Modified post. Read the edit at the buttom.
Now, call me crazy, I don’t think so! I have been an addict and I know how it is to be an addict, but I don’t think sugar is as addictive as cocaine. And I really am frustrated with people who say such things.
This notion that it’s as addictive drives me crazy! I mean, imagine someone gullible who says, well, “I can control my addiction to ice cream, heck I can go without ice cream for months, if it’s as addictive as cocaine, why not give cocaine a chance? It’s not like it’s gonna destroy me or something?” Yeah, I have once been this gullible (when I was younger) and I hate this.
I do crave sugar and I do occasionally (once per week and sometimes twice a month) buy sugary treats/lays packet (5 Indian Rupees, smallest one) to quench that craving, but I refuse to believe that it is as addictive as cocaine or any other drugs. PS: My last lays packet was 45 ago and I am fine, and this is the most addictive substance I have consumed.
I am pretty some people here have been addicted to cocaine (truly no judgement, I hope you are sober now), so what say you?
PS: If you haven’t been addicted to anything drastic as drugs, you are still welcome to chip in.
edit: thank you all for adding greater context.
I realize now that when they talk about sugar, they are not just talking abt lays and ice creams, but sugar in general. I get the studies now. But media is doing a terrible job of reporting on studies.
Also, the media depiction of scientific studies is really the worst. I mean, they make claims which garbage and/or incomplete data or publish articles on studies which make more alarming claims. Also, maybe wait for a consensus before you publish anything, i.e., don’t publish anything which isn’t peer reviewed and replicated multiple times. Yes, your readers might miss out on the latest and greatest, but it isn’t really helpful if the latest and greatest studies in science aren’t peer reviewed and backed up well by data.
I feel like a headline “SUGAR IS AS ADDICTIVE AS COCAINE” can and will be life destroying if you don’t give enough information. I feel like there should be an ethical responsibility to not sensationalize studies, maybe instead of “SUGAR IS AS ADDICTIVE AS COCAINE” give a headline like “Sugar and Addiction, what science says.”
also, https://i.imgur.com/VrBgrjA.png ss of bing chat gpt answering the question.
some articles: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/aug/25/is-sugar-really-as-addictive-as-cocaine-scientists-row-over-effect-on-body-and-brain
https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/experts-is-sugar-addictive-drug
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/cravings/202209/is-sugar-addictive
https://brainmd.com/blog/what-do-sugar-and-cocaine-have-in-common/
I challenge anyone who says sugar isn’t addictive to go a week without. No sugar. No sugar substitutes like fructose. I’ve done it. It is awful.
I’ve also done hard drugs. Quitting those are awful too.
The difference is that I haven’t done drugs in decades but I still have a pack of Oreos on my counter.
See, the impracticality here is not that I’d be jonesing for sugar, it’s that almost all processed food and most natural food has a little sugar in it, and also that our bodies literally require some simple carbohydrates to operate. Best case, you go on a hard keto overnight, and yes, the first week is terrible, because keto is a stupid fucking diet that doctors don’t recommend because it sucks.
Yes, if I eat nothing but beef and saltines for a week, I’m going to feel like shit. That’s not an addiction issue.
Fun fact exogenous sugar is not required in the human diet. The body will produce sugar in the liver through a process called gluconeogenesis converting fat into sugar. But it only needs to do that a little bit.
Very very little fat can be converted to sugar actually. It’s usually protein that gets converted.
Bruh saltines has carbs, cut that out too
but no simple carbs, no sugars. Got some carbs in on a technicality!
Carbohydrates are converted directly into glucose (sugar) in the liver. So they are effectively the same thing.
Well empty space eventually gets converted into LSD on the planet surfaces so it’s basically the same thing too
Directly?
To that challenge I would specify “in anything”. Sugar and equivalent is in almost all processed foods.
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That would be comparable with asking someone who smokes weed a couple of times a year to quit cold turkey.
Of course it’s not going to make any difference to you if you stop taking sugar or not.
However ask someone who “needs” to have that redbull every day. Who drinks sugary lattes, eats sweetened bread and so on.
Ask them to quit and they will most likely experience withdrawal symptoms and have a really hard time to keep away from sugar.
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To second your point with something that’s easier to grasp:
It’s quite common for people who are heavily addicted to nicotine to be able to enjoy a little bit of alcohol sometimes or completely go without. Or be able to go shopping without getting addicted to it.
Being addicted to one thing doesn’t mean you automatically get addicted to all other things that people can get addicted to.
Going without a basic macro nutrient making you feel bad doesn’t mean its addictive. You’d feel like shit if you tried to go without oxygen too. Your body doesn’t need as much sugar as many consume, but it’s more than nothing.
Sugar is not nutritionally required. Humans can live without sugar in their diet, including carbohydrates. Paleo/keto are viable diets the humans live with throughout history.
So it is not a necessary macronutrient. It is not necessary like oxygen.
Of course the literature has many assumptions about sugar, and it’s easy to get confused. Which is why we need more foundational nutritional research from the ground up not sponsored by corporations. To help clarify all of this.
But if you know of even one person who does strict keto, and there’s still alive, it’s clearly not as necessary as oxygen.
The human body can create glucose from fat sources, it’s called gluconeogenesis and it happens in the liver. But it only produces small amounts of blood glucose. And because it synthesize sugar from fat, exogenous sugar is clearly not biologically necessary
Well, your body needs carbs. And theoretically, you could do a low-carb diet, even a keto diet, but… keto is fucking dumb.
So, yes, in practice, you’re gonna want at least some sugar in your diet.
Sugar is not a basic macronutrient. The macronutrients are protein, carbohydrates, and fat.
I’m pretty addicted to oxygen at this point to be fair…
Are you just talking about refined sugar or are you including natural sugar in that too?
Is it even possible to eat healthily for a week with no sugar?
I feel like if I’m allowed fruit it’d be pretty easy tbh.
Is it even possible to eat healthily for a week with no sugar?
Healthy as in survivable sure, but I’m pretty sure at that point you would already notice the side effects of not having access to carbohydrates.
I feel like if I’m allowed fruit it’d be pretty easy tbh
Most fruits have a huge amount of sugars (and are therefore not healthy in large amounts), so I would say they count as sugar for this purpose.
Yeah I don’t mean survivable. I was thinking about the implication from the comment that sugar is this horrific substance which is prone to abuse and should be avoided at all costs.
If the point is for refined sugar then I’m with them. If they’re talking about sugar as a whole though, then it would be unhealthy to go for a week without any.
I challenge anyone who says sugar isn’t addictive to go a week without. No sugar. No sugar substitutes like fructose. I’ve done it. It is awful.
I’ve also done hard drugs. Quitting those are awful too.
ok that makes more sense.
