S’mores. That delightful campfire treat that most associate with summer. When my oldest son and I were backpacking last week with a group of five other fathers and sons, there were several evenings that he indulged in s’mores after dinner.
So why am I against s’mores? Well, besides causing a massive insulin spike, they are most often eaten late at night. And once you begin naturally producing melatonin, your insulin production is shut down. This means that the glucose in your blood sugar stays there until morning. This is problematic because high blood glucose is very pro-inflammatory, and as I’ve spoken about many times, inflammation is the cause of every major disease.
When we were growing Mara’s breast cancer cells in our lab, they would not grow unless there were three conditions: 1) no oxygen 2) high estrogen and 3) high glucose. This is why she implemented a ketogenic diet in 2014 before it was popular, and why she tried not to eat more than 25 grams of sugar per day. So, high blood glucose at night should be avoided for people concerned about cancer.
More than the high sugar content of s’mores, the ingredients are awful. Both the chocolate bar and the graham crackers have soy, and the marshmallows have high fructose corn syrup.
I occasionally get asked what is the one food I’d recommend avoiding if someone is concerned about getting cancer. I always say, “high fructose corn syrup, but a close second is soybean oil.” This is primarily because these crops are genetically modified to receive the herbicide glyphosate, the active ingredient in RoundUp, which I talk about in this blog. Trace amounts of glyphosate can disrupt the tight junctions of the gut barrier, kill your good gut bacteria, and reduce your Nrf-2 expression, all of which are very bad for your health.
You can get organic graham crackers that don’t have soybean oil. Additionally, I like Lily’s chocolate because it is sweetened with stevia to minimize the glucose spike. natural marshmallow alternatives are still sugary but lack the GMO element. Alternatively, there are homemade marshmallow recipes, like this one, you can try.
If you’re making s’mores, select better ingredients and make them earlier in the evening to give your body a chance to process the glucose.
1 Comment
As I read the article on the unhealthiness of s’mores, as if the things listed weren’t enough, there’s another element that makes them even more carcinogenic and that is roasting the marshmallows over an open flame which causes toxic nitrosamines to form. After seeing my genetic test results, I found gene SNPs that do not allow me to detox well from nitrosamines. Please use caution when cooking, especially grilling, broiling, anything.