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Sugar Addiction
Floating_Abu
Veteran
Advice for breaking free:
Much experience over the years has taught me that nature abhors a vacuum. If you are going to take sugar out of your diet, it will need to be replaced with something else. This law of human nature often makes it the case that it is easier to do big things than to do little things. For example, it is easier for an alcoholic to stop drinking completely than to just drink a little. I want to suggest that the same approach might benefit your attempts to break the sugar addiction.
Assuming that you binge on huge amounts of sweets, I want to suggest that changing your entire dietary pattern might be easier than just stopping this one maladaptive behavior. I say this for two reasons. First, if you are going to give up sugar you are going to have to replace it with something very active and positive. And second, it is increasingly clear that even people who don't binge on sweet foods suffer significant health problems just from eating the standard American diet that most of us consume every day.
I want to suggest that you attempt to rid as many processed and packaged foods from your diet as possible, and replace them with a diet replete with natural foods. By natural foods, I mean food that humans evolved to benefit from: fruits, vegetables, some whole grains and meat from animals that are fed grass (not grains and antibiotics). To eat this way requires making a commitment to shop smart and to cook smart. These are both challenging and exciting activities that might help you organize an emotionally satisfying life beyond the grasp of your sugar addiction.
This column is far too short for me to describe how to go about doing this, but fortunately excellent sources of information on this topic are already in print. Let me recommend two books to you by Michael Pollan. "Omnivore's Dilemma" is an eye-opening expose of how we came, as a society, to eat so much sugar in everything, and "In Defense of Food" spells out how to go about extricating ourselves from the unhealthy Western diet to which most of us adhere.
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Comments
Interesting that more is not written about sugar addiction in the sense of true addiction, as opposed to cravings, since having quit candy in the past I can assure you that I did have very strong cravings that I had to consciously resist.
@Floating_Abu, would you be so kind as to link the rest of this article? Thanks in advance.
I've found that the body becomes addicted to sugar (the food industry knows this, that's why cookies and breakfast cereals have gradually become sweeter over generations), and that once you break the habit for a week or two, the cravings stop, and you're just not interested anymore. It's also about rewiring your mental habits. So that in the withdrawal phase, if you think of grabbing a sweet, substitute a special tea, or better yet, find an engaging, constructive hobby to occupy your mind with.
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/expert.q.a/04/27/sugar.addiction.raison/index.html
Best wishes,
Abu
And @Hubris, completely agree. For example organic is good for you but usually much more exorbitantly expensive so who can pay for that except the wealth(ier). Ditto for recycled products, and the like, it's not a very cool system IMO but I assume that mass (and more careless) production is simply - cheaper.
Hm.
_/\_
Re the original post (sugar craving): some anti depressants cause that (!!) - which makes you extra vulnerable, cause w the craving comes weight gain and discontent.
I do not agree that the high price of untouched food is totally justified though. We have created the "organic" niche market by stripping food of nutrients, which is a more complicated process than not tampering with the food in the first place.
Then someone along the line decided natural was indeed better. By then it was too late to change the streamlining of food processing. So 20/20 hindsight has come back to bite us. It makes no sense on a practical level, but it makes money for the niche market.
The real expense is the labor of farming, I get that, but there is still an inordinate retail markup there under the guise of "organic", because you can go to a farm stand that sells the same thing for a lot less than you can get it at a grocer. Even growing your own is exceedingly cheaper. Seeds are inexpensive in and of themselves.
A vegetable is a vegetable, it's more about how it has been altered and/or raised. Whether it was fertilized naturally or chemically. Most everything we eat is altered in some fashion, in the interest of preservation and longevity.
Also, for people looking to replace sugar in things like coffee, Stevia is a great substitute. It's derived from a plant instead of a chemical like other sweeteners. I haven't tried baking/cooking with it though, so I don't know how that would go.
I also heard somewhere that it takes about 3-4 weeks for your taste buds to adapt to changes. For example, switching from vitamin D milk to skim will seem horrible at first, but after 4 weeks, you won't be able to believe you ever drank vitamin D. For sugar, this means that at first if you cut the pop and whatever out of your diet, you're going to really miss it... but after 4 weeks, you will be surprised that you ever tolerate something so sweet. My girlfriend actually just did this very thing.
Potassium is to your muscles what calcium is to your bones.
Potassium deficiency is what will drive a horse to chew on the wood of its stall, even to the extent that wood splinters in its intestinal tract can kill it.
Sugar and alcohol addiction in human beings are both driven by potassium deficiency.
Bananas are high in potassium aren't they.
A friend in SF bought some honey from a rooftop honey business (organic) and the prices were simply exorbitant. But if that's a market, there's a willing mark up no doubt.
Good points both though..
I've been surprised to learn of the extent to which farmers in the US use chemicals that have been banned in Europe. That alone is enough to convince me to pay extra for organic food. I also think this is a niche market that deserves support. The more farmland dedicated to organic food, the better off the planet will be. The organic food business now supports small farmers in Central America as well as the US. I see this as a good thing. Growing your own veggies is also a good alternative, to the extent it's feasible for people.
The soil in the US was found to be depleted of nutrients back around the 1920's. There was a Congressional study done of it back then. The European-derived custom of mono-cropping leaches nutrients from the soil, even if you rotate crops every few years. Even back during colonization of the Americas, the colonists kept having to push for more land from the Natives, because their farming practices would turn the soil barren after a few years. Then sometime in the 1950's or 60's, chemical fertilizers were invented and popularized, leading to the "Agricultural Revolution". Using chemicals on the soil allowed destructive farming practices to continue, it allowed the ag industry to remain in a state of denial. Now we're becoming poisoned by our own chemicals, the chickens have come home to roost. Hence the development of the organic food market.
If it's more for the rich and hip then I'm not so keen.
Thanks for sharing the info. We try to buy organic at home because there are fans of it here.
Just Googled up this website: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/potassium-rich-foods-list-of-foods-high-in-potassium.html
Interesting study about the soil, I remember when I was in HS (many years ago) that they talked about how farmers would rotate their crops and plant legumes to replenish the soil. Peanuts,soy,peas,etc. I guess that has changed as you said, probably because of all the chemical enhancements, and the higher population/demand for food.
Maybe you are right that we support organic farming to increase their market share, however they could meet us halfway with better prices. Then it would be a win-win.
culture. Children in the West often are raised to consider cookies, cakes, sweet breakfast rolls and the like, to be a treat. It sounds like this happened in Hubris' family, I know it happened in mine. Some kids are raised on sweet breakfast cereal. Sugar becomes a lifelong habit. I believe that to some extent, we are acculturated to sugar.
Marketing. Sweets are aggressively marketed, and I think there's some truth to CW's assertion that the sweets have been getting sweeter over the decades. I've also noticed that sugar shows up where it's not expected. Read the labels of the hot soups and stews at Whole Foods. They have sugar in them. Read the labels on tomato sauce at any grocery store. Most have sugar in them.
emotional issues. Sugar addiction (like over-eating) can be a symptom of unfulfilled emotional needs, as someone above mentioned.
And the addiction tends to be self-perpetuating. Sugar is a drug.
I wouldn't say that sugar cravings are totally extinct yet, but I am rapidly losing interest in things like crisps and chocolate which have always been a problem for me. Also my energy levels have increased (which means I've been really active) and meditation is easier too.
YAY, VIX!! Vix is back! And by all counts, a healthier, happier vix! Congrats!
@Jeffrey Absolutely, it's about using the mind to get over sugar. You find a substitute that you psyche yourself to believe is the new "special treat". Peanut Butter is very carby, though, so watch out on those seconds and thirds.
i also forgot that raw spinach was another "treat" i was given. really. another trick because they knew i wanted to be strong like popeye! sometimes i just think my family must have laughed and laughed in secret that i bought it. kids are little psychological sponges.
ZG. that's an amazing story! You were lucky. And I think it was smart to give you raw spinach. Passed off as salad, kids are much more likely, I think, to eat raw spinach than cooked.
@Jeffrey where did you find these fruitos? i'm curious to try them.
I'm going to try if our local grocery has them. They are kinda like rice cakes in that they are mostly air
I need to design a menu for breakfast, snacks and dinner.
Any suggestions?
Any good resources for Raw/Veggie diet? Recipes perhaps?
Surely that's gotta be better than cookies?
:mullet:
I eat virtually no white (bleached) sugar, or sugar in general. I do eat natural sugar-containing foods, like fruits. Part of this is because I began having very sensitive teeth several years ago, and also because I realized how unhealthy it is for you to consume a lot of sugar.
The key, in my opinion, to reducing and staying away from sugar consumption is to just...not eat it. Stop eating processed and sugared foods and you will no longer have a taste for them, (eventually). At this point, anything overly sugared makes me queasy, I can't tolerate eating it. You really realize how disgusting processed food is once you stop eating it for awhile (6+ months)...then try to eat any fast food or per-processed food, it's revolting, lol.
Also, eating healthy CAN be expensive, if you don't purchase carefully. It takes practice and creativity, but you can eat fairly low cost [at the same time as] having very healthy eating habits.
So, to summarize, buck up your will-power and cut the sugar. Read labels, try for stuff without sugar or up to 5g or less per serving. Stevia is a great alternative (and natural) occasional sweetener, works wonderful in tea, as does natural local honey (best flavors when local).
Can provide links, recipes, etc. if anyone wants them.
Just an idea.