I can easily go for a week without sugar. I did it recently. I wanted to lose some weight so I cut out sugar. Usually I have some desert after lunch but I just stopped. Usually I put sugar in my coffee but I stopped. I don’t drink sugary drinks so that was easy. I didn’t have any bad cravings or anything. I would simply think about eating ice cream and even if I had some in the fridge I would just say ‘nope’ and move on. I was doing this until I lost the weight I wanted to lose so for about 2 months.
If sugar is as addictive as drugs does it mean I just start smoking and doing drugs and it will be as easy to quit?
I have dropped all sugar a couple times. It’s not easy, but also not terribly hard for me. That’s not to say that is the case for everyone, just me. I have seen people come out of addiction to a few different drugs and it was not at all comparable. To compare my experiences with sugar would be as insulting as OP describes, if not more so.
But humans are all different, so I wouldn’t be shocked if for some it is comparable.
Not literally everyone is addicted to sugar. I barely have it and many days don’t have any of it at all (and I know it’s not in the food I’m eating because I make the food I’m eating).
Do you also know what the plants you use to make your food consist of?
Onions are about 4% sugar, for example. And that is excluding more complex carbohydrates that are essentially the same to your body. I highly doubt you don’t eat any sugar for days on end.
You barely eat sugar. Sure. But not eating any is close to impossible I’d argue.
Often, yes. It’s something I’ve had to look up in order to properly reintroduce foods on the low FODMAP diet.
Anyway, this conversation is about refined sugar. I eat fruit, for example.
fruit is natures provider of “refined” sugar. you body doesn’t care whether you first actually refined it and then put it in a cake. It’s the same sugar while it’s still inside the apple (I know nobody refines sugar from apples but you get my point)
That’s not how sugar works.
I did it many times and it wasn’t awful in any way. If you cut all carbs, that’s different though, and it has little to do with addiction and a lot to do with your body entering ketosis. That’s not to deny that food can be addictive. Anything can be addictive. People get addicted to porn, phones and computer games after all. But people blow this sugar thing way out of proportion.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10284150500485221
Studies done on mice, and mice addiction to sugar, and mice addiction to other drugs. Are these studies directly applicable to humans? That’s a good debate, it’s hard to say. But the studies do show that mice have a stronger preference to sugar than to other drugs.
I do keto, I go for the absolute absence of sugar, try to get less than 20 grams per day.
The first two weeks is very difficult. Especially the first 3 to 4 days. We’re talking hallucinations almost, deep cravings, it’s very difficult to kick the habit. I can’t compare it to other addictions, but the effect is very real.
In fairness, if I was locked in a box all day, I wouldn’t want to do coke either. Take the mice to a club and see if they stick to the sugar then ;)
This is exactly the famous rat park experiment. Yes, the rats consumed vastly less cocaine when they were in a fun rat park compared to a box, where they became totally obsessed cocaine fiends.
I wouldn’t do coke at Disney World with the family either. Get them away from the kids, turn the music up, and maybe throw in a few strobes. I bet you’ll see those little shits dancing then :D
😂
I say do the study directly on humans! Now give me some cocaine ;)
I’ve heard it’s as addictive as sugar. Be careful.
I didn’t go full keto, but I did tighten up my sugar consumption once and tried to keep it as close to zero as possible for a couple of weeks.
I can’t say I had hallucinations, but the cravings are seriously real. I didn’t even stop because of the cravings though, I stopped because sugar is so ubiquitous in everything that trying to find a drink to buy while working that didn’t contain sugar and I actually liked was difficult. I tried drinking tea with stevia as a main drink, but the taste of it never really acquired for me.
For drinks you are way better off getting used to water and sparkling water as primary drinks, use mio or crystal light if you really need flavor at first. Once you get used to water, it’s pretty easy to stick to just water.
The first two weeks is very difficult. Especially the first 3 to 4 days. We’re talking hallucinations almost, deep cravings, it’s very difficult to kick the habit. I can’t compare it to other addictions, but the effect is very real.
As with almost anything nutrition-wise, YMMV. Going cold turkey off caffeine was harder for me than starting keto (been doing keto for 11 years). Caffeine resulted in shakes and fever symptoms for several days, keto only in a 1-2 day period of brain-fog and general tiredness. Similar for my wife, though for her, it’s a few more days.
I know caffeine and sugar affects people differently but caffeine was a lot easier to stop consuming than sugar for me. I was only drinking a cup of coffee a day, compared to having a really bad sweet tooth though.
The sugar cravings were so bad it’s all I thought about for like 36 hours. After the 3rd or 4th day, the hump, everything became significantly easier.
Heh, I was at multiple liters of black coffee a day. Nowadays, it is only 1 liter :D
On the other hand, my home made sweet stuff was way less sweet than supermarket stuff, and from what I heard that already was way less sweet than US stuff (I’m in Germany).
I was only drinking a cup of coffee a day
Yaaaaaaawn. Let us know when you need an entire pot just to go to bed. No wonder you had such an easy time “quitting” lol
Same bro. I decided I can’t be doing more than 20 grams of coke per day any more
The thing that really causes addiction isn’t so much the physical dependence, but the psychological dependence.
Almost all drugs (including Cocaine) have only very short term withdrawal effects. If it was only physical dependence, all you’d have to do to break any substance addiction is to lock that person up for a few weeks, until the drugs are out of the system and that’s that.
The long-term effects are purely psychological. Usually, your life is shit, you got some pretty heavy problems or you have other psychologial issues like depression. And you know that substance X will help you to feel good, even if only for a short time. So you take the substance again to forget and feel good.
Because of this, you can get severely addicted to stuff like gaming, smartphones, social media, shopping or gambling, even though there is no substance involved at all.
Remeber the high-profile study about a rat that was locked alone in an empty cage and the only things it had available to distract itself from it’s misery where a bottle of regular water and one filled with cocaine water.
The rat used cocaine until it died of an overdose.
This experiment was repeated, but this time there was a whole rat family in a really nice cage with a lot of things to do. This time some of the rats did a bit of cocaine sometimes, but never in excess and no rat overdosed.
Sugar, together with the physical withdrawals (which do really exist), is really tough on the psychological side due to its extremely easy availability and omnipresence.
To get cocaine you need to find a dealer, spend a rather big amount of money and you are always aware that if you are caught, there are some very serious consequences.
To get sugar, you walk into the kitchen. Worst case, you go down to the next shop, spendless than an Euro on the substance and consume it completely legal without fear of any repercussions.
Or you wait until someone gifts you some sugar for birthday, Christmas, Easter, or any other holiday. Or just because they are nice.
This super easy availability means, there are hardly any barriers where you can say “Actually, I wanted to stop” and stop what you are doing.
nice comment, thank you!
Actually you can just decide “I want to stop” and then stop. Tell your friends you’re cutting sugar and to stop buying you treats. Stop going to the shops for donuts. Stay away from McDonald’s.
