Sugar makes your gums bleed

We all know that sweet treats can cause cavities, but how many of us realise that a high-sugar diet can also lead to gum inflammation and increase our risk of gum disease? This was the finding of a 2014 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Sugar harms your heart

Harvard University researchers studied thousands of American adults over 15 years and found that people who got a quarter or more of their daily calories from sugar were more likely to die from heart disease in that time than those whose diets contained less than ten per cent of added sugar a day. Sugar-sweetened drinks, fruit drinks and dairy desserts were among the worst culprits.

It’s as bad for your liver as booze

Fructose, a sugar that occurs naturally in fruit, is processed in the liver. This is leading to a rise in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which can cause liver failure and cirrhosis and may even necessitate a liver transplant. A sugar belly—think beer belly but caused by an excess of the sweet stuff—is a tell-tale sign of NAFLD.

Fructose could be worse than salt for your blood pressure

A high-fructose diet can send your blood pressure beyond the recommended upper limit of 120/80, according to a study in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology in 2010. And in a review of research in 2014 in the BMJ Open Heart, experts argued that it could be more damaging to heart health than salt.

Sugar can cause asthma

Scientists who analysed data from 146,990 American adults found that people who quaffed at least two sugar-sweetened drinks—such as fizzy drinks, juices and sports drinks—a day were more likely to have problems with their breathing.