Hard Thing #3: Sugar
Hi, my name is Anna Marie, and I’m a sugarholic.
Our livers and brains metabolize fructose (sugar) and ethanol (alcohol) in all the same ways but one: we don’t know when we’re drunk on sugar.
We recognize alcoholism and many other addictions as diseases and put infrastructure in place to help treat and manage these risks: we make it harder to access the substance, we put warning labels on products, we regulate the companies that profit on addiction, we create rehab clinics, and we culturally respect someone’s decision to abstain.1 But imagine if instead of having to buy crack from a shady dealer in a back alley, we just coated our cereal or laced our baby formula with it? That’s how we get addicted to sugar.
While I love a fad diet as much as anyone, I find most nutrition science to be impractical and unsustainable - I’ve got citation-filled books telling me to go vegan and others telling me to eat nothing but steak and butter.2 I’m a believer in moderation and practicality, but there is one thing that 99.9%3 of scientists and nutritionists agree on: processed sugar is bad for us. It’s bad for our waistline, our brains, our microbiomes, and our lifespan. And yet, it is everywhere.
In other words… Happy Thanksgiving everyone!! I hope you’ll enjoy this post about how sugar is poison while you dig into your holiday meals. 🦃 Bonus: A delicious Thanksgiving menu is at the bottom with zero grams of added sugar.
Table of Contents
Chemistry 101: What is “sugar”?
There are three basic sugars that our body metabolizes (called “monosaccharides” because they have a single sugar component):
Glucose: found in basically everything
N.B.: there are two “isomers”4 of glucose, D-Glucose (more commonly called “dextrose” - this will be important later), which is the form found in our food, and L-Glucose, which doesn’t occur naturally but can be synthesized in a lab. For now, remember: “dextrose” = glucose.
In case you’re wondering, “glucopyranose” just means glucose when it’s in the “cyclic” form shown here. “Glucose” is just the generic term for the molecule whether it’s in this form or in its linear configuration.
Fructose: found mostly in obviously sweet things, like fruit
Galactose: found in dairy
Those three simple sugars combine to make a few different “disaccharides” (double sugars):
Sucrose: one glucose molecule + one fructose molecule (this is what we think of as “sugar” - the stuff we buy at the store)
Lactose: one glucose molecule + one galactose molecule (this is the main carbohydrate you drink in plain milk)
Maltose: two glucose molecules (think: bread)
When we use the word “sugar”, we’ll be talking mainly about anything containing added fructose5 (the purple blob), that’s the drug that makes things sweet and addictive.
Neurology 101: Our brains on sugar
Step 1: Ooh! That tastes good! aka. the science of sweetness
While biology is always more complicated than presented, there are two main proteins expressed together on the surface of our taste buds that are responsible for our ability to taste sweetness: T1R2 and T1R3.6
Omnivores evolved these proteins to seek out sweet (healthy) plants and a different set of proteins to detect and avoid bitter (potentially poisonous) plants. While we think about taste receptor proteins as being expressed on our taste buds (to prevent us from swallowing the bad stuff!), these sweet-receptor proteins are actually found throughout our bodies, indicating that they play an important role in metabolism as well (e.g. glucose mediation). Different animals have different configurations of taste receptor proteins and many (e.g. carnivores like cats) have lost functionality of these proteins entirely (ice cream doesn’t taste sweet to your cat!).
How “sweet” something tastes depends on how it binds to those receptors, which then send a “yum!” signal (this is the scientific term, of course) to your brain. This can depend on the size and shape of the molecule as well as the concentration (e.g. some old studies showed fructose tasted much sweeter than sucrose at low concentrations but at higher concentrations we can no longer tell, it just tastes SWEET).
Here’s a handy chart simplified from Wikipedia comparing the sweetness (higher = sweeter) of the different simple sugars to sucrose:
Takeaway: All sugars have some sweetness—this will become important later if I convince you to eliminate fructose but you don’t want to give up all desserts (glucose is still sweet!). Now - let’s see what happens after you taste sweet.
Step 2: Your brain on sugar
As soon as those sweet receptor proteins on your tongue get activated, they send a signal to your brain. As the diagram below shows, this does a couple things: 1) activates dopamine neurons which results in dopamine production and 2) triggers the release of opioids (yes, your body makes opioids!) which stop other neurons (the “GABA-ergic interneurons”) from blocking your dopamine neurons. Bottom line: you get a big dopamine and opioid hit to the brain = pleasure.