People literally do this all of the time.
It straight up is mostly personal choice and I am tired of people trying to claim it’s not.
Found the miracle healer!
You want to get out of addiction, just decide “I want to stop”.
Do you offer the same solution for other issues as well?
Depression: “Just don’t be sad”
Broken leg: “Just decide that it’s not broken any more”
If you can give something up just like that, you weren’t addicted to it. Please read my post again. There is a huge difference between “using a substance that can cause dependence” and “being addicted to said substance”.
For that very reason there are people who enjoy some wine, rarely, in specific settings, and at the same time there are alcoholics who actually are addicted.
Thanks for proving my point by showing us you know exactly what it is you’re doing when you shovel donuts in your mouth and then get angry you aren’t ripped. Or do you think we don’t know what you’re thinking when you instantly react to any kind of pushback against any attempt to hold you accountable for your behavior?
You make the choice to be obese by practicing bad lifestyle choices and refusing to take responsibility for those choices. And you do it because you want to eat sweet, delicious treats. And you are angry because you can’t accept the fact that you can’t have it both ways: you can’t eat donuts and be ripped at the same time, and you don’t want to put the effort in to be healthy, you want it done for you so you can eat what you want without consequences.
But that’s not how life works.
I say that as someone who is fat and eats donuts and drinks Cokes all the goddamn time. We do it because we want to, because we understand a large part of happiness in life comes from the food we eat and that has always been true, not because of society or any other externalities, but because that’s how life is. We do it because we like donuts and Cokes. We do it because we want to.
But there’s a price to pay for that. I’m as fat as a pile of pigshit rotting in the Texas sun on high noon on the summer solstice because of it. But I don’t worry or have feelings about it, because I understand and fully accept the consequences of my actions as an adult, and more importantly, don’t care about being ripped.
I am adult enough to be honest and make that choice and it’s time for you to grow the fuck up and do the same.
Or choose to stop eating sugary treats and actually become ripped.
It’s up to you how you’re gonna live this life.
You are projecting. I hate doughnuts. I do eat sugar but not excessively so. And I am not overweight. I also don’t care about petty beauty ideals like “getting ripped”. I am not 15 anymore.
Let me get this straight though: You say that you are “fat as a pile of pigshit”, say that you eat donuts and drink cokes all the time and that you “could stop at any time, you just don’t want to”. That’s 1:1 addiction speech.
You are addicted. Because being addicted means that you keep doing something even though you know it’s really bad for you. Being addicted means, that you are not in control.
Saying “I could quit at any time, I just don’t want to”, while your body is rotting away, means not only can you not quit even if you wanted to, but that you have so totally given up on trying, that it has become part of your identity.
That’s the exact same line you hear from old smokers with amputated legs and lung cancer.
Then you should not speak for those of us who actually are obese and for whom this discussion is relevant, should you?
Think before you open your mouth. I do it before I swallow down a Coke; you can do it before arrogantly presuming to speak for a situation that is not even yours.
Eh, obesity was labeled a disease by the WHO nearly a century ago (1948). And just to be clear, obesity does not mean being fat. Obesity is defined as “abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that presents a risk to heath.” You can be overweight and live a perfectly healthy life, but saying that putting on so much weight that it takes decades off your life and greatly reduces your standard of living is a choice is pretty ignorant. This may be a bit extreme, but I would equate it with saying that self-harm is a choice, completely ignoring all the underlying conditons that cause such behaviours.
Honestly, I find the psychology and biology behind obesity fasinating. If you’re interested in the science of weight gain and obesity, look up some of the recent studies done on it. I think they’re realay neat.
Oh, but claiming that obesity is a choice and that it’s a symptom of weak willpower is an old stigma that prevents lots of people from seeking help. I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t push such old ideas.
Yeah people have power over which diseases they experience in life.
I can experience depression if I stop working out. Depression is a disease but it’s also within my control whether I have it.
You are the one who brought obesity up. I was talking about addictions from an empirical standpoint.
You then jumped in and called me obese and weak-minded.
I didn’t even mention obesity or being overweight at all in my first post.
There are also a lot of other conditions you can get by consuming too much sugar, even if you aren’t overweight. For example, you don’t need to be overweight to get diabetes from consuming too much sugar.
And contrary to you I know that addiction is not a character weakness and it has nothing to do with being weak-minded. Addiction is a psychological problem same as depression. Shaming people for their addiction is incredibly counter-productive, because it often is the result of people being very unhappy with their current state. Shaming someone makes this problem worse and usually results in more severe addiction.
I’ve have experience with addiction and I worked a lot with people who are affected by addiction. I do know how it works, and shaming someone (even yourself) makes the addiction much harder to get rid off.
I didn’t see any shaming going on. Equating the description of people’s agency with “shaming” them isn’t helpful.
The person you’re responding to is right. You are demonstrating classical signs of coping. But let’s just use your same argument, please do not assume for other people and take options away from people battling with insulin resistance. Telling a diabetic to just stop eating donuts will not cure their diabetes, they have to take a holistic approach to their entire diet not just one element of it.
The body is very empirical, if people are not getting the results they want, they need to change what they’re doing until they get those results whatever they may be. For a diabetic, or a pre-diabetic, removing carbohydrates can increase insulin sensitivity, and at least for type 2 diabetes remove the need for exogenous insulin. That’s fairly empirical. You might not like it, you might feel guilty that you’re doing something you know is bad, you might be looking for excuses, but it’s not about what you feel it’s about the results you get. And you can measure it everybody can get a glucose and ketone meter and see how their diet is impacting their health day by day or even hour by hour
Oh Jesus Christ 🤦
No, Karen, someone telling you no, we actually are making the choice to live this way is not evidence that we are addicts and have no agency. It’s evidence that we do.
But it is not surprising at all you would flat-out disrespect the very same people you’re trying to justify stripping of their autonomy because the truth is, you’re just a fatphobic authoritarian and for people like you, one of your core principles is a lack of respect for other people’s rights, boundaries and choices.
Because if I wasn’t an addict, I would not still be eating donuts and drinking Cokes, right?
It couldn’t possibly be a personal choice or anything.
The world is black and white and only sane people do the correct things and anyone who deviates from that is defective – a drug addict, mentally ill – and therefore needs their choices made for them by others to live the correct lifestyle.
And fuck our rights. Fuck our autonomy. Fuck our happiness.
Those numbers on the surgeon general’s charts need to come down and you don’t give a fuck who you have to trample over to make that happen.
That is you and how you think, and it is why obese people like myself just dismiss you, and go back to drinking Cokes and eating donuts. Those of us who are foolish enough to listen to you are the ones who suffer self-esteem problems. Those who aren’t just laugh you off, or shake their heads at witnessing the further degradation of lack of respect for human rights you are putting wildly on display right now.
