# Is all sugar bad or only added sugar? Source: https://kidneystonediet.com/ep/is-all-sugar-bad-or-only-added-sugar/ Published: 2021-05-11 --- [![Kidney Stone Diet Podcast](https://kidneystonediet.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Kidney-Stone-Diet-Podcast-1-1024x1024.jpg)](https://kidneystonediet.com/podcast/) [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNfDJHf9EeE)[Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/is-all-sugar-bad-or-only-added-sugar/id1528474326?i=1000521318344&uo=4)[Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1ArBLHanKlXO3o7Xj3CcQA)[Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/0868148d-adfd-411d-b3f2-71a0ad1461ec) May 11, 2021 --- ![Jeff Sarris](https://kidneystonediet.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Jeff-Sarris-150x150.jpg) Jeff Sarris Host ![Jill Harris](https://kidneystonediet.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Kidney-Stone-Diet-Jill-Harris-150x150.jpg) Jill Harris Host In this episode of the Kidney Stone Diet Podcast Jill Harris answers a listener question about sugar and if all types of sugar are equal when it comes to the Kidney Stone Diet.\ \ Have a question? Leave us a voicemail at (773) 789-8763.\ \ • [Kidney Stone Diet](https://kidneystonediet.com/)\ • [Kidney Stone Prevention Program](https://kidneystonediet.com/kidney-stone-prevention)\ • [Oxalate Food List](https://kidneystonediet.com/oxalate-list/)\ • [Free KSD Resources](https://kidneystonediet.com/resources/)\ \ Find the full transcript at [BYLT.co/show/kidney-stone-diet](https://bylt.co/show/kidney-stone-diet) ## Chapters - 00:00:00 Standing Desks And Workspace Ergonomics - 00:01:48 Natural Sugar Versus Refined Added Sugar - 00:03:20 How Excess Sugar Increases Kidney Stone Risk - 00:06:30 Fruit Fiber Benefits And Safe Oxalate Fruits - 00:09:08 Daily Added Sugar Limits For Men And Women - 00:13:47 Lifestyle Changes And Kidney Stone Prevention Resources ## Transcript ### Standing Desks And Workspace Ergonomics 00:00:00 Jeff Sarris Welcome back to the Kidney Stone Diet podcast, the show about reducing your kidney stone risk and living your best life. I'm your host and fellow student, Jeff Sarris. 00:00:23 Jill Harris And I'm Jill Harris, and it's good to hear everybody and see everybody. I'm very excited, Jeff, to see you, too. 00:00:28 Jeff Sarris Yeah, it's great to see you. And I was very tempted today to try my new standing desk for this podcast. I- it's a manual one– 00:00:37 Jill Harris Why didn't you? 00:00:38 Jeff Sarris Like, I need to figure out like getting the shot just right if I was going to do it. I would need a little more a little more time to find the right way to do it, but I really like this. I picked it up from IKEA a few weeks ago and it's just got a crank– 00:00:50 Jill Harris Okay, dude, I'm so excited for you! I'm so sad that you didn't do it so I could see it. I often will just, you know, do a lot of books or, just put it on a table and, you know, but the standing, 'cause your- your tush hurts after a while, you know. It's not good for us. We don't use our legs, we don't use our butt. It's terrible! So, standing is the way to go, baby. 00:01:11 Jeff Sarris Yeah, and for a long time I would use a KALLAX, so like IKEA has the KALLAX, which is the cube little system, and being 6'4", the second rung of that is perfectly where my hands are, and the top is pretty close to where my eyes would be. I just have a little extra lift, for the laptop. 00:01:28 Jill Harris Man, you've got to love IKEA. 00:01:29 Jeff Sarris Oh, yeah! And this desk is from there, as well. So, it's only like a couple hundred bucks, but it's a manual crank, which I always like when stuff's manual versus electric– 00:01:38 Jill Harris Of course, you do. You're very boy that way. 00:01:41 Jeff Sarris Yeah. Yeah, and it'll just always work. But, anyway, enough about that. So, what do you say we dive into this week's question? ### Natural Sugar Versus Refined Added Sugar 00:01:48 Jill Harris I'm ready, baby! Let's go! Let's go! 00:01:50 Jeff Sarris All righty. What do we have? "Hi, my name is Jim from Santa Rosa, California. And my question is regarding sugar and kidney stones. I know that sugar is, can cause kidney stones, or so it's supposed to, but my question is, you know, we all know as far as glycemic index and blood sugar level, there's a big difference between sugar that you get from eating fruit, natural sugar, and the refined sugar or added sugar. And I'm wondering if that same dis- difference extends to kidney stones? In other words, does it make a difference whether our sugar is coming from fruits or whether it's, a refined sugar? And or is basically just sugar, and, you know, they're all equally bad for kidney stones? So, that's my question. Thank you." 00:02:53 Jill Harris Well, I love that question because I love all the questions. Did you happen to get his name, Jeff? 00:02:58 Jeff Sarris I think it was Jim. It was a little, it broke up a little bit. It was hard to hear. 00:03:02 Jill Harris Yeah, I know. Okay, I hate not addressing people by their name, but we're going to call him Jim. I hope it's Jim. Anyway, it's a good question, right? 