this is really fascinating.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Like you just wake up and like all you do
is think about every meal to the point where it
could like impact how they do work. And so a
GLP one is amazing for them because they don't think
about it and they just they can execute and that's it.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
And I think also we can think about if you're
five hundred pounds and you live in a housing project
and you only ate fast food, you were not going
to have like taste buds to eat Cigy's plain yogurt. Guys,
you're just not. So so let's level set here. The
GLP one can very easily help someone menopausal women. I
(31:34):
have so many manipeazal women that come to me that
do so much hard work and they're like it's not working.
I'm like listen, you gave it an honest try. So
now this is a tool to help you. So doesn't
say that you're not going to eat sugar, but you're
going to eat it less and you're not going to
think about it as much as you probably had done previously.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
What are the questions that come to your mind as
a nutritionist about the long term effects of these drugs. Yes,
they are well researched.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
We've used them for years, but we've used them at
a certain dose on a certain population. And so what
I think about first is at the higher dosages, what
does that mean?
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Long term?
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Doesn't mean cancer, doesn't mean like you're ruining your GI tract.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
I have no idea.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Then I think about the compounded drugs because that's a
lot of what's out on the market right now, and
we didn't do any trials on those drugs. So what
is going to happen to people who use them and
also got result from it? What does that mean are
they on it long term?
Speaker 1 (32:32):
What goes down?
Speaker 2 (32:32):
And so I'm not saying it's something the farious is
going to happen, but I'm also not saying that it's not.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
And none of us actually really know well GLP ones
are just one of the things that people are talking
about on the internet when it comes to diet and nutrition.
We pulled a few other clickbait claims from TikTok and
we want to run these by you. First. One, we
have carbs after six pm turned straight into fat? Is
that true? No? Who says this don't know?
Speaker 2 (33:00):
It's like so in a blanket statement. I mean, I
guess it is to try to like get you not
to eat any sugar at night, is probably.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
The reason for it. But that is not true. That's
very nuanced.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
So no, but remember, like I said, if you ate
one hundred calories of cookies, it spikes your blood sugar
and it tells your liver make calories and store fat.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
So you could follow the logic kind of, but it's
not one hundred percent true. Sugars cause yourselves to mutate
when they regenerate, leading to aging. We talked about sugar
and aging, but I don't remember you mentioning that. No,
it's not mutation, it's inflammation and degeneration. That's what it's causing. Okay,
(33:43):
just seventy five grams of sugar, which is about the
same in one of those prepackaged smoothies suppresses neutrophil immune
function for up to five hours. I don't even know
what half of that meant. Why is that even actually
like important? Right?
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Like I don't no.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
And also seventy five what did you say said? If
I have grams of sugar? Yeah, that's a lot.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
I think that's the thing we should talk about. Why
are you eating seventy five grams of sugar in one
sitting because you're having a smoothie?
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Like okay, but don't we all know not to do that?
Don't we all know?
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Don't go to those juice places and get one of
those things because it's gonna be semi ninie grams of
sugar and you're gonna feel terrible. It's kind of like
this high feructose corn syrup thing and soda or the
red dye. Like how many skittles are your kids eating?