So, until you’re willing to accept what I tell you at face value because I am the authority on my own choices and not you, there’s no point in furthering this discussion.
You need to dominate and assert control over other people and you’ll prove it by taking the last word like you desperately need to, so go ahead. I’m not gonna waste any more time with you.
I’m literally obese and you don’t want to listen? That’s 100% a you problem. Go look for a real addict to save.
Stop eating bread, stop eating rice, stop using sauces infused with sugar. Sugar’s everywhere. Carbohydrates are converted into sugar in the liver so no stop sugar is complete without removing carbohydrates as well
I am sorry buddy, I am not sure if that’s true. Not true for most people at least.
It literally happens all the time. You can find videos of people losing hundreds of pounds through their own choices with a simple Youtube search.
You just don’t want to admit you don’t really care about losing weight, you just want to be fat without the consequences, and life doesn’t work like that.
Just say you choose to be fat, you’re happy being fat and you don’t want to change. Just say that, and no one could really touch that. But don’t sit there and try to lie to me.
Yes, you can find videos of people who have not been addicted.
Please go and read up just a little bit about what addiction is. Apparently, being completely unaware about the concept does not stop you from commenting.
I don’t understand either how you came up with the idea that I am addicted or overweight. I was just talking about the concept addiction and the difference between sugar addiction and other addictions.
You are making a fool of yourself.
You are making a fool of yourself.
Are you sure?
You’re literally the one in this thread right now gossiping to other people about me, directly in front of me where I can see, accusing me of being a sugar addict because I said I went back to eating donuts and drinking Coke because I didn’t like eating Mediterranean.
You’re clearly the angry, spiteful one here proving to everyone that everything I am saying is right with your immature, abusive behavior. See herein:
It’s no wonder you struggle so hard with respecting obese people – and people who consume sugar in general – as adults making their own choices. You clearly aren’t capable of being mature so why would you assume anyone else would be? And you clearly don’t understand that we who are fatter than pig shit are self-aware and happy with ourselves because we accept ourselves as we are, and that’s why we can laugh and joke about ourselves. You misconstrued it to mean something negative because you have a negative image of fat people in your mind, and that’s why you label us as sugar addicts. Because you don’t like us. Because you’re afraid of becoming one of us. Because you’re an immature child who can’t grow the fuck up.
That absolutely is a you problem though. I’ll be over here enjoying my ribs slathered in the sweetest, spiciest barbecue sauce I can find. And unlike you, I’ll clearly be happier. 😎
No, I am kinda pissed because you called me weak-minded and because you kept attacking obese people.
I got a few obese people in my life that I care a lot about and I know how messed up they get because of the constant scrutiny and hatered they get from random people.
Again, I kept saying all throught this conversation that I think that addiction and obesity are not a weakness of character or something like that. Everyone has things that don’t work out and issues that they work on for decades that just don’t get better. And if we are honest, everyone is addicted to something. Some addictions are more visible than others, but that doesn’t make them worse.
You on the other hand have done nothing but bashing addicts and obese people.
Go and eat your ribs the way you like it. Why do you think I care?
They’re probably also messed up by the constant inflammation all their fat is causing. In my experience systemic inflammation immobilizes me far more than other people’s opinion of me.
Sugar addiction is not the same as a drug that causes physiologic dependence, like cocaine or opiates.
But
You can become addicted to sugar, or anything that makes you feel good, because you’re basically hacking into the cocaine repository that’s already in your brain. Anything that triggers a hit of dopamine and/or noradrenaline - gambling, shopping, sex, food, weed - can cause addictive behavior, but you’re essentially addicted to your own neurotransmitters and not the thing itself.
I want to respond to your edit:
wait for consensus before you publish, don’t publish anything that isn’t peer reviewed and replicated multiple times.
You need to understand that publishing is the way scientists communicate among each other. Of course, all reputable journals conduct peer review before publishing, but peer review is just that: Review. The peer review process is meant to uncover obviously bad, or poorly communicated, research.
Replication happens when other scientists read the paper and decide to replicate. In fact, by far most replication is likely never published, because it is done as a part of model/rig verification and testing. For example: If I implement a model or build an experimental rig and want to make sure I did it right, I’ll go replicate some work to test it. If I successfully replicate I’m probably not going to spend time publishing that, because I built the rig/implemented to model to do my own research. If I’m unable to replicate, I’ll first assume something is wrong with my rig/implementation. If I can rule that out (maybe by replicating something else) I might publish the new results on the stuff I couldn’t replicate.
Consensus is built when a lot of publications agree on something, to the point where, if you aren’t able to replicate it, you can feel quite positive it’s because you’re doing something wrong.
Basically: The idea of waiting for consensus before publishing can’t work, because consensus is formed by a bunch of people publishing. Once solid consensus is established, you’ll have a hard time getting a journal to accept an article further confirming the consensus.
People have left some great comments here so to add: when the body gets something it needs nutrition-wise, it releases dopamine. We know this, that’s why we enjoy eating (pretty good biological functioning). However, there is diminishing returns on most things. The first steak you eat: delicious. Hell the first bite is the best. Every next bite, every consecutive steak, you get less and less dopamine release because your body recognizes it doesn’t need that nutrient as much. Drugs however (disregarding tolerance and dopamine fatigue because those work through different mechanisms) do not do this. There is no evening out or plateau on dopamine release for cocaine for instance. Sugar works the same way. No slowing or plateau. So in a very real and bio mechanical way, sugar is very analogous to drugs.
I was able to quit cocaine, cigarettes, and alcohol and of those 3, cigarettes was the hardest to quit, with alcohol being a close second. I don’t want to get into a discussion about the roles of behavioral addiction vs. chemical addiction when trying to quit something, but sugar has been just as difficult as alcohol and nicotine, if not more so. It doesn’t help that it is seemingly everywhere and included in all the food. It’s not as easy as “I’ll just stop having ice cream”, of course anyone can do that. If you start paying attention to all the foods sugar is added too and try to avoid those foods, you really have to completely rethink your whole approach to food (where to buy, the role it plays in your life, i.e. why you eat) and spend a lot more energy trying to find “healthy” foods.
Avoiding gluten, dairy, or sugar really requires getting proficient at preparing all your meals from scratch. It’s a good skillset to develop, but there’s major hurdles. What are the chances that every single day you’re going to have the time and energy to cook 2 meals from raw ingredients instead of grabbing a box/freezer meal or takeout? It’s not a pure question of whether someone has the willpower to say no to a craving, they have to have the discipline to plan and prepare meals before they are hungry.
Absolute adherence to dietary restrictions is very difficult even when addiction isn’t a major component.
Add to it: they need to have the money too. Getting a cheap frozen Pizza is by far cheaper than to get all the components fresh and preparing everything yourself.
