Craving sugar: Why do I crave sugar?
Your sugar craving may have started even before you were born! I’m sure you’ve heard of fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS). Once fructose is extracted from its natural sources, which always have it embedded in a lot of fiber, it becomes a very close relative of ethanol.
In fact, the only substantial difference between the two, in terms of nutrition, is that some of the ethanol is metabolized in the brain, causing people to get too drunk. Whereas, isolated fructose is processed in the liver without apparent toxic effects, since they are not acute, but chronic.
In the same way that an expectant mother who drinks alcohol exposes her baby to SAF because ethanol crosses the placental barrier, a mother who drinks fruit juice or any sweetened beverage, for the same reason, predisposes her baby to what I I would call it fetal fructose syndrome (FFS).
This partly explains why we know we have an unprecedented epidemic of obese 6-month-old babies. Combine this with the number of mothers feeding their babies commercial formula and you have the answer. More than 50% of some formulas are made up of corn syrup and sugar solids!
If someone tries to tell you that obesity is the result of eating too much and not getting enough exercise, have them explain to obese 6-month-olds!
Studies in laboratory rats on the effects of maternal fructose intake have revealed that babies of mothers with 20% of their caloric intake from fructose are born hypoinsulinemic. Which means they were born with abnormally low levels of insulin in their blood. Insulin and leptin are hormonal proteins responsible for regulating our energy intake. They do this by signaling to our brains that our bodies have sufficient reserves and that we feel satiated.
Fructose also interferes with the production of leptin. If that’s not enough, get worse! Tea hyperinsulinemia produces a reward signal in an area of the brain called the Nucleus Accumbens, which is part of the pleasure center. This inexorably leads to obesity.
What we tend to do, in effect, is starve our brains while we overeat. Sugar, especially refined sugar, is a very easy source of energy that our brains are tricked into believing our bodies need. Hence our bodies crave sugar. I’m not talking about a minor craving here, as researchers now point out that sugar is far more addictive than cocaine.
Obesity is the result of fructose intake not only because it is made up of “empty calories”, but like ethanol, due to chronic toxic effects. What I mean by chronic toxic effects is that fructose is not metabolized in the digestive tract. Everything has to be metabolized by the liver and one of the by-products is uric acid which causes gout and hypertension.
Comparing the 120 calories in a couple of slices of bread to the 120 calories in a glass of orange juice illustrates this point. Once the glucose in bread is broken down and digested, 24 calories end up in the liver. In the case of orange juice almost three times more, the liver needs to metabolize 72 calories.
Let’s compare the 150 calories found in carbohydrates in a can of coke and a can of beer to see what I mean. In coke, 10.5% are carbohydrates in the form of sucrose, of which there are 75 calories from fructose and glucose. Beer has 3.6% carbohydrates in the form of ethanol. Yes, ethanol CH3-CH2_OH, by definition is a carbohydrate.
Beer has 60 calories from maltose and 90 from alcohol. With coca, no fructose is digested in the intestine, everything ends up in the liver. With beer, 10% is digested and the rest ends up in the liver. The 90 calories from fructose that reach the liver are about the same as the 92 from beer. In both cases, the liver is left to deal with these undigested toxins. Therein lies the problem.
In both cases, the processing of toxins produces a fatty liver commonly known as cirrhosis. This does not happen immediately like an acute toxin like arsenic does, but is chronic and develops over long periods of time. Your craving for sugar is not that different from a craving for alcohol. This is well confirmed by the dramatic increase in sugar consumption during prohibition.
The fermentation of alcohol from sugar in the brewery is not that different from the fermentation of sugar that takes place in the gut. Recognizing the toxic effects of ethanol, in accordance with public health initiatives, governments around the world have been motivated to try to restrict consumption with everything from government-controlled outlets to taxes to the extreme of prohibition.
Too bad nothing was done with fructose intake, which has caused a crisis in current health problems, including obesity. As I explained in an article on detoxification, the liver, being an essential organ, has incredible restorative properties. As is often the case, if we take this too far, we run into serious health problems.
Metabolic syndrome is a catch-all term used for a basket of medical disorders that increase susceptibility to cardiovascular disease and diabetes. The metabolization of fructose in the liver leads to all of them. These include hypertension, inflammation, insulin resistance in the liver, obesity, elevated levels of fat and cholesterol in the blood, fatty liver and resistance to leptin, which promote incessant consumption.
One of the most important disorders is called de novo lipogenesis which is simply the body’s ability to convert carbohydrates into fat. The reason this is important is that our bodies store short-term energy reserves as glycogen. Once they see that we have enough, they convert carbohydrates into fat for long-term storage.
So athletes, for example, can get away with relatively large amounts of carbohydrate intake even in the form of fructose because their glycogen levels are being depleted through strenuous exercise. If we more sedentary types try to do the same thing our bodies say, “well, we have enough glycogen, turn this into fat.”
I mentioned the Ancel Keys studies in an article on the cholesterol myth. His infamous and much-debated Study of the Seven Countries in the 1950s was largely responsible for the massive shift away from fat in our diet, largely replaced by carbohydrates and most of it in the form of sugar.
Although this was supposed to reduce the risk of heart disease, it has managed to push it into epidemic realms. There was an element of truth in Ancel’s so-called “lipid hypothesis” that attributed coronary heart disease to a high-fat diet.
The unfortunate problem with their hypothesis was that although fat leads to heart disease, consuming animal fat is not the culprit. Otherwise, the proposed solution would have been successful rather than the other way around. The deadly culprit is sugar, the consumption of which has increased sixfold since their study, which is in agreement with coronary heart disease statistics.
With the cheap production of GMO corn altered to grow like a weed and its addictive nature, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) has found its way, in increasing quantities, into almost all processed foods. you can imagine. It’s hard to find anything from supermarket bread through a plethora of packaged convenience foods to condiments, like tomato sauce and BBQ sauce, that don’t contain HFCS.
And it’s killing us!
