The United States is a country with a great sweet tooth. You can see fat people drinking cola and eating donuts everywhere. Once they stop eating these high-carb foods, they become listless like drug addicts. After seriously understanding sugar, we were surprised to find that the people dying from sugar far exceeds the deaths caused by wars. This daily substance is actually a poison in itself!
Refined Sugar vs. Natural Sugar
What is natural sugar, and which foods include it?
We need to understand the difference between processed sugar and natural sugar to better comprehend sugar addiction. Natural sugar exists in many foods we eat. Fruits and vegetables contain fructose, glucose and sucrose that is stored in plant vacuoles wrapped by cell walls made of cellulose and pectin. Our digestive system must break cell walls and membranes to access these small-molecule carbohydrates. Rice, wheat, and corn are rich in amylopectin and amylose. Even fully exposed to digestive system, they can’t be directly absorbed, as starch must be broken down into glucose by enzymes. Biomacromolecules and cell structures act as sustained-release to prevent natural sugar from being absorbed instantly to cause health risks. It is hard to eliminate sugar from our diet because it provides energy and materials for synthesizing other nutrients.
What is refined sugar, and which foods include it?
Refined sugar is also called white sugar or processed sugar. Its 99% component is sucrose. Harvested sugarcane is pressed for juice that is treated with lime to precipitate impurities. The filtered and clarified liquid is concentrated into syrup, then poured in a centrifuge to separate liquid from sugar crystals. Another more affordable refined sugar is high-fructose corn syrup. Corn starch is broken down into glucose by acids and enzymes. Then glucose is converted into sweeter fructose by isomerase. Thus, it is evident that refined sugar lacks minerals and vitamins, especially dietary fiber which slows absorption. Excessive intake of snacks containing a lot of processed sugar causes sharp fluctuations in blood sugar and insulin levels.
In ancient times, it was a luxury food only nobles could afford, but consumption of processed sugar skyrocketed in the 17th century. This was mainly thanks to industrial revolution and colonial expansion. Sugarcane was planted in warm and humid colonies like India, Brazil, and Mexico; automated factories replaced manual workshops. White sugar became an affordable commodity for everyone. It was added to almost all foods, such as cookies, chocolate, juice, milk tea, sauces and even cigarettes to make the smoke milder. If a product without white sugar, it can’t compete among numerous competitors. Therefore, we are under desperate siege of refined sugar.
Sweetness Promotes Dopamine Secretion: Addictive Processed or Refined Sugar
Breast milk rich in lactose is the first food for a newborn baby. As infants grow up, they also eat food rich in saccharide, such as fruits and rice. Natural toxic foods often taste bitter or astringent. The preference for sweetness may stem from our evolution: quickly identifying sweetness helps humans obtain safe and high-energy food. The dopamine reward mechanism in brain is activated by sugar to bring pleasure. Whether adults or children, they are always in a good mood when eating candy, cakes or desserts. Especially in a busy work or life, eating a piece of sweets often makes people forget their tiredness temporarily.
This characteristic is similar to some addictive drugs, but we have never seen anyone addicted to apples or potatoes. Dietary fiber in natural foods brings satiety to prevent overconsumption. Yet, one can easily eat a cake, a donut, and then a cola without effort. Huge doses of processed sugar quickly enter the bloodstream to become chemicals that stimulate brain directly and strongly. Just like cocaine extracted from coca leaves is a highly addictive drug, merely chewing coca leaves will refresh you mildly.
French researcher Serge H. Ahmed found the preference for sweet water was almost insurmountable by increasing cocaine doses: If mice were first fed sucrose to develop sugar addiction, they would not show a desire for cocaine in subsequent experiments; mice addicted to both substances would choose sucrose solution unhesitatingly. He even discovered that the charm of sugar water is an order of magnitude stronger than cocaine (when mice had to exert eight times the effort to obtain sweet water, the preference remained unchanged).
Another famous example is Coca-Cola, a world-renowned soft drink. The "coca" in its name refers to coca tree, the raw material of cocaine. When people realized cocaine is dangerous in the early 20th century, the Coca-Cola Company had to remove it from its formula. However, its sales were not significantly decreased by cocaine ban, because a large amount of white sugar in cola saved it.