I recently tried making a few of the simple and cheap foods you can easily buy ready-made.
Do you know how much time and money goes into making a simple Döner Kebab if you don’t have industrial kitchen equipment?
Or sausages?
Even stir fry. A bag of frozen stir fry mix at Kroger costs $1.79 here. Just a single bell bepper costs 79¢.
It’s pretty much all foods. Cutting out the retailer avoids a markup of ~40%. Buying in bulk straight from the farmers drops the price even more.
Buying a whole pig from the farmer costs roughly €200 or roughly €2.80/kg.
In the super market you pay €10-30/kg (at least over here).
And there is the same kind of markup on everything.
No wonder processed food is so much cheaper.
Well, i am a single guy living paycheck to paycheck, so buying bulk isn’t really an option. I have a local farmers market that i walk to regularly in the summer, but even that is only a marginal saving compared to the local grocery stores.
That’s yet another example of “stuff gets more expensive if you are poor”…
A very annoying concept.
It really helps to cook in bulk if you want to cook affordably.
And for that it really helps to have a crock pot
I measure my blood everyday. I measure my ketones. The number of times I’ve eaten " clean " food that had hidden carbohydrates in it, shocking.
Oh this sausage has no sugar, next day plenty of sugar.
Oh this vegetable soup has no starch in it, next day plenty of sugar.
Oh this omelette’s keto, next day plenty of sugar.
When you’re not preparing your own food, you have to trust the other party understands what no sugar actually means. At least where I live sugar gets added to everything, especially in restaurants, to make the food taste a little bit better.
I’ve compensated for this by boiling eggs for snacks, measuring my own blood so I know what restaurants are clean through empirical testing… And doing one meal a day. After the first couple weeks of keto, eating once a day wasn’t a big deal, cuz the hunger cravings aren’t there. So cooking one meal becomes less work, and it’s easier to keep that one meal clean.
You’re not kidding. I’m a pretty experienced cook and it’s still exhausting preparing every meal yourself.
I’m currently on the reintroduction phase of the low FODMAP diet (trying to figure out digestive problems) and I sincerely don’t believe most people would be capable of properly following this diet. It is extremely restrictive and requires significant meal planning and knowledge about foods and food groups. The only reason I’m able to do it is because I have so much experience cooking and reading about cooking/food.
It’s also handy to have bottles of soylent tucked everywhere. Like if friends invite you out unexpectedly you can drink that soylent for some calories then get whatever tiny thing on the menu actually fits the dietary restrictions.
“I’ll have the parsley garnish please”
You don’t have the same incentive to quit sugar either. It’s not illegal, it won’t make you crash your car and kill someone, the police won’t arrest you for driving under the influence of sugar, you won’t lose your job because you were caught using sugar, your family won’t leave you because of your sugar habit, strangers won’t feel ashamed or depressed if they see you using sugar in a public place etc.
Sure, there is obesity and diabetes, but they are directly caused by an excess of calories, not sugar. Sugar might make you eat more, or so people say, but does it really? You can still overeat plenty of greasy salty stuff.
Fructose in particular causes liver damage at a much higher rate than other carbohydrates including glucose. It’s not as simple as excess calories.
There are more non-obese diabetics than obese diabetics. Yes, there’s a strong correlation between weight and diabetes, but that has more to do with metabolic disorders causing both weight gain and insulin resistance.
If you’d like to watch a presentation on the topic, this one by Robert Lustig is pretty good. www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDJsxw0uMLM
This is just more keto pseudoscience. Unfortunately people care more about YouTube videos than what reputable sources say: https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/diabetes/overview/symptoms-causes#type
Not disputing that excess fructose can cause liver damage, but most studies demonstrating this have mice ingesting absurd amounts. This doesn’t happen when you are eating a normal amount of food anyway. Excess water can kill you, but no one avoids drinking water because of this.
I think when people make those headlines they forget that sugar is essential to the human body. It’s a nutrient. As far as I know you don’t get a deficiency disorder if you don’t use cocaine ever.
The problem is with the way our society is structured now: it’s hard to not rely on processed foods with tons of sugar and salt because most people don’t feel like they’d ever have to the time to prepare a healthy meal.
Sugar is not necessary for human existence. The body can synthesize sugar from fat in a process called gluconeogenesis in the liver. People can live 100% healthy lives without sugar or carbohydrates.
Only very very little fat (the glycerol part) can be converted to glucose actually. The main source for gluconeogenesis is protein. And our bodies hate converting protein to glucose. You can guess why! This is why endurance athletes are constantly sipping on a sugary drink as they compete
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/13/8/2896
There have been some interesting studies on ketogenic endurance athletes, but TLDR They perfect just as well (after adoption) and have a larger capacity.
I’m aware the liver can convert protein to glucose, but it also has other sources available to it. Do you know / or can you point me to / information on how the source is decided?
The googling I’ve just been doing seemed to indicate lipid sources are more common in ruminants, but that feels like I’m just finding the wrong literature.
They don’t compete or do hard workouts without consuming carbohydrates though. The anaerobic metabolism doesn’t run on fat no matter how much you train, and it brings a lot of extra energy. You simply can’t go as hard as you can without carbohydrate.
Ruminants might be able to convert more fat to glucose, I don’t know about that, but humans can’t. Would be wonderful if we could, considering we can store almost infinite fat but only a meager amount of carbohydrate.
Wikipedia explains it well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis
I forgot to mention odd-chain fatty acids besides glycerol, but they also just give you half of a glucose molecule.
That is correct. Your Body mostly needs good protein sources (there’s no such thing as too much protein intake except if liver/kidney diseases exist already) since it can only reuse part of those in the body, not synthesize all necessary forms of it. Everything else (fat and carbohydrates) is purely energy. Sugar, starches and anything with sugar is just carbs to the body in different forms. The body can synthesize those as needed, whatever of both is deficient. Your body most likely runs a lot better on fat, according to anyone who tried.
Academic peer reviewed source supporting your claim that your body runs better on fat please?
No, that’s all keto pseudoscience.
So the fun thing is, if you reverse that ‘Academic peer reviewed source supporting the claim that your body runs optimally on carbohydrates’ is also missing. Nutritional research is massively lacking with “tradition” standing in for basic foundational science.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1743-7075-1-2 Ketogenic diets and physical performance
Basically the theory goes like this, bodies that are glucose adapted can only tap into the free glucose in the blood, which is like 3-5g, not very much. Bodies adapted to fat burning (ketosis) can tap into the entire stored fat reserve for performance. So long term endurance tasks win on ketosis. Glucose is great for burst activity (which is why cortisal/adrenalin cause the liver to produce glucose in the blood, to help with bursts)
Fun fact they talk about pre-modern Inuit diets in your link but completely avoid the fact the Inuit died of natural causes substantially earlier than almost all cultures. It’s weird how often those pushing keto reference the Inuit but avoid that bit. Modernity has changed this significantly so modern Inuit have similar lifespans to other people.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/82-003-x/2008001/article/10463/4149059-eng.htm
there’s no such thing as too much protein intake except if liver/kidney diseases exist already
Nope. “Rabbit poisoning” used to be a pretty common thing. Early north Americans whose main protein source was rabbit got too much protein and developed health issues.
