It’s been almost two weeks since I’ve consumed any refined sugar. What little sugar I have consumed has been organic, in very small amounts and in food that tastes no where near as good as donuts, cake and Lucky Charms.

Addiction – ad·dic·tion – [uh-dik-shuhn] – Compulsive physiological and psychological need for a habit-forming substance

Sugar wasn’t a huge part of my three meals a day. I would regularly skip breakfast or lunch and would eat a decent dinner. My problem has always been the snacking. I could barely go to the grocery store without picking up a donut or three to eat in the car. If I was at a birthday party I would eat three slices of cake instead of one, always going for the edge pieces of course. If I bought a half gallon of ice cream it would be gone within a day or two. We’re talking zero self control. I would eat and eat until I got the sugar sweats and my stomach started to ache. I would joke it off but it’s obviously a serious problem. Why do I have to eat a whole bag of double stuffed Oreos in one sitting?

Because I’m addicted to sugar.

While there’s still some debate among the PhD’s about whether sugar addiction is real, I think there’s plenty of evidence to support it. (especially considering they’re still debating what the word “addiction” even means).

Back in the cave man days we learned to like sweet tastes because that’s how we figured out if those berries we found were going to kill us.

Bitter, dead. Sweet, live.

So we developed this appreciation of sweet foods to support our appreciation of living through the next meal. The problem is stuff that is overly sweet (like refined sugar) does weird things to our bodies. First off, it causes our brain to release dopamine. Dopamine plays a major role in the reward system of your brain. Basically it’s your body’s way of patting you on the head, telling you what you did was good and to keep it up. By the way, this is the same thing that happens if you take heroine or cocaine. One doctor in France did a study where he fed rats sugar and cocaine. After awhile he made the rats choose between the two. The rats picked the sugar.

Eating sugar tricks your brain into thinking it’s doing something good which makes you want to continue eating to keep the good feeling going.

Sounds like a “compulsive physiological and psychological need for a habit-forming substance” to me. And it gets worse.

Not only does overly sweet food effect our brain, but it kick starts a vicious cycle in our blood stream as well. Insulin is the hormone that helps maintain your blood sugar level. You’re probably already aware of insulin because of it’s association with diabetes. Those afflicted with type 1 diabetes get to inject a synthetic insulin into their belly on a regular basis because their body doesn’t produce an adequate amount of the hormone on it’s own. When we eat a bunch of sugar it spikes our blood sugar which kicks the body’s insulin production into high gear to bring the blood sugar levels back down to normal. Once our blood sugar is back to normal we start craving sugar again. And round and round we go.

So our ancestors just wanted to eat something that wouldn’t kill them and now our brain gives us a big thumbs up when we eat too much sugar. Time to check the box next to sugar as an addictive substance.

So it’s really not all my fault after all.