Whether your concern is shedding stubborn pounds or preventing cancer, an essential step to improving your health lies in removing one sneaky culprit from your diet.

According to a recent report published by Dr. Joseph Mercola, the average American consumes 2.5 pounds of this per week, and the high consumption of it is “what’s driving the obesity epidemic.” Any guesses?

Many of you will be shocked to learn that it is not a diet high in fat that is killing us, but one high in sugar. Fructose in particular promotes inflammation and speeds up the aging process. According to the report published by Dr. Mercola, it “promotes the kind of dangerous growth of fat calls around your vital organs that are the hallmark of diabetes and heart disease,” and these new fat cells are produced after just ten weeks of high-fructose consumption.

Not all Sugar is Created Equal

While foods such as apples, bananas, grapes and citrus fruits are high in fructose, they also contain a lot of beneficial vitamins and minerals, as well as glucose, which happens to be essential for distributing energy throughout the body. Consuming fruits such as these is necessary.

You can start cutting down on your sugar intake by limiting or eliminating soft drinks and sweetened juices from your diet. It is also important to read labels, because processed foods are generally high in fructose, especially high fructose corn syrup. Even foods you wouldn’t think of as sweet may contain scary amounts of the stuff. Ketchups and condiments, breakfast cereals, breads and even lunch meats are culprits.

Look to healthy alternatives

Do you take your coffee or tea with sugar? If not, you are ahead of the game. Unless, of course, if you are using a low-calorie artificial sweetener. Splenda’s sweetening agent is sucralose, which is made by replacing three of the hydrogen-oxygen groups on sucrose with three chlorine atoms. Sucralose is indigestible by the body, and will likely lead to equally adverse health effects in the long run as regular sugar. The adverse health effects of aspartame-based sweeteners are better known, as it has been linked to brain cancer, though this has been hotly debated.

That being said, it is good practice to avoid artificial sweeteners. Other popular sugar substitutes such as agave nectar are touted as being all-natural, but agave is almost entirely fructose. If you have a sweet tooth, try the naturally sweet herb Stevia, which has been shown in studies to actually improve insulin sensitivity in rats and help reverse diabetes.

Lauren Anderson can be reached at [email protected].