You also act like vegtables aren’t a thing…
Vegetables do provide some nutrients and buffering, yet they’re not an absolutely necessary main source IF you have access to good quality meat, eggs, fish, etc. Those things have a very high micronutritiants-content, as long as they are of good quality.
On Rabbit poisoning, looked it up. That is based on an absolutely purely protein-based diet with little to no intake of fat and carbs, as far as I understand that right now. I did not state that eating purely protein is okay, just that the body can make up for deficiencies in fat or carbs as needed. So eating nothing but chicken meat without any fat or carbs would likely cause rabbit poisoning symptoms as well. Which is, again, not what I stated.
Fat and Organ meat are excellent sources of bioavailable compounds. Eating lean protein by itself would lead to a unbalanced diet with essential acids, minerals missing.
I did not state that eating purely protein is okay
You said:
there’s no such thing as too much protein intake except if liver/kidney diseases exist already)
Which is wrong.
Really nothing you’re saying is based in science, but considering how this went, I don’t think explaining it all is going to be productive
Rabbit poisoning is too much protein and not enough fat.
It is protein poisoning. Having fat available just means you can consume less protein in order to not starve.
So…
The person I replied to was wrong when they said you can’t eat enough protein?
Yes but the fix for that specific issue is fat not veggies
I never said it was…
I implied someone acting like a human can be healthy without eating vegetables doesn’t know what they’re talkng about…
And the person I replied to refusing to admit they’re wrong that there’s no such thing as too much protein means they’re likely getting their nutritional information from Joe Rogaine
Academic source that proves humans can live healthy lives without carbs? Keep in mind no studies have been done on ketogenic diets in people with “normal” digestive systems that have spanned decades.
I suspect you are going to have to dial that claim back a bit. At best right now it appears as if it might be possible for adults to avoid carbs but we have no idea what that looks like over the course of a full life nor is anyone going to run this test on kids.
Great question: https://wellsrx.com/comparison-of-traditional-indigenous-diet-and-modern-industrial-diets-and-their-link-to-ascorbate-requirement-and-status
The Inuit’s famously had a very high fat, high protein diet consisting mostly on captured sea creatures.
The life of Stefansson Vilhjalmur is fascinating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilhjalmur_Stefansson
Stefansson documented the fact that the Inuit diet was then consisted about 90% meat and fish. Inuit would often go six to nine months a year eating nothing but fatty meat and fresh fish, which might currently be perceived as a ‘zero carb’ / no-carbohydrate diet. …Stefansson found that he and his fellow explorers of European, Black, and South Sea Islands descent were also “perfectly healthy” on such a diet.
To combat erroneous conventional beliefs about diet, Stefansson and his fellow explorer Karsten Anderson agreed to undertake an official study to demonstrate that they could eat a 100% meat diet in a closely observed laboratory setting for the first several weeks. For the rest of an entire year, paid observers followed them to ensure dietary compliance.
TLDR in one of the first observational society studies of a native ketogenic diet, the explorers reporting the findings embarked on a year long observed diet proving it worked outside of the native population. A really fascinating at one of the early rigorous approaches to dietary research.
We can only rely on observational epidemiological studies of native populations which have low carb diets to make statements about “carbohydrates are not necessary for human life”… but I as the Inuit exist, throughout history, on a very low carb diet, it demonstrates that carbs and sugar are not necessary for human life
I asked for academic sources for a reason nakely because there is a ton of bullshit broscience surrounding keto. Do you have peer reviewed academic sources? Wikipedia and a pharmacy group’s blog aren’t peer reviewed academic sources.
As an aside you might want to look into how much younger Inuits who ate a traditional diet died vs those that ate more plants. It doesn’t support keto as a healthy diet at all by comparison.
I’m sorry your dissatisfied with the sources I could find.
What are you referring to by mortality rates in Intuit children? I’m not familiar with that study
That’s because they aren’t what I asked for though to be fair Im also aware those sources do not exist because we haven’t done those studies.
The fact that the Inuit traditionally have a much shorter lifespan is a fairly well documented fact. It’s really hard living in the Arctic and it is extremely likely that you do need some plants to live a more normal life. You’ll note it’s never academics that bring them up as an example for how keto is “totes healthy” (again we don’t know if it is for decades on end).
Well documented fact, source: trust me bro
After complaining about actual sources.
Refined sucrose is not an essential nutrient, carbohydrates may be though even that is disputed these days the body refines glucose from any number of complex carbohydrates and even non-carb sources. In a natural environment sucrose would be consumed seasonally at a relatively low percentage of total calories when fruits were available, for much of the year sucrose would make up a very low percentage of calories consumed.
Who disputes the need for some carbohydrates? Our brains run on carbs.
https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/does-the-brain-need-carbs
The medical debate is ongoing, but the glucose requirements are satisfied by gluconeogenesis in the liver from fat, and the bulk (70%ish) of the energy can come from ketones (fat) directly
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6061736 Brain metabolism during fasting
The brain does not need any carbohydrates to function, it does require some glucose which the body can produce itself.
The fact that the brain needs glucose means your brain does need carbs. You might not need to eat carbs to get that glucose but that’s different.
The fact is we have no idea how healthy or unhealthy a keto diet is long term for people with “normal” digestion.
I’ve yet to see someone blowing people in a parking lot for caster sugar, so I can’t see how it’s as addictive as hard drugs.
Have you ever seen a TV show about a 600+ lbs woman? If cocaine was available in Walmart you wouldn’t see people doing sexual favors for it.
It’s also significantly easier to get ahold of.
you dont see huge bags of cocaine on grocery store shelves either.
Make sugar as rare as coke and you will see way worse shit than some simple street head.
Granny may take your head for a cup of sugar, deary
If the studies are true, Granny is basically a drug dealer
Price…
If pure sugar/corn syrup cost the same as cocaine, then some people probably would.
If cocaine was legal, it would be cheap as fuck and comparable. Hell, it was legal once and relatively cheap, people weren’t giving blowies for it back then. But it was still just as addictive
I’ve seen people with diabetes unable to quit sugar even though it’s killing them, and THAT sounds like hard drugs to me.
You can buy a pound of castor sugar in any store. Plus it’s about $19,000 cheaper.
Well sugar is way cheaper and easier to access so that’s not a good comparison. I wonder if sugar suddenly became a black market item and jumped to comparable prices if people would resort to sucking dick for it?