00:03:09 Jeff Sarris Definitely. 00:03:10 Jill Harris I think, Jeff's like, "Yeah, girl, will you answer, please? Tick tock, baby, tick tock!" He looks at me like, "Yeah, it is, girl." Okay. So, sugar. ### How Excess Sugar Increases Kidney Stone Risk This is a great question because, so what's the difference here? And, first of all, why does sugar increase your risk of kidney stones? Well, here's the deal with sugar. Sugar kind of acts like sodium. So, sugar, when we eat too much of it, added sugar, and I'll explain that in a second, when we eat too much added sugar, it could also, like sodium does, pull calcium from our bone, and then we wind up having too much in our urine. And when we have too much calcium floating around in our urine, that's where these other crystals like phosphate and oxalate can connect to it and form kidney stones. The other thing that almost everybody understands about salt is that it decreases the amount– we pee less when we eat too much sodium. You know, when you go out to eat you're like, "Oh, my god! I ate too much sodium. I haven't peed in a day! What the heck?" You get bloated, your dungarees don't fit. That's not pretty, and that's– yes, how old I am, I said dungarees. Okay! Well, the deal is this: sugar acts the same way. So, sugar will also decrease urine volume, meaning you're going to pee less. So, you'll be, you'll be holding in water, you'll be retaining water, so you're not going to be flushing out your system like you should by eating too much sugar. And the calcium is also a problem. So, when we eat too much sugar, again, it pulls calcium from our bone, and it dumps in the urine. So, now, to get to his question, 'cause he wasn't even asking all that, but I wanted to clarify why we do care about sugar and kidney stone prevention. And, by the way, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, everything, sugar is just, it's, it's, you know, it accounts, it's a problem with a lot of medical conditions, chronic medical conditions. So, added sugar versus regular sugar. First of all, I am so thrilled, because I'm a nerd this way, that our government finally said, "Hey, we need to parse out added sugar from regular sugar on our nutrition labels." So, when you look at your nutrition label– and remember, people, turn it around, Buster Brown! Just don't be looking at the front of a package that tell you all kinds of little fairy tales there. Turn it around and look at the nutrition label. In the middle of the label you're going to see sugar. You will see the sugar, the total grams, and then you're going to see a parsed out bit that says, "Added." Well, the government says, "We need to tell people how much added sugar is in things." So, the added sugar is what you want to pay attention to mostly. And added sugar is sugar that has been added to the product. And you'll see it in its various forms in the ingredient list. So, honey, people are like, "Jill, I don't care what you say. I don't care what you know, I don't care where you've been, I do not care. I do not believe that honey is added sugar." Well, you don't got to believe it! It is a natural sugar, just like white sugar is a sugar, you know, refined sugar, but still these things have been added to our product. Think about it. ### Fruit Fiber Benefits And Safe Oxalate Fruits 00:06:30 Jill Harris If you were making cookies, you have to get honey and add it to there, hence it's an added sugar. Unlike a pear or an apple. It just came with the sugar! It was born with the sugar in there, it was not added. So, that is naturally occurring sugar and that you don't have to worry about. Does that mean I want you to eat eight bananas today? No, I don't want that, because that's a lot of sugar in those bananas. But have your few pieces of fruit a day, perfectly fine. Fruit is fine. Everybody should be eating a variety of fruit in their diet. I always say to my patients, "Get the one with the most fiber." Especially like diabetics should not really be eating a lot of bananas. There's not a lot of fiber in there, their blood sugar will shoot up. But things like apples and pears, which, by the way, are also low oxalate foods, there's tons of them, and you can see it on my safe oxalate list at kidneystonediet.com. So, pick the fruit: strawberries, blueberries, blackberries. All of these have a nice amount of fiber in them, and so when we have fiber and sugar together like that, it slows our sugar spikes in our blood, so that's awesome. So, you can have fruit. We do not count that towards our added sugar. It is not added sugar, it's naturally occurring sugar. Again, to find out if it's added, look at your