October 30, 2011, is the first annual Sugar Addiction Awareness Day, appropriately, since the next day is Halloween when most American children are allowed and even encouraged to stuff themselves with candy.\u00a0\u00a0Sugar addiction is real, and wide-spread, and, according to some, is a stronger addiction than even cocaine.\u00a0 Dr. Serge Ahmed, of Bordeaux, France, has found that when given the choice between cocaine and sugar, rats will choose sugar.\u00a0 Sugar produces dopamine in the brain, “the body’s own happy, feed good, chemical.”<\/p>\n
When I talk with people about how to eat a healthy diet, one of the first reactions is often “No sugar?\u00a0 No way.”\u00a0 Be honest, ask yourself, “Could I stop eating sugar cold turkey?”\u00a0Many of us\u00a0can’t even face the possibility of going sugar free.\u00a0 That’s\u00a0a good indicator of how strong sugar addiction really is.\u00a0\u00a0The only negative reaction to most of the other changes needed to eat a healthy diet is “It costs too much.\u00a0 I can’t afford to buy organic produce, grass-fed beef, eggs from pastured chickens” and so on.\u00a0 Rarely does anyone argue about the benefits of a diet of unprocessed, whole, organic foods, but the idea of giving up sugar is just too much.<\/p>\n
Let’s look at how much sugar is in the standard American diet.\u00a0 Some estimates say that Americans eat 200 or more pounds of sugar\u00a0every year.\u00a0\u00a0 It is found in almost every type of food we eat, especially processed foods, and not just the desserts and snacks.\u00a0 Even so-called savory\u00a0dishes\u00a0often have some form of sugar–a very sweet barbecue sauce, a honey glaze, ketchup, honey mustard sauce, and so on.\u00a0\u00a0 Look at the labels on almost any processed food–the baked beans, salad dressings, sweet and sour sauces, and especially the breakfast cereals.\u00a0 Sugar is everywhere!\u00a0 It’s also\u00a0important to know that sugar can be included (hidden?)\u00a0in foods under many different names.\u00a0 Some of the most common other names for sugar are corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, evaporated cane juice, fructose, maltose (in fact most anything ending in -ose is a form of sugar), maple syrup, succanat, and turbinado sugar.\u00a0 All of these are processed by the body in similar ways and too much of any of them is destructive to our health.\u00a0 One of the reasons sugar is added to so many processed foods is that it is cheap; another reason is that people\u00a0like (are addicted to?)\u00a0the sweet taste which can cover up the inferior, tasteless ingredients in so many processed foods.\u00a0 Sweeteners are so common, in fact, that our palates have been desensitized to sugar, so manufacturers keep trying to hide more sugar in their products.<\/p>\n
So why should we give up sugar to be healthy?\u00a0 First, remember that sugar in high concentration is rare in nature.\u00a0 We need sugar in our bloodstream, but our bodies can’t handle sugar in high concentration.\u00a0\u00a0Our bodies are simply not prepared to deal with the amount of sugar we are eating.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Excess sugar consumption is disastrous, especially for children.\u00a0\u00a0Sugar can interfere with the way our hormones work, disrupting the physiological developments taking place during puberty.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sugar can bind to hormone receptors and leave us insensitive to the hormone insulin.\u00a0 Insulin resistance can drive blood sugar levels even higher and lead to diabetes and its related disorders.\u00a0 Sugar also causes the collagen to stiffen in tendons, joints, and skin, which can cause arthritis and premature wrinkling.\u00a0 This is just a brief mention of some of the effects of sugar on the body, but there are references below for more extensive information about the dangers of too much sugar.<\/p>\n
So how did I deal with the sugar problem.\u00a0 Until a few years ago, I was one of those who were\u00a0suckered by the widely-promoted, high carbohydrate, low fat, and very little red meat diet.\u00a0\u00a0[Unfortunately, this\u00a0type of low nutrition diet is still being pushed as ‘healthful’ by the federal government, doctors, nurses, nutritionists, and prominent health\u00a0‘experts’ and journalists.]\u00a0Was it easy for me\u00a0to give up sugar?\u00a0 For the most part, yes, it was easy, because I had read quite a bit about the effects of sugar (carbohydrates) and I really wanted to be healthier and feel better.\u00a0\u00a0I had no problem skipping desserts and\u00a0swapping sweetened, cold\u00a0cereals\u00a0for smoothies with raw kefir and egg yolks.\u00a0\u00a0 The most difficult change for me was to stop drinking my morning tea\u00a0with sugar and lime juice.\u00a0 I loved the sweetened citrusy tea, but could never adjust to drinking\u00a0tea without sugar.\u00a0 I\u00a0rarely drink\u00a0tea now.\u00a0\u00a0 Lately my morning drink is\u00a0freshly ground organic decaf coffee with stevia and real cream.\u00a0 My family occasionally–once every few weeks–indulges in homemade ice cream made with real cream and a little organic sugar or a baked custard with a\u00a01\/4 cup of\u00a0maple syrup [see recipe<\/a>], and occasionally we have fresh fruit for dessert.\u00a0 I have made pies for special occasions like birthdays and Thanksgiving but that’s about\u00a0it for sweeteners.<\/p>\n Update, November 7, 2011<\/em>:\u00a0 Just learned about the risk of mycotoxins <\/a>in coffee from Natural News:\u00a0 “A form of fungus, mycotoxins make their way into coffee by adhering to dried coffee beans. Once the mycotoxins have latched onto the dried coffee beans, they are incorporated into the process of grinding and roasting them down and, eventually, may end up in your cup.\u00a0” Apparently it’s worse in decaf coffee because the caffeine\u00a0protects the coffee beans from the mycotoxin fungus. So I’m\u00a0switching to organic green tea with lime and stevia for my morning drink.\u00a0\u00a0 There’s too much caffeine in regular coffee for me.<\/p>\n Resources, websites and books:<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.endsugaraddiction.com\/helpful-resources.php<\/a> Deep Nutrition<\/em> by\u00a0Catherine Shanahan, MD October 30, 2011, is the first annual Sugar Addiction Awareness Day, appropriately, since the next day is Halloween when most American children are allowed and even encouraged to stuff themselves with candy.\u00a0\u00a0Sugar addiction is real, and wide-spread, and, according to …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19,145],"tags":[61,77,67],"class_list":["post-1087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-real-food","category-sugar-2","tag-healthy-foods","tag-sugar","tag-sugar-addiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p70SEj-hx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1087"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5965,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087\/revisions\/5965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nhttp:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/irene-rubaumkeller-\/is-sugar-addictive_b_217115.html<\/a>
\nhttp:\/\/www.sugarstacks.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n
\nNutrition and Physical Degeneration<\/em> by Weston A. Price, DDS
\nLife Without Bread<\/em> by Christian B. Allan, PhD and Wolfgang Lutz, MD
\nGood Calories Bad Calories<\/em> by Gary Taubes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"