I mean… the kind of people who would for sugar probably aren’t the same people you’d want sucking your dick tho.
When sugar became a rare commodity in Jewish ghettos in Nazi-controlled territory, people would literally trade diamonds to get it.
Oh people were definitely sucking dick for sugar there man.
It depends on the person. For me, not really. I get mild cravings but they’re easy to overcome.
What really helps is having something sweet that has no added sugars, like fruit or natural sweeteners like stevia or monk fruit or some-such. That way you can have the taste of sweet without all of the baggage.
I am pretty sure it’s the taste of sweet that’s addictive and not the actual sugar.
To answer your question, no, it is not and never will be as addictive as hard drugs.
no added sugars, like fruit
An average apple, which is a fairly mild fruit, has 20 to 25 grams of sugar. There may be none added but it’s still a ton of sugar. Try weighing out 25 grams of sugar to see what that looks like.
We also bred fruit to be sweeter than they were naturally, so there’s that as well.
It’s not the same kind of sugar as table sugar so your comparison is disingenuous, as is the whole debate.
When we talk about sugar in the context of food addiction or weight management, we mean sucrose, as in table sugar. Not the fructose in fruit.
You can quibble about the semantics of it if you want to, but those definitions are set in stone and nothing you’re going to say will change that.
Now stop arguing in bad faith and let the rest of us speak our minds.
Also apples have 8 grams of sugars in them on average, not 25, now let’s watch you prove my point that you’re just here to argue and not to meaningfully talk about sugar addiction by arguing about apples more.
Actually respectfully no. When we talk about sugar in diet, we’re talking about carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are converted to glucose in the liver, and it’s glucose levels in the bloodstream that cause the body’s ill effects. It doesn’t matter how the glucose gets into the bloodstream so natural sugar, added sugar, carbohydrates, it’s all about glucose in the blood
Since sugar is not a dietary requirement, it is not nutritionally necessary for human existence, we can have the debate about sugar addiction. There are many human diets that are completely sustainable that have no sugar, carbohydrates in them. So in the context of the sugar addiction debate, we need to evaluate that in terms of no carbohydrates versus a diet with carbohydrates.
Many people have great difficulty sustaining a diet with no carbohydrates for the first week. This is what I believe is referred to as sugar addiction.
With all discussions it’s important that we agree on vocabulary, so I hope this clarifies the context at least in the journals referenced here. But I appreciate you are no added sugar position. From a no added sugar diet, sugar addiction doesn’t exist, because there’s enough base sugar in food anyway. Somebody could eat lots of rice, lots of fruits, and get their sugar fixed that way. Or even honey.
Then you’re here to quibble about stupid bullshit that doesn’t matter instead of whether sugar is as addictive as hard drugs or not, which is the actual topic of the thread.
Thanks for proving my point
The papers referenced put mice on a diet that doesn’t have sugar, carbohydrates. And then they allow them to self-select between sugar, and other drugs. And they observe the behavior. That’s where the sugar is as addictive as cocaine comes from.
Quibbling over casual vocabulary is pointless, it’s the setup of the experiments that matters as far as the as addictive as cocaine metric matters
You could have simply said that instead of derailing the thread to talk about apples and it would have gone a lot more smoothly for you.
Your anger is misplaced. I did not make an analogy to apples at all. The person you are referencing is not me
For context, pinkdrunkenelephants said in a different comment, that they are “fat as a pile of pig shit” (direct quote) and consumes a lot of doughnuts and sugary drinks like coke.
That user is sugar addicted, and the reason why they are posting what they are is to justify their actions. Because if there is no sugar addiction, they cannot be an addict.
I feel for them. I’ve been there. I didn’t know what to do. The good news is being in that mental state, and in that physical state, are both things that can be temporary.
The fact that they describe themselves so negatively tells me that they’re unhappy with the situation. And I’ve been there too. Struggling, struggling, struggling, and then just saying I’m happy where I am but still being very negative about it. It’s not a healthy place
But in this thread we’ve outlined the options for them, and if they want to change it they have the tools to do so and I hope they’re either happy now, or have the tools to become happy in the future.
But I imagine in their original context, they are using the disparaging language to lend themselves credibility for saying it’s a personal choice. And as a rhetorical method that might work, but as you gleened… It’s just defensive armor.
When I was struggling with obesity, and my friends were having success by just cutting out Coke, I was genuinely jealous, and a little angry that it was working for them. That was a hard mix of emotions to process. I didn’t take it out on them, but I could see the conflict in my own mind. So we all process this journey differently. I hold no grudges now
Personal anecdote: as someone who’s gone through multiple rounds of keto and different artificially sweetened drinks. Drinks with no actual sugar are not addictive. I’m never compelled to pick up a Coke zero and drink it.
Normal cocoa sugar is addictive. I want more and more and more.
To your earlier point about different types of sugar yes and no. Fructose is converted in the liver two glucose in the bloodstream. It spikes the blood glucose levels quite high because it’s converted rapidly. It’s like super sugar. That’s why fructose is very popular in drinks.
Normal table sugar, and carbohydrates, are converted into glucose in the bloodstream. At a slower rate.
The body has a physiological, and immediate response, to elevated blood glucose levels. It produces insulin to reduce those glucose levels.
The body can only store about 3 to 5 g of glucose in the blood, and the body has no capacity to store glucose anywhere else. There is some capacity for glucose to be absorbed by muscles, but it cannot be reintroduced into the bloodstream. That three to five grams of glucose will last the body about 3 hours. That’s why people in a sugar diet get hungry every few hours. They’re depleting their energy.
People who are keto adopted, whose body is not used to burning sugar, but instead burning ketones, which is a type of fat transport. They don’t run out of energy every 3 hours, so they don’t get consistently hungry.
Depending on what you mean, this could be considered the sugar addiction cycle. When your body runs out of energy for it’s various processes it once more energy, and if your body is used to burning glucose instead of ketones, that means you want to eat more sugar every 3 or 4 hours. Snack culture if you will
I’m gonna assume you’re here in good faith and I hope you don’t prove that assumption wrong.
Don’t get me wrong, I know all about the ins and outs of the biochemistry of the matter. I lost 20 pounds eating Mediterranean earlier in the year and it has been coming back because I went back to eating my favorite foods. It is 100% the added sugars in the processed food that put on weight for me, and I give not one single fuck, because I am honest enough to come out and say that I chose obesity because I simply wasn’t happy restricting the foods I eat.
I eat what I want to eat and I just so happen to like donuts and Coke. And it’s as simple as that, not just for me but for everyone else who lives this way. Eating junk food isn’t an addiction, it’s a lifestyle choice.
Much of our happiness in life comes from the food we eat and I simply wasn’t happy drinking nothing but water and the occasional wine and swallowing down stale Pita bread. I just don’t like that kind of food.
