A couple years ago, out of pure curiosity, I cut out added sugar for two weeks.
The task proved to be much more difficult than I had anticipated. I found added sugar in what I thought to be the most unlikely of places: ketchup, whole wheat bread, Campbell’s chicken noodle soup.
My project had made me hyper-aware of the ubiquitousness of added sugar in consumer food products. I was disturbed at what I was seeing, yet at the same time, I wasn’t surprised.
Our bodies respond in an interesting way to added sugar. Sugars, when consumed in the body, are utilized for the purpose of providing us with short term energy. Added sugars are very rapidly broken down and used for this purpose.
The term “sugar high” comes from the impact of sugar on the reward system of our brain. When we consume products with added sugar, the reward system in our brain releases the pleasure-inducing chemical dopamine, which is also released upon consumption of substances such as drugs and alcohol.
The reason our body reacts in this particular way to added sugar can be explained by examining our origins as a human species. We started out as hunter gatherers. We never knew when our next meal would come, so our body desired something that could quickly be utilized for energy, and then quickly stored as fat.
Yet, this evolutionary reaction to sugar has proven to have consequences in the modern age. Our inner biology did not apprehend the fact that we would evolve past being hunter-gatherers unaware of where our next meal would come from. Most of us are food secure, and have become accustomed to eating at prescribed meal times.
Yet, our body and mind still react to added sugar as if we had not moved beyond our lives as hunter-gatherers, and this has had serious consequences on the general health of the American public.
The plight of our country is not overwhelming food insecurity, as it was in the past, but is instead a vast array of chronic health diseases like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes that have been exacerbated by our country’s sugar addiction.
The stimulation of our body’s reward system upon consumption of added sugar means that people are just as capable of becoming addicted to sugar as they are capable of becoming addicted to narcotics. Food companies across the country have capitalized on this “sugar addiction” by heaping sugar into their products.
I implore you to read the labels of food items before purchasing them at the grocery store. Anything with the suffix “ose” is most likely a sugar. Pectin, honey, agave, molasses, and fruit juice are all also forms of added sugar; don’t be fooled! As a general rule of thumb, gravitate toward food products with the least amount of ingredients in them, that largely consist of ingredients YOU have heard of.
