With this blog I have been working to connect the status quo, the standard Western approach to life, with the subjects of enthogens, and psychological and physical health. The other night I was explaining this project to a friend and said something like "The tendency in our culture is to try to escape and avoid discomfort and pain - at all costs - instead of investigating and opening to it to see what it might have to teach us." The escape and avoidance are aided in part by culturally acceptable addictions: to alcohol, to screen time, and to sugar, just to name a few. I want to turn the focus now to the topic of sugar consumption in the US and how it fits into this discussion.
The Age of Sugar?
When I was a kid, growing up in the late 60's and 70's, we would eat Captain Crunch cereals for breakfast, which contain a hefty amount of added sugar (9 grams, for a 3/4 cup serving). My mom would mix whole milk with non-fat dehydrated milk, half and half, and then add sugar, to save money (and add taste); and we also had a bowl of white sugar on the table, which we added to the cereal at will, by the teaspoon-ful. I am sure the (Wonder)bread we ate for lunch had sugar in it, not to mention the twinkies and cool-aid, and probably even the mayonnaise; and then for dinner we would have meat, starch, frozen veggies, and, without fail, a sweet dessert. My mom, bless her heart, was just following the societal norms of the day! She did her best to feed us well, according to accepted thoughts on the matter. We never went hungry, and everything we ate was made or prepared with love. We were also raised up consciously, with limited television time, and constant encouragement to go play outside. In my neighborhood, the gang of kids who lived there rode bikes, went frog-catching and swimming, played in tree forts, played kick-ball, went sledding, built forts, etc. In other words, we were active. We got our fair share of cavities, but all things considered, we were OK. We were - very luckily - healthy kids.
Americans = Sugar Addicts
Not all kids today have it so good. Add to the 'normal' sugary diet easier access to unhealthy foods, staying indoors for large amounts of sedentary screen-time, and taking prescription medications from a young age (among other factors), and the equation will equal with over one-third of US kids now being classified as overweight.(1) But, obliviously, we Americans love our sugar. The average American eats 130 - 152 pounds of added sugar each year, mostly hidden in processed foods and store-bought drinks.(2,3) One site reports that the average American consumes 53 gallons of soft drinks a year!(3) And since these are averages, it means many people drink/eat a lot more than that.
High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) started being added to the modern diet in 1970. It is given that name to distinguish it from regular corn syrup, which is primarily glucose-based. Some reports state that the average American consumes over 63 pounds of high fructose corn syrup per year. (4) As one article stated, "In a sense, sugar (HFCS) is the number one food additive. It turns up in the most unlikely places, such as pizza, bread, hot dogs, boxed mixed rice, soup, crackers, spaghetti sauce, lunch meat, canned vegetables, fruit drinks, flavored yogurt, ketchup, salad dressing, mayonnaise, and some peanut butter." (5) So we are inundated with this product, and many are eating it with every meal - yet it is SO new in the scheme of human existence (45 years compared to hundreds of thousands of years!) - I think it is just another example of human hubris on the one hand, coupled with human greed on the other. We are conducting an ongoing, wide-scale experiment on our species with no knowledge of how it will turn out, all for the sake of making cheaper products (ie making a bigger profit).
The Cost - Sugar Causes Disease
Refined sugar consumption has been linked to many diseases: type two diabetes, obesity, hypoglycemia, hypertension, depression, nervous tension, skin irritation, irritability, violent behavior, and acne.(3) It also can lead to tooth decay, obviously. There is something now called "Metabolic Syndrome,' linked to excessive sugar consumption, which "is a cluster of conditions — increased blood pressure, a high blood sugar level, excess body fat around the waist and abnormal cholesterol levels — that occur together, increasing your risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes." (6) Of course, if you look at the rates of obesity in this country, and heart disease, and type two diabetes, you will see a direct correlation between them and the rise of sugar consumption. Still, websites such as the 'sweetsuprise.com' will argue that there is no correlation between sugar consumption and obesity, just as there is no real difference between eating something containing HFCS and something made with honey.(7) And that makes me say... really? I can't even go there with all the ways that that is wrong. I will just post a few statistics here for the reader to draw their own conclusions:
- 1 can of soda a day = 150 extra calories x 365days/year/ 3500 cal/lb = 15.6 pounds/year! (4)
- 40 grams of sugar a day = 10 teaspoons = the amount in an average 12 ounce soft drink (5)
- Calorie increase in American diet from 2076 per day in 1970 to 2534 in 2010, an increase of 458 calories. (7)
- HCFS, in particular, does not affect the brain with a satiety response (this is true of all fructose, but when eaten in fruit, for example, the fiber present tells our bodies we are full). In other words, after consuming fructose you do not know that you are full or even that you have eaten anything. Meaning, a person can have a 64 ounce soda and still be hungry! *
Sugar is a Drug