Some Mediterranean food (and I use the Mediterranean diet as my de jure example because that’s what I did as opposed to keto) is good but nothing beats a Coke once in a while. And I am very particular about which kind of Coke I drink, because I don’t drink it out of some addiction, I drink it for taste and because it is what I like.
And the sooner enabling assholes like the ones insinuating that eating sugar is akin to drug addiction shut the fuck up and stop muddying the waters so everyone else can be honest about the fact that they’re the same way, the better off we’ll be.
That’s my perspective on the situation and I believe it is the correct one.
I am pretty some people here have been addicted to cocaine (truly no judgement, I hope you are sober now), so what say you?
Cocaine is completely different than sugar in every conceivable way and I have NO fucking idea how the hell everyone got it in their heads that the two are comparable. They simply are not.
I’m glad you found a diet and lifestyle that works for you. Kudos. Genuinely
I take issue with your position that people talking about sugar addiction, and the difficulty of removing sugar from the diet for the average people, and especially the loved ones in our lives that were trying to save from medical conditions such as diabetes, are in the wrong for trying to help others. Sugar addiction is a very real thing. Simply because we have people in our lives who are being killed by sugar, type 2 diabetes is a great example, who have difficulty modifying their diet to live longer healthier more fulfilling lives. So however you want to address that vocabulary, there needs to be a discussion there, because it is a serious global metabolic epidemic. If you would like to give us the right vocabulary so that we can speak about it with you please I will use your vocabulary. But we need to have that discussion, and to tell other people that can’t have that discussion because it makes you feel bad, is insufficient
It’s wrong to deny obese people agency or to stop others from holding them responsible for their choices and the consequences.
That’s exactly what does NOT help people.
What does help people is openly saying they are the ones making the choice about their own bodies and, most importantly, respecting the fact that they’re making that choice instead of infantilizing obese people by labeling them drug addicts.
The only way we lose the weight permanently is either a drastic lifestyle change usually spurred by tragedy or hormone altering drugs like Ozempic, which themselves become something obese people become dependent on.
And that is true because we choose to live this way.
If you would like to give us the right vocabulary so that we can speak about it with you please I will use your vocabulary.
Here’s the right thing to say:
“I respect your choices and your right to live as you please.”
And that’s all. Stop talking about it and accept them as they are, and stop trying to manipulate other people by equating us with drug addicts.
It’s not even anyone’s business whether someone is obese or not anyway so the whole discussion is moot.
I disagree with the assumption. I would say a heroin addict has the agency, they got addicted to heroin, and they have the agency to get off of heroin. We are sympathetic to their plight, and we can certainly try to help them, but the agency is their own. You cannot cure an addict who does not want to be cured.
So addiction, and agency or not diametrically opposed. You can have both.
Helping people understand the journey they need to take is a good thing. Giving them the tools on that journey is also a good thing. The foundational research to understand addiction, and the mechanisms that people have to overcome it are good things.
A lot of people live this way, not by choice, at least not by deliberate choice. But out of happenstance, because it’s the food that’s available, because it’s the food that their social circle is eating, because it’s normalized.
Lifestyle change is necessary for people who are suffering from insulin insensitivity, but I don’t think it needs to be from tragedy or from external medication. It can come from understanding the mechanisms, and the nutrition.
One thing in your debating style I really like, is your philosophy of not assuming for other people, so we shouldn’t assume how other people are going to approach their journey. We should give them options
I disagree with the assumption.
And I am an obese person who is telling you your beliefs are not true, and to no surprise to anyone, here you are not listening and instead choosing to override my authority on the subject and you trying to impose your will on me to protect your cherished personal worldview in the face of the truth.
An enabler demonstrating for all of us this is only about you and your need to have someone to save to feel needed, to the extent you are denying fully grown adults the respect of their personal experiences and their own agency as human beings? Well, knock me over with a feather.
And it’s not insulin insensitivity, it’s insulin resistance, and you know what stops that? Choosing to cut out sugar. Know how I know that? Because diabetes runs in my family and that’s exactly what I did earlier in the year.
You know how it is people do that? By being open and honest about their own choices and exercising their own agency, which you don’t allow people to do because you wouldn’t feel needed without invalids to care for.
And who cares if your behavior is making the problem worse? That’s not a bug for you, that’s a feature.
I disagree on your authority to speak for all obese people and that only obease people suffer from sugar addiction.
There are many non obese people with type 2 diabetes. The skinny fat population.
Your message is about perceptions and authority- emotions. This discussion is about biomedical physics. You don’t have to agree with me, it’s emperical. You can conduct the measurements yourself.
Insulin insensitivity and insulin resistance are synonyms.
I agree cutting out sugar solves insulin resistance, or at least lessons the impact of it, I disagree on your premise that sugar is only sugar and not carbohydrates which are trivially converted to sugar in the liver. The issue of this discussion, and the one we seem to be stuck on is addiction as a biological rather than mental thing. That’s why we do the studies with mice. So we don’t have to get into the feelings of what is biological or what shouldn’t be biological. The mice react this way. That should tell us something about our own biology
When I gave up drinking I developed an overwhelming craving for sugar because it, apparently, hits the same dopamine buttons. I, ultimately, found giving up booze easier than sugar because it’s not socially acceptable to give those in recovery a bottle of wine as a present but people don’t think twice about giving you some chocolate. I’ve had to be explicit about this now.
In some ways the ease of access and social accessibility are key - I had a chat with a couple of former heroin addicts about addiction and they found stopping smoking harder. You can quite the heroin lifestyle but (back before the smoking ban and the rise of vaping) it was very easy to have a few drinks, accept the offer of a cigarette and before you know it, you are working through a pack of 20.
Also, never underestimate Big Sugar, they will use all the dirty tricks Big Tobacco used to avoid bans in smoking, with similar disastrous consequences for our health.
I’m addicted to air. At some point I’ll kick the addiction.
Not only is it hard to kick the habit, it’s incredibly hard just to avoid. For cocaine, in order to get a hit, you gotta call a dealer. For sugar, it’s in so many foods that it’s seriously hard to go sugar free, even if you never ate sugar before in your life.
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Anyone who has gone on a hard cut or fast will tell you how much they crave bread. People think sugar means refined white crystal sugar or honey.
Pasta is “sugar” Bread is too.
I completely agree as someone who has quit smoking and drinking. Sugar is by far harder to cut back on.
I think it is because at a fundamental level your body knows it needs carbs. Not so for chemicals like nicotine and alcohol.
I think this is part of why drinking is so hard to quit for some ppl. Their body wants the booze AND the carbs!
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The Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast did a segment on this recently, looked at a bunch of different studies and came to the conclusion that the scientific consensus is all over the place on the actual adictiveness of sugar and of processed foods in general, but that there are definitely some affects going on.
