Sugar Exposed

 When we think of the word addiction, pictures of drugs and alcohol usually come up, we never suspect anything as innocent as sugar could be an addictive substance as well. According to one website, "Sugar is eight times as addictive as cocaine", while this statistic may or may not be true, it is certain that some people get really hooked on sugar. To help understand how sugar could possible be addictive, here is an excerpt of an article from livescience.

Addiction has both a biological and behavioral component.

Our brains are hard-wired to find certain things pleasurable, such as eating and having sex. This brain "reward circuitry" makes sure we carry out behaviors we need to survive, said Brad Lander, a psychologist at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

"Anything that stimulates the reward pathway is going to be interpreted as something that’s necessary for life and needs to be repeated," Lander said.

But many things that are not, in fact, necessary for life can stimulate this reward circuitry, including drugs, sugar, fatty foods, and even behaviors such as gambling and exercise, said Dr. Joseph Frascella, director of the division of clinical neuroscience and behavioral research at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The pleasure we get from these substances comes from the release of dopamine in the brain, which reinforces the behavior.
 You have always been told that sugar causes cavities, but there is actually quite a lot more health problems sugar can cause. According to Nancy Appleton, author of "Suicide by Sugar", there are 143 reasons sugar ruins your health. Some include:

• Sugar interferes with the body’s absorption of calcium and magnesium.
• Sugar can cause premature aging.
• Sugar can cause arthritis.
• Sugar can interfere with the absorption of protein.  

The average american eats about a cup of sugar per day, compared to our ancestors measly tablespoon of honey a day (when it was available) we look complete gluttons! Our horrible diet has created numerous horrible diseases that were unheard of in the times of our ancestors, so we really can't put ourselves above them in health. 

 So if sugar is this bad for us, why can it be found in almost every package of processed food? The first reason is because sugar is cheaper then any other sweetener. Honey is too expensive because the bees are dying by the thousands due to dangerous pesticides and the genetic engineering of crops, and maple syrup is too expensive simply because it takes a ton of maple sap to even make one gallon of syrup. Now if the big companies really cared about us (which of course they don't!) they would not use sugar in their products, but being the greedy little pinheads they are they want us to get addicted to the sugar so we keep coming back for more! 

Resources

• http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/white-poison-danger-sugar-beat-article-1.1605232
• http://www.livescience.com/40749-addiction-drugs-sugar.html
• http://nancyappleton.com/141-reasons-sugar-ruins-your-health/
• http://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/zapping-sugar-cravings/