The Sugar Addiction

We are going to talk about a problem that everyone in the Netherlands struggles with … namely the sweet seducer: sugar. We too were victims of this delicious processed magical sweetener that stays in our heads all day. We always have room left over for dessert or a sweet snack, don’t we? Sugar is in the spotlight more and more these days and maybe after reading this blog you can learn something from our experiences and the disadvantages of sugar. Several years ago we decided to completely rid our house of all ”bad” sugars and products with added sugars. It was very difficult to say the least. We both grew up in a family that loved sweets, cakes and sweet treats. It was instilled in us and until our adulthood we were never that aware of how bad it actually is for you. Don’t get us wrong… We too cheat from time to time, but we make sure this almost always happens outside our home. As soon as we reintroduce this poison (sorry for our honesty) into our home, we all eat it without sobs and shame within a few minutes, like true addicted junkies.

So that’s out! We will try to explain exactly why we rid ourselves of sugars in our kitchen, secret jars, under the bed, in the living room and in many secret drawers. And it wasn’t the obvious sugars, like candy, Oreos, M&Ms and Ben & Jerry’s. We really went hunting in our food stash and looked for the hidden sugars instead. For example, those delicious caeser dressing, bread, crackers, yogurt, breakfast cereals, tomato sauces, chips, ready-made sauces, soups, so-called “fresh” juices and an endless amount more. We were really shocked that almost all of our products contained so many hidden sugars. After much effort, our cupboards were completely cleared out and sugar-free and it seemed like we had nothing left to eat in the house. All we had left was some eggs, chicken, butter, vegetables and some fresh fruit.

Sugar is a drug

Sugars are known to have the same effect on the brain, as heroin and cocaine. Say what? Yes sugar is even 8x more addictive than cocaine, which is why it is often easier to leave some drugs, but not your oreo cookies. It is quite a cheap way to get high, we would say. In our opinion, the sugar industry is just as bad as the alcohol and cigarette industries. They all produce products (not food) that are bad for our health. Their motto is also as long as they line their pockets they really don’t care if half the world gets sick from it. The sugar industry which also includes Coca Cola, Nestle, Pepsi Co, Unilever are one of the best earning industries in the world, unfortunately at the expense of others. See the trailer below of Fed up, we also recommend that you buy this movie or if necessary download it somewhere.

What is sugar in ABC?

It’s a complicated long story with all these difficult terms, so we’re going to try to keep this short and simple. The white sugar you eat is broken down in your body into glucose and fructose. Glucose is essential for a million different things in our bodies. Our body can make it itself when our glucose levels are extremely low. Glucose is a part of life and we cannot exist without it. Fructose, on the other hand, is not as essential as glucose. Fructose is converted in our liver, but our liver also has a ceiling on what it can process and in everyone this is different. So what exactly is fructose in? It is found in fruit. Does this mean we can’t have fruit? No, of course not, just keep eating! However, do not take more than a few apples in a day or mangoes as that also still contains sugars. Each type of fruit also contains different amounts of fruit sugars. This is also the reason why in our juices we average 80% vegetables and 20% fruits so you get very little fruit sugars and mostly super healthy nutrients.

Only fruit in season and fructose

Thousands to hundreds of thousands of years ago, sweet fruits and honey were only available in the summer and were therefore very scarce. Our ancestors then ate an incredible amount of this so they literally and figuratively got a little more fat on their bones to prepare for the cold winters. Today, our fruit is available year-round and is manipulated and selected in such a way that it tastes mostly ant-sweet and thus contains mostly lots of fructose sugars. So even for fruit today, the rule is to eat it daily in moderation. What we have to understand is that we are basically still primal humans. As soon as you eat too many fructose sugars, mainly from processed foods, our liver cannot process them properly and panics and works overtime, which results in more insulin. And what does the liver do then very cleverly, it converts excess sugars (insulin) into fat.

Added in everything!

Sugar is spot on! And oh so delicious. If you start looking at your ingredients, it will be hard to find a basic product that does not contain (added) sugars. You can add sugar to the worst recipes and your dish becomes instantly tasty. Sugar is highly addictive, and it works in your brain in such a way that you want to eat more and more of it! Now think again about your primal man? If you were walking hungry in the woods and you saw a bush full of delicious sweet blueberries, you wouldn’t just walk by, right? No, you’d prefer to eat that whole bush all by yourself until there wasn’t a single blueberry left. That’s why we make juices with very little fruit sugar and lots of vegetables.