Many doctors and researchers say that sugar is more addictive than cocaine, tobacco, or even heroin. (2, 3) How it effects us is it hooks into the rewards (dopamine) system of our brains. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that causes euphoria, or extreme pleasure. Think about a time when you got an 'instant high,' when you won an improbable poker hand, or the boy (or girl) kissed you for the first time - this is dopamine at work. When a person eats sugar, it can trigger the release of this neurotransmitter, especially when the behavior follows a pattern of abstinence followed by binging . In the study sited in this article, animals who were exposed to eating high levels of sugar and then deprived of it developed symptoms of withdrawal, such as "...anxiety, chattering teeth and tremors." Further inquiry showed that just the taste of sugar released opioids in the brain, and that the combination of these and the dopamine reward circuitry led to dependency. (8)
Dopamine pathways in the brain are supposed to lead the organism towards a greater chance for survival, which is why we get dopamine released when we eat. But sugar actually floods the brain with more dopamine than we would get from eating an egg or an avocado - it is what researchers call a "superstimulus." The affected brain pathways then become 'hijacked' by this stimulus (sugary foods), because it is way stronger that anything we have evolutionarily been designed to handle.(9)
Even worse, both addictive drugs and sugar affect a particular area of the brain, the nucleus accumbens, which is part of the brain that shows up in addiction research.(9) Both drugs and sugar flood the brain with dopamine and lead to cravings when the substance isn't present. And what the brain is craving is not nutrition, which can lead to satiety. It is craving 'reward,' the same thing addicts crave. Tolerance is also part of this cycle, and develops with sugar use as well as with other addictive drugs: you need more and more to feel the same reward. This is can in part explain the phenomena of binge eating. Finally, junk food is unhealthy. Everyone knows it - and yet people still eat junk foods, too much of them, despite knowing better, despite knowing they are probably causing them harm. This is similar to the smoker knowing that cigarettes will be her death, but smoking anyway: the addiction is stronger that common sense and the instinct for self-preservation. Many people feel like they can't control their addiction to junk food. They try to cut back, have irresistible cravings, obsess about it, then binge; then feel bad, set another quit date, try to regulate the behavior, then fail again... and on it goes. This is exactly what I did when trying to quit smoking - and drinking - and using other substances. It is the cycle of addiction. Just add in your drug of choice - including sugar.
All this is written in the hopes of pointing out the ridiculousness of the 'War on Drugs,' all the government's attempts to try to save us from ourselves, to regulate what each one decides to use or abuse... it is a lie. I am hoping with these points to prove that almost anything we humans use can become a 'drug.' Some of these drugs in our culture are sanctioned, while others, like entheogens, are not. I want to point out the absurdity of the fear of and legal sanctions against some of these substances when sugar abuse harms considerably more people in one year than all of the entheogens' have in their combined history. One report said a conservative estimate would be 15 million deaths worldwide from sugar-related causes each year. (10) Another said 180,000 worldwide deaths each year just from drinking sugary drinks.(11) Comparatively, in the US, we also have 430,700 deaths a year from tobacco use; 110,640 deaths from alcohol; 30,575 yearly suicides; and 82,724 people a year dying from complications from taking their prescription medications (12). However:
"An exhaustive search of the literature finds no deaths induced by sacred entheogens such as Salvia Divinorum and the US Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) records no instances of drug mentioned in medical examiners' reports. Sacred Entheogens or Salvia divinorum alone has not been shown to cause an overdose, death, nor have there been any hospital visits by anyone who has ingested them." (13)
One other source said there were a total of 8 deaths related to marijuana, in all recorded history (and it is not verifiable that marijuana actually was the cause of these death), and one death related to an LSD overdose. (12) As in, like, ever.
Just sayin...
(1) http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/obesity/facts.htm
(2) Hyman, Mark. "Sweet Poison - how sugar, not cocaine, is one of the most addictive and dangerous substances." Daily News, 2/10/14. http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/white-poison-danger-sugar-beat-article-1.1605232
(3) Walton, Alice. "How Much Sugar are Americans Eating?" ForbesWoman, 8/30/12. http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2012/08/30/how-much-sugar-are-americans-eating-infographic/
(4) Lustig, Dr. Robert. Sugar: The Bitter Truth. UCSF's Osher Center for Integrative Medicine.http://wellnessmama.com/15/harmful-effects-of-sugars/
(5) Profiling Food Consumption in America.http://www.usda.gov/factbook/chapter2.pdf
(6) http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/metabolic-syndrome/basics/definition/con-20027243
(7) http://sweetsurprise.com/2013/07/18/blog/The-History-of-High-Fructose-Corn-Syrup
(8) A Real Sugar High? https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200301/real-sugar-high
(9) http://authoritynutrition.com/10-similarities-between-junk-foods-and-drugs/
(10) http://www.olsonnd.com/what-kills-more-people-sugar-or-cigarettes/
(11) http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/19/health/sugary-drinks-deaths/
(12) http://entheology.com/features/annual-causes-of-death-in-america/
(13) http://www.entheology.org/edoto/anmviewer.asp?a=3
* (sorry lost the reference for this factoid. Will edit when I find it).
No comments:
Post a Comment