PREVENTION AND HEALTH: SUGAR ADDICTION
What is it?
A condition in which an individual becomes ‘hooked’ on sugar-containing foods so that life without them becomes a misery or virtually impossible. Sugar addiction is worth worrying about because it makes people fat (with all the resultant health risks this entails) and causes tooth decay. It may also, via its action on insulin metabolism, have something to do with the causation of diabetes.
What causes it?
• There is little doubt that most higher animals find sugar a pleasant taste and many of nature’s fruits, and vegetables contain sugars. Although most westerners with their sweet tooth don’t realize it, vegetables such as carrots and onions are very sweet. So it appears that it is natural for us to like sweet-tasting things.
• Upbringing is undoubtedly the prime reason why so many people in the West are sugar addicts. From the very earliest days mothers give their babies dummies filled with sugar solutions or coated in honey to suck to keep them quiet. This sort of habit sets the body’s sugar ‘thermostat’ so high that anything that is not extremely sweet is perceived as less palatable.
• A cultural acceptance of the myth that dietary rewards must involve sugar. The woman who feels low pre-menstrually or the unhappy child on the way home from school both opt for sweet, sugar-containing slugs of confectionary.
• The best starting point is total and on-demand breastfeeding. Breast milk contains its own sugars and tastes very sweet. However, these sugars are balanced with other constituents and don’t have the harmful effects that sucrose (table sugar) has. A baby nourished in this way will not crave sugary drinks and sweets.
• Don’t have sugar on the table as your children grow up. Teach them to find sweetness elsewhere-in vegetables or fruits.
• Once you are a sugar eater and want to change your ways, keep a sugar diary for a week or two. It is very difficult to appreciate just how much sugar you actually eat unless you do this. Statistics show that sugar added to food accounts for 25 per cent of all the calories eaten by the average adult. For teenagers this figure can be as high as 50 per cent. Get used to reading labels on foods and steer away from those that are rich in sugar or have anything ending in ose, (maltose, dextrose, sucrose, etc.) on the label.
• Shop more wisely. This will mean buying few or none at all of the following: sweets and chocolates; cream-filled and iced biscuits; cakes and sweet pastries; jams, honey, marmalade and spreads; tinned fruit in syrup; sweetened yoghurts; jellies and ready-made desserts; sweet pickles; fruit sauces; tomato ketchup; and fizzy drinks and squashes containing sugar.
• Ban all sugar and sweets from the house. Feeding your craving is much more difficult if the things are not there to be eaten. In spite of all the publicity about the dangers of sugar consumption, in 1980 in the UK the use of sugars and sweeteners was up 50 per cent from 91 lb a year per person at the turn of the century to 143 lb a year.
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