We always wonder why our hands reach the bottom of the cookie jar so quickly? We are so evolutionarily programmed to like sugar that we can’t really do anything but finish that whole bag of M&Ms. Because as with the blueberry, it never stays with just one cookie. Of course, the food industry knows full well that sugar is hugely addictive, which is exactly why it is added to more than 85% of the products in regular supermarkets and unfortunately also the ”healthy” supermarkets Eko plaza and Marqt. If a company sweeten their product, they are guaranteed to have lifetime customers. They want you to crave and desire the next bite of their products daily, preferably every second. For example, they do this very cleverly in soft drinks. In these they add extra sodium (salt), which makes you feel more thirsty. However, of course you don’t notice that your cola tastes salty because they mask it with sugar. So this way you are constantly thirsty because of the added salt and because of the sugar you keep drinking more and more because it tastes so damn good. To make it even worse and more bonkers, they have developed so-called calorie poor soft drinks and sweetened them with artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, saccharin, hydrolyzed stevia which are even more addictive than regular white sugar and have even more health disadvantages.

Sugar designations

There are an awful lot of different names for sugars, such as dextrose, brown sugar, grape sugar, fructose, frustose syrup, galactose, condensed fruit juice, jelly sugar, glucose syrup. Lactose, milk powder, maltodextrin, maltose, sucrose and the list goes on. It is very difficult to memorize all those dozens of other names of sugar. To make it a little easier: anything ending with ose, concentrate, syrup, nectar, syrup or sugar should basically be avoided. We swear by our own rule: if you can’t pronounce or understand it you shouldn’t eat it.

Sugar makes you sick

It is nothing new when we say that too much sugar leads to insulin resistance. Insulin resistance leads to diabetes, obesity, increased blood pressure, low bone density, increased bad cholesterol and cardiovascular disease. But what many people don’t know is that it can also lead to cancer. Cancer is characterized by uncontrolled growth and cell division. Insulin in the body is one of the key regulators of this growth. So, if we constantly have elevated insulin levels (caused by sugar consumption) it will contribute to cancer growth. In fact, cancer cells grow best on sugar; it is as addictive to them as it is to us. Strange, that a menu in a hospital (when treating cancer patients) is full of sugary products.
That’s why we keep eating it

Different foods have different effects on the brain. For example, when you eat glucose from basic carbohydrates like bread, pasta and rice it tells our brain that we are full at some point. But when we eat this in the form of fructose, it actually tells the brain that we want more of it. This can lead to overweight or obesity. Unfortunately, when we eat foods with lots of added fructose sugars, our satiety part in our brain is not activated. Therefore, we can keep eating it. When we eat sugar, the hormone dopamine (happy hormone) is produced, just like with drugs. This is why scientists say that sugar has the same effect on the brain as cocaine or heroin. Normal food (containing non-processed sugars) does not create this amount of dopamine as sugar does. And this is exactly why we keep eating those McDonalds hamburger, snickers and Oreos. You often feel so good after eating these foods, at least for a short time, that you want to eat more and more of them to experience that feeling again. Just as with drugs, you need more and more to experience the same sugar high. And lo and behold the single biggest problems in the world, countless chronic diseases, cancer, overweight and obesity. The only thing that works to get rid of your sugar addiction is complete abstinence. This is why we no longer have all the bad sugary products in our homes.

100% fat free?

Unfortunately, you still see all around you that everything is fat-free or light. The reason for this is because in the 1960s it was thought that cardiovascular disease was caused by eating saturated fat. But when everything became fat-free, the food became tasteless or rather the food tasted like cardboard. This, of course, was a big problem for the food industry. So they thought of adding sugar to make their food palatable, with all the consequences. Promise us this next time you are in the supermarket. Find a regular product and keep the fat-free or light variety next to the regular variety. Which one do you think has more sugar ?

Sugar alternatives

We hope that after reading this long blog you understand a little better that refined sugars are not good for you. Unfortunately, what most people still choose are artificial sweeteners. Artificial sweeteners are even worse for your health than sugar. avoid them as much as possible and if you still want to eat sugar prefer regular white sugar instead of artificial sweeteners. Artificial sweeteners are completely synthetic and come from a factory. We believe that if nature can’t make it itself you shouldn’t put it in your body. Of course, there are many alternative and healthy sweeteners on the market! Like Yacon syrup, raw honey, maple syrup, lucuma, mesquite and green leaf stevia. You can also sweeten your desserts with ripe banana, figs, prunes, raisins and dates. If you want to choose a natural sweetener with the most healthy properties and least impact on your blood sugar, go for the stevia plant. Just be careful which type of stevia you buy, much of it is still heavily processed, so buy the one that is really green and has a strong aftertaste.

Our advice

Limit and minimize processed foods in your diet as they have an incredible amount of hidden sugars. Read the packaging carefully and attentively and remember our motto, if you do not understand the ingredients, are too small to read or can pronounce you should not eat it either. These processed sugars have very serious negative effects on your health. If you do want to use sugars use it from natural sources such as in fruit or honey. If you use natural sweet substitutes try not to take more than 1 teaspoon (6 grams) per day. Good health means doing everything in moderation, even if you want to keep eating sugar daily try to be aware of what it is doing to your health. Do you find it difficult to stop eating sugars right away? A detox can help you let go of unhealthy habits.