nutrition label, see how much added sugar is in it. It will say added sugar under the total sugar. And then, also, the government said "Some food manufacturers said, 'Look, this is a lot of money to change our all our labels, and we don't make that much money.'" So, the government gave the smaller, the companies that, I think, make a million dollar net or less a year, they didn't have to change their labels yet. So, you may not see them on all labels, but mostly you will, okay? So, if you say, " she lied! I saw that YouTube, she's lying! She's lying!" It could be a smaller company, a little mom and pop shop that hasn't changed their labels yet, but they have to soon, okay? So, it should be everywhere. If you're like, " how is this added?" Look at the ingredient list! If you see things like honey, if you see things like rice, syrup, if you see things like maple syrup, you may say, "Ooh, maple syrup, that comes from a tree!" It's added if it's in the ingredient list! So, those are the foods that you want to– I'm not saying you can never have a food that has added sugar in it, I'm saying don't make that your staples. And as a reminder, Jeff's like, "I need some vodka!" ### Daily Added Sugar Limits For Men And Women 00:09:08 Jeff Sarris [laughter] 00:09:09 Jill Harris 'Cause she's really going on! As a reminder, men get up to 38 g of added sugar a day. We women, 'cause we tend to be smaller, we get 25 g of added sugar a day. So, listen, people, you can drink one soda, there's 38 g of added sugar! So, I often tell my people, "That's your bank, that's your budget. You spend it how you want." As a matter of fact, I start my day every day with some added sugar, because I have a coconut creamer I use in my coffee that's vanilla, and it makes me so happy that I am going to use 3 g of added sugar out of my budget, and I'm going to I'm going to use it for that coffee creamer. And everybody that loves and knows me also wants me to continue doing that so I remain happy throughout the day! So, that is part of my budget. I will tell you right now that I probably don't eat more than 5 g of added sugar a day. I eat a very low sugar diet. It's what makes my body work well. But you, women, 25 g of added, men 38 g of added sugar a day. Men really get 37.5, but I'm giving them the extra half. Okay, so use it where it matters most. Somebody says, "Hey, I don't care about no creamer. I'll have my coffee black, but I'm having those two cookies after dinner." That's where you decide to use it. Okay, that's beautiful. Use it where it makes you happy. The way one stays compliant to dietary changes, lifestyle changes, is eating the foods that make you happy within normal portion sizes, okay? Except spinach and almonds and buckwheat groats, they're too high in oxalate. But everything else, raspberries, but everything else is pretty much on the table, people. The problem is we eat too much salt, we eat too much added sugar, we eat too much meat protein, we don't eat enough calcium, and we don't get enough fluids, and we're overeating oxalate in with spinach and almond products all over the place. So, when we do things within normal portion sizes, hey, life is good, and that means treating yourself here and there. What do you think, Jeff? 00:11:23 Jeff Sarris Oh, I think that's great! And in terms of portion sizes, then, so we're talking added sugar. But if we're looking at fruit, do you have sort of a maybe a metric that you use to be like, "Okay, I have at most an apple a day and…" 00:11:38 Jill Harris Yeah, I'd say two to three. I'd say two to three servings of fruit, and actually servings of fruit are pretty small, like 1/2 a cup of berries, you know, one apple, one pear. So, typically what I do, also, and I just wrote an article on that today that's going to go on the website, that I'm excited about because– well, that will be definitely another video, but fiber, once people are like put on a low-oxalate fiber, so many patients come to me totally constipated because they've taken away– they think that all fruits have oxalate, right? So, they've taken away a lot of high-fiber fruits, and they're not eating enough, and that's not good. So, staple fruits for me are blackberries, blueberries, apples, pears. I even eat kiwi- kiwis, they're higher in oxalate, but they're 5 g of fiber per little kiwi. They're really packed with nutrients, so I like those. So, two to three servings of fruit a day is absolutely great. If you're diabetic, you choose the ones that have higher fiber, and of course listen to your registered dietitians exactly what works for you. 00:12:39 Jeff Sarris Yeah, for sure. And, yeah, the fiber, I'm glad there's going to be an article, and we'll definitely dive into fiber on another on another episode because that is such a huge component. Like you said, like if you're pouring maple syrup in something, sure, it's a nice sugar. It's like a nice product, but at the same time there's no fiber, there's nothing else to go with it in that delivery. 