Surviving sugar addiction

Sugar addiction and food addiction is one of the hottest new sciences emerging over the last 10 years. What we’ve been able to find is that, in my estimation, heck yeah, it’s real. Because we now have credible science, and it’s being published on a daily basis, by the top universities, funded by the National Institutes of Health… showing a relationship that is so powerful between sugar — specific foods we call the hyperpalatables, sugary, fatty, salty — food combinations, and their very, very strong association with addiction, and now proven changes, organic changes that take place in the brain, specifically the brain’s reward center.

And if getting too many calories is what worries you, reaching for a Sprite Zero isn’t the solution: Artificial sweeteners may be almost as bad for you as HFCS. In 2004, a study published in the International Journal of Obesity found that rats ate more after consuming an artificially sweetened drink than they did after sipping sugar water. Researchers speculate that calorie-free artificial sweeteners act like stomach teasers: As you swallow diet soda, your body anticipates the arrival of calories. When they don’t show up, your body sends you looking elsewhere for them, often in a snack bowl. A 2005 study by researchers from the University of Texas found that people who drank a can of diet soda per day had a 37 percent greater incidence of obesity. And because artificial sweeteners are often many times sweeter than sugar, stirring a teaspoonful into your daily cup of joe may mean that when you do use real sugar, it just doesn’t taste sweet enough for you, sending you grabbing extra sugar packets.