That's the general PSA. I don't care if my kids
have Peeps or Skittles or eminems because it's not an
(34:35):
everyday thing. It's like Halloween. Then you know, Christmas is
basically another Halloween, and then somehow Easter is another Halloween,
and so they have the candy every day, you know,
for two days, three days, and then they forget about
it until the next holiday.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
And the common thread here is consumerism. It's marketing. It's
all marketing.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
It's all marketing. It's all yeah, no, no, no, guys,
do you control what's going on in your house a
little better? Okay, speaking of kids, this one's interesting. It's
not safe to give a baby any refined sugar until
at least.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
One year old. That's totally true. Oh, this is this
is kind of giving you your child the best chance
at success with their relationship with sugar. Yeah, it's even
like I can get really really technical.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
You know, you wouldn't give your baby your infant yogurt
until about nine months ten months because their kidneys like
can't take it. Introducing something very sweet to a baby
like now you're taxing their endocrine system and they're little,
so like that shouldn't be it, right.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
We need to like phase.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Approach the food, get their body used to digestion all
of these things. Also, think about it, the more sugar
you have, the more like gastric disturbances you can have.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
When people were stick in the hospital and they'd be
like they're losing weight, give them boosts, and I'm like,
this patient has tons of diarrhea and the boost is
just going to make more diarrhea.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
So please, like any dietician that's like, And then I
get my patient boots, I'm like, I've written you off
your your this is not it.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Nope. First of all, you look at the nutritional label
on those things. It's disgusting. Awesome thing. If someone is
out there listening to this conversation and thinking, wow, this
is such great information. How can I give my body
a reset from sugar? What would you prescribe them.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
A dietitian, harget, Let's say, yeah, let you do it
by yourself. It's hard. You need to be able to
talk to somebody and ask questions and like send somebody
your food and have this back and forth dialogue so
that you can get corrected in real time. But I
guess the thing I would say if you are going
to do it by yourself, is like one thing at
(36:36):
a time. So if you tell me that you have
six Oreo cookies every single night, well then tonight, let's
have four, and let's eat it adjacent to our dinner,
not at the nine o'clock hour that you have, right,
And so we'll just try that for a week. That
worked great. Now, let's have four orio cookies every other
day for the next week, right, and just phase it
that way so that you break the habit.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
But just quitting sid something cold turkey that is never
gonna work. Guys, Vanessa, what's one fact about sugar? You
wish everyone new that all sugar is the same, white sugar,
brown sugar, coconut sugar, agavet honey. They were like, oh,
it's this somebody fancy honey.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
I'm like, I don't know what that is. Honey's honey's
honey and sugar.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
It's all the same. Your body doesn't know the difference.
So save your money and you don't need to be
having like sugar free things. Let's just work on how
often you're having the sugar.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
What's up, Domino, Sugar, I'm about to pull through. I'm
about to pick you up to take you home with me.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Yeah, that's what I have in my house. I put
in a fancy like glass jar with a like a
gold container. And it's like, yeah, of course, yeah, you
have to put your sugar in a fancy jar. I
mean that's naturally, that's how I can stay here in
this house.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Vanessa, I want to end on this note. We ask
all of our guests this here on the bright side,
because it's your moment to shine. What are you celebrating
in your life right now? I am celebrating that I
have these kids that are really self sufficient. I've got
a thirteen year old and eleven year old that are
actually like nice. There's no drama with them or their
friend groups, and they do things on their own, like
(38:13):
get themselves so they buss on their own, pack their
own bag, and I'm like, all right, we're firing at
all cylinders. There's hope. Vanessa. You deserve a run of
applause for that, because that's you. You know that, Yes,
that's you and your parenting. Yeah, thank you, Thank you, Vanessa,
was so great to meet you. Thank you so much
for just blowing my mind. When it comes to sugar anytime,
I'm happy to work you through however you like you're
(38:35):
viewing it. I don't want to call it an addiction.
It brings joy, so we can get a plan, work
through a plan. It's definitely not an addiction. It's just
joy and pleasure, and like you know what, life is
hard and short and sure, and it's like I'm gonna
die anyways, I might as well enjoy it. Yeah, I
want to be happy. I agree with you. I'm an
eighty twenty girl at the end of the day. Honestly,
(38:57):
that's awesome. You'll be fin You'll live a long life.
I'm sure of it. Vanessa, thanks so much for coming
on the bright Side.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Nice to meet you. Vanessa Rizzetto is a registered dietitian
and CEO and co founder of Colleena Health. The bright
Side is a production of Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts
and is executive produced by Reese Witherspoon and me Simone Boyce.
Production is by a Cast Creative Studios. Our producers are
(39:26):
Taylor Williamson, Abby Delk, and Adrian Bain. Our production assistant
is Joya putnoy Acasts. Executive producers are Jenny Kaplan and
Emily Rudder. Maureen Polo and Reese Witherspoon are the executive
producers for Hello Sunshine. Ali Perry and Lauren Hansen are
the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts. Our theme song is
(39:47):
by Anna Stump and Hamilton Lakehauser.
Host
Simone Boyce
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