00:12:59 Jill Harris Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. 00:13:02 Jeff Sarris Well, yeah, I think this was great. So, we'll wrap right there. And if you want your question answered on a future episode, let me see what that number is. The number again is 773-789-8763, and Jill will do her best to answer your question in a future episode. I say do your best, I wanted to call– I was just thinking about it, how this should be "Grill Jill!" We're like trying to see if you can answer the questions, because you can obviously, you can answer all of these. The challenge becomes us having enough time to get through all of them, because we do have a nice amount of voicemails. We want you to keep calling in, though. As many as we can get, because we want to touch as many different topics that maybe wouldn't just be front of mind for either of us in any given week. So– ### Lifestyle Changes And Kidney Stone Prevention Resources 00:13:47 Jill Harris Absolutely. Absolutely. And here's the thing: nothing makes me happier than knowing that we are able to help people. Because, you know, in the stone world there's not an exorbitant amount of help, and where there is help, there's often conflicting information. So, you know, nothing makes us happier than be- than having this service for you guys, to be able to. You get to call in, ask whatever you're thinking. Call in 22 times! I don't care, we don't care at all. So, we're we're we're really on a mission to get people just, not even kidney stone disease, just healthy eating habits, practical. We're trying to sprinkle some common sense on everyone's plate. The diet industry has made us all freaking nuts, people. It's nuts! And it's overwhelming, and it's confusing. And then it's one thing when someone's like, " I want to lose weight to get in that bridesmaid dress." God, I'm so glad I'm old, I'll never have to do that again. Now, it's funerals, so I get to wear black, it's perfect, perfect. But, you know, we're not just, it's not about losing weight, it's about feeling good. We're dealing with a sickness, and then, you know, people are giving you all kinds of conflicting information on how to treat that sickness with some dietary changes, and then, you know, it's it's really overwhelming. And somebody like me, who's a patient with my own cancer stuff, I understand what that's like. You're dealing with your sickness and now you've got to do deal with all these changes and, and guess what? There's nobody here to help you to do it, I mean. So, this is a privilege. 00:15:18 Jeff Sarris Yeah, and it's just so much to navigate. But that's, that's why if you want more, be sure to subscribe to this podcast. It's on YouTube on Kidney Stone Diet, and you can also find it anywhere you get your podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, whatever, wherever you're listening right now. And be sure to check out kidneystonediet.com. When you're there, you can sign up for the free weekly newsletter where Jill sends out sends out a little inspiration to sort of keep you on track, and, we'll probably send out the fiber article when that one's all dialed in and ready to go. And, if you want the a real deep dive, there's the Kidney Stone Prevention Course, we have Kidney Stone Diet meal plans where you're able to, just have inspiration for every day to keep you on track. We're really just trying to get you from here to there, there being reducing your kidney stone risk and just living a better life overall. So, I think that wraps it there. 00:16:13 Jill Harris Yes! If there's one thing I'll just say this, really, I will just say this. If it's one thing, the only thing I like about kidney stones, it is a wake-up call for people. So, it's like, "Oh, holy resurge! The time is finally here, I've got to be responsible for what I'm putting in my mouth, you know. Maybe I really should think about moving a little bit more, maybe I shouldn't watch Netflix all day long, maybe I should drink more water." So, you know, that pain that people suffer from kidney stones, it is a wake-up call, and, you know, that's when they start tuning in. Subscribe to the YouTube channel, people, too, by the way, because then other people can find us, so, and thanks for all your support. We really appreciate you. All right, close it up, Jeff. 00:16:55 Jeff Sarris Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, but that is the thing, like, and if you know anyone else who is suffering through kidney stones, be sure to send them the show. I mean, we have the paid products, but all of this is meant to be free to reach as many people as we possibly can. 00:17:08 Jill Harris Yeah. 00:17:09 Jeff Sarris So, yeah, so thanks again for listening and we will see you next time. 00:17:13 Jill Harris Thanks, Jim! We hope that's your name. Bye! 00:17:16 Jeff Sarris See ya.