Roger Harty: Why Sugar Is Addictive

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GETTING straight to the kernel of the matter, sugar is addictive because it is connected with our very survival.

In other words, if we don’t get what the body believes to be an adequate supply of sugar it thinks it is going to die.

A very important point to make here is to pay attention to the word ‘think’.

The body ‘thinks’ it is going to die, that doesn’t mean that it ‘is’ going to die. In other words a lot of the messages going to the body are psychological and not necessarily connected with the truth.

The same argument could be made for Panic Attack and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) where the fear of dying is psychological and is not in fact real. (However it feels very real to the person experiencing it!).

Getting back to sugar and its addictive nature, I would like to make the following observations.

The Roman Army use to pay its soldiers by means of salt before money became the currency. Thus we get the terms; To get paid your ‘salary’ or to say ‘that man was worth his salt’.

Why salt I hear you ask?

Because salt is a preservative and thus was a great way for storing food over the harsh winter months where food was in scarce supply.

We can still see it today where many companies are experts in pickling food to increase its longevity.

Very popular indeed in countries like Germany, Poland, Italy and what is known as the former Eastern Bloc.

Back in those bygone days there were no Dunnes Stores, Tescos, Lidls, Aldis, Supervalues, Spars, etc. Only as recent as the last 100 years there was no electricity so there wasn’t the availability of refrigeration on a mass scale.

The question thus arises; How did the people long ago who didn’t have access to salt survive the long harsh winter months?

The only plausible answer is that they had to gorge on the rich pickings of Autumn where they had an abundant supply of berries and nuts in order to survive the winter months.

Many of these foods are high in sugar content which when eaten to excess converts into body fat which gives a ready-made supply of energy over the harsh, sparse winter season.

We see examples of this in many animals were they go into winter hibernation and live off their fat storage.

The opposite is also true, No Sugar meant No Fat meaning probable death.

Thus there is a direct link between sugar and survival and when the body has access to sugar the old survival cravings begin to kick in.

The problem nowadays is that we have an ever increasing access to sugar supply by means of the modern supermarkets etc , so supply is not an issue but the real problem is that our bodies haven’t moved with the times and the Primal connection with survival craving is still very real.

In simple terms our body thinks that it is going to die but the truth is that it isn’t. That link has to be broken in order to survive the addiction.

Are food companies aware of this sugar addiction? Something tells me that they are very aware of it. Any change has to start with awareness!

• Next week I am going to write about — Living In The Now

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