There have been lots of studies indicating that lab rats prefer sugar to cocaine (leading some to shout: “sugar is more addictive than cocaine!”). While there are many flaws in that precise conclusion (stemming from inherent flaws in study design), it is very clear that sugar behaves in many of the same ways:7
…animal data demonstrate significant overlap between the consumption of added sugars and drug-like effects, producing (1) bingeing, (2) craving (a strong desire to ‘use’), (3) tolerance (gradual escalation in intake with repeated use), (4) withdrawal (adverse physiological signs with discontinuation of use), (5) cross-sensitisation (increased response to drugs of abuse), (6) cross-tolerance (animals become tolerant to the analgesic effects of morphine after chronic intake of sugar and saccharin), (7) cross-dependence (suppression of withdrawal symptoms with certain drugs), (8) reward (intense dopamine release in the brain), and (9) opioid effects, such as the release of endogenous opioids on consuming sweet substances, symptoms of narcotic withdrawal when an opiate blocker is given, and other neurochemical changes in the brain.
DiNicolantonio JJ, et al. (2018 BMJ review article)
All those things are bad, but I’ll call your attention specifically to number 3 above: “tolerance”… The more sugar you eat, the less sensitive your brain gets—you need more sugar to get the same “high”. Studies on rats, pigs, and fruit flies all show that the availability of dopamine receptors (the things that make you feel good when you eat sugar or snort coke) decreases when subjects had higher-sugar diets. In other words, it’s harder to release the flood of happy hormones for any reason when our bodies have had too much sugar. Bummer. ☹️
Is all sugar created equal? Do we get just as addicted to pasta (glucose) and milk (lactose) as we do to Swedish Fish (sucrose)? Obviously not. To get a clue as to why, there’s one more hormone we need to understand: leptin.
Leptin is the “fullness” hormone that tells your brain that you should stop eating.8 We’ll get into the biochemistry in the next section, but while glucose triggers a metabolic cascade that results in leptin being released and telling your brain you’ve eaten enough, fructose does not. In other words, you could just keep eating fructose and your brain would say: “this tastes great! gimme more, I’m starving!”
Takeaway: fructose is a drug - your brain wants it and doesn’t know when to stop.
Biology 101: What does our body do with “sugar”? The metabolic pathways of sugar
Time for some science fun! My interest in sugar started in 2011 when the New York Times wrote the article Is Sugar Toxic? (uh, yeah!) inspired by the work of Dr. Robert Lustig at UCSF. For those of you who want to go down this rabbit hole, his original lecture is linked here and in the resources at the end of this. He does a very nice job outlining all of this in a couple of papers and I particularly like his metabolic pathway maps (reproduced and annotated below) to help us understand just how your body metabolizes sugar.
I recognize that these are eye charts, but there are only a few things you need to remember:
Every cell in your body uses glucose for energy. As glucose travels through your body, it is absorbed all over the place (mediated by insulin release). Only 20% makes it to your liver, where most of that is stored up as glycogen in your muscles for future use - all fine stuff.
Your cells can’t use fructose for energy so your body treats fructose like a foreign substance and sends it all to the liver (where toxins go to be dealt with)
Your liver does a WHOLE BUNCH of stuff with all that fructose:
Inflammation and hypertension: Phosphate depletion → inhibition of endothelial nitric oxide synthase and reduction of nitric oxide → increases uric acid & contributes to hypertension (high blood pressure)
Fat in your butt/gut: De novo lipogenesis (making new fat cells) and dislipidemia (high levels of bad cholesterol/fats in the blood stream)
Fat in your liver: Liquid fat droplet formation → fat buildup in liver itself (“fatty liver disease”)
Insulin resistance (Type II Diabetes) in your muscles
More fat and inflammation: c-jun N-terminal kinase (JNK1) activation → hepatic insulin resistance (aka: diabetes)→ promotes hyperinsulinemia → fat
High blood sugar: Increased forkhead protein O1 (FoxO1) → gluconeogenesis (GNG - release of glucose into the bloodstream) and hyperglycemia (high blood sugar)
Screwed up hormonal control: Central nervous system hyperinsulinemia (high insulin) → which antagonizes central leptin signaling and promotes continued energy intake (keep eating)
A bit of an aside, but something that really pissed me off… Do you remember the agave nectar craze (alongside the “low glycemic index” craze) for dealing with the diabetes epidemic? While low glycemic index should just be shorthand for "low sugar” (and therefore good), it led to some pretty wild conclusions for a while. Take the idea that it was better to eat agave nectar than regular sugar because it has a low “glycemic index” and thus doesn’t spike insulin right away. Sounds great, right? Except by now alarm bells should be going off for you… Agave nectar doesn’t yield an immediate insulin spike because it is 90% fructose (compared to normal sugar at 50%). That means it goes straight to the liver and causes fat creation and insulin resistance, making you MORE likely to have longer-term health issues rather than less…
Note: we haven’t talked about artificial sweeteners but for a whole host of reasons, I don’t touch them (some of them taste gross, some of them seem to cause microbiome issues, they still can cause insulin resistance, and I find the taste makