I’ll never forget the day I knew that I was a sugar addict. By the time I hit day four of the South Beach Diet, which means cold turkey on all sugar and simple carbohydrates for two weeks, I wasn’t just craving sugar. I needed it.
Day four cruelly corresponded with a trip to Walt Disney World with our girls, and as we walked by the cornucopia of sweets and ice cream stands, my cravings became so acute that I was beginning to relate to heroin addicts in a way I never thought possible. I saw myself on my knees in front of a kiosk, imploring the attendant, “I need to get well, baby. I’ll do anything, just give me that cookie.”
I made it through those two weeks without making sugar deals in back alleys, but there was something seriously wrong with that kind of extreme reaction. I have a sweet tooth, but it’s not that bad. There had to be something more to it. I did some research and here is what I learned. I wasn’t a simple sugar junkie; I was a simple carbohydrate junkie.
The heart of the problem is that almost all processed foods are loaded with sugar. And I mean loaded. In the majority of off-the-shelf foods, sugar is usually the second-highest ingredient. It’s in almost everything from salad dressings, tomato sauce, jelly, peanut butter, breads, juice, yogurt and cereals. And if it’s not sugar, it’s high fructose corn syrup, or other sugars in disguise. The general rule of thumb: If it’s packaged, it has added sugar.
The next time you are in a grocery store, or in your kitchen, take the sugar challenge. Read the ingredients. You may be shocked to see just how much sugar is in the foods you eat. Bear in mind that “high fructose corn syrup” or anything with “tose” in it is just another word for sugar.
Our foods are all infused with sugar because it tastes good and it sells. We are all victims of the processed food industry, which has made all of us sugar addicts to some extent.
I learned that I was a sucker for some products, especially salad dressings that promulgate, “Low Fat.” Here is a simple rule to follow: Low Fat = High Sugar. Manufacturers take out the fat, but pump in more sugar. It’s a bad trade. And they use seductive words to encourage us to buy like, enriched, which often means they take out the healthy stuff and enrich it with, guess what, more sugar!
I’m not an expert on the physiological effects of sugar, so I need to stay within my lane here, but I do have something all of us have: common sense. Sugar metabolizes quickly. It is high calorie, quick burn. What we don’t use gets converted to fat. And once the sugar burns off, our bodies crave more sugar. It’s a vicious cycle.
Now here’s where things get dangerous; if we’re taking in this much sugar in our regular meals (perhaps twenty times more than what we consumed just 30 years ago), what happens when we throw a desert or candy bar on already sky-high glycemic levels? It’s like putting gasoline on a raging fire. Do we really need to spend millions of dollars on studies to understand why the rate of adult onset diabetes (self induced) has doubled in just 15 years to the point where nearly one of ten adults has it? Or why obesity rates have quadrupled in twenty years?
I believe we need modern-day Paul Revere’s to sound the alarm on this. Processed foods are not our friend. They’re fast and convenient, but they are also major contributors to adverse health trends that we need to address for our sake, our children and future generations.
So I urge you to take the sugar challenge and read every label of the foods you buy. Be especially wary of the ingredients with the sneaky names designed to hide what it really is: Sugar. Make a plan to transition to more proteins, whole grains, fruits and vegetables and other natural foods. If you have the willpower to go cold turkey, go for it, but I might suggest a more gradual approach, if you want to avoid finding yourself in Disney World, on your hands and knees, begging strangers for cookies.
Art,
Love the stories, especially this one! I remember the days of you coming over and “cleaning out” our cereal cabinet of anything that had an ounce of sugar. But I think my fondest memory of your sugar tooth tendencies was when I came to Minnesota to visit. As I waited at the gate, here you came, down the hallway munching on a Charleston chew while holding backups in the other hand…Not much has changed…..Talk to you soon. Kirk