The Sugar Addiction

            "Like opium, morphine, and heroin, sugar is an addictive, destructive drug yet Americans consume it daily in everything from cigarettes to bread" (Dufty back cover). Though most people consider refined sugar harmless (and laugh at the notion that it is dangerous) it is believed to be a root cause of many common health problems: hypoglycemia, high cholesterol, indigestion, myopia, seborrhea dermatitis, gout, hyperactivity, lack of concentration, depression, and anxiety. Furthermore, since refined sugar is rapidly converted in the blood to fat (triglycerides), it promotes obesity, risk of heart disease, and diabetes. Disease is almost always caused by a combination of toxicity and deficiency and, toxins, by definition, are poisons, so no matter how one looks at it, refined sugar is an addictive poison.
             Dr. David Reuben, author of Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Nutrition says, "White refined sugar is not a food. It is a pure chemical extracted from plant sources, purer in fact than cocaine, which it resembles in many ways. Its true name is sucrose and its chemical formula is C12H22O11. It has 12 carbon atoms, 22 hydrogen atoms, 11 oxygen atoms, and absolutely nothing else to offer." The chemical formula for cocaine is C17H21NO4 as compared to sugar's chemical formula C12H22O11, which reveals the only difference between sugar and cocaine is that sugar is missing the "N", or nitrogen atom (Reuben 167). Evidence in humans indicates that sugar can stimulate the reward and craving centers of the brain that are analogous in degree to those stimulated by addictive drugs (Ahmed et al). On the whole, research has shown that sugar and sweet reward can not only substitute for addictive drugs but can even be more rewarding and appealing than drugs such as cocaine, and the neural substrates of sugar and sweet reward at the neurobiological level appear to be more resistant to functional failures than those of cocaine (Ahmed et al).