Sugar as an addiction?

Hey guys,

Yesterday was a pretty tough day and when I got home, I ate chocolate, just because it made me feel good. Probably most of the people feel the same way, right? But why do we think “I need chocolate right now!”? Is it possible that we are addicted to sugar? Well, let me try to explain.

First, it isn’t our fault, but rather a born reaction. If you look at babies, you will see that even they start to smile when they eat something sweet. Even our ancients already knew that sweets are good. Searching for food, there sometimes were toxic things that killed them. Nevertheless, most of the sweet food they had tried were good to eat and brought energy and so they learned that sweet food are good.

However, it is not only our will to survive that we love sweets. The sugar stimulates certain parts of our brains that let us feel rewarded. Especially a combination of sugar and fat activates messengers, which stimulate that part of our brain, which is responsible for our mood. Maybe this is why we love chocolate. (I want to remind of my blog about MOOD-FOOD)

Because of our need to feel good, we have that desire to eat sweets. Compared to addictions, it almost acts the same way. An Addiction is caused by a certain desire and a preference for something, like coffee or alcohol.

Although there are some tests with rats, who showed symptoms of an addiction by taking away sugar, there are no proofs that humans feel the same way.

Alimentation Experts assume that you can’t compare those effects with the effects of Heroin, for example. It rather must be considered as a great way to feel rewarded. So if people “addicted” to sugar are not addicted to sweets itself, but rather to the endorphins we feel when we gain reward.

Anyway, there are some things to notice. If you, now or then, have the desire of chocolate, it certainly won’t be a problem. But if you want to stop eating sweets, because of diet for example, and you cannot stop eating sweets, well, that IS an addiction and needs professional help!

Theoretically, everybody should know that too much sugar is bad for our health. But why?
Sugar contains many calories, and together with fat it becomes a bomb of calories. So sugar, often hidden in drinks, etc, can lead to overweight. Sugar also enters our blood very fast and let the insulin level raise a lot. So besides of overweight, there’s a risk of getting diabetes and other cardio-vascular-diseases (take also a look on my post about Binge-Eating-Disease).
Now I questioned myself: why not just eat fruits? They are also sweet and surely not that unhealthy, right? Yes and no! Without doubts, fruits are much better and much healthier.

The problem is this:
The consistence is quite important for us and for stimulates the reward-system of our brains. And lets be honest, when you want to eat chocolate, deliciously melting in your mouth…do you really think, eating an apple would have the same effect?

So, our minds simply don’t accept fruits as an option and it might has something to the structure of fruits an sweets. Fruit sugar, or fructose, has a different kind of chemical structure as chocolate has. It might influence our brains, but until today there are no proofs of this.

So as a conclusion you can say that sugar cannot be an addiction in a traditional way. It stimulates or mood and this might us want to eat more and more. Therefore, it is important to take some precautions. If you want some chocolate, don’t put the whole chocolate on the table, but just a part of it. And think about alternatives. You want chocolate, but half of the package seems little? Well, take some fruits covered with dark chocolate, because dark chocolate contains more cacao and less sugar. Also make sure if there aren’t any alternatives to feel good like sport. Yeah I know, even I feel strange while writing this. But I will give it a shot. I hope, so will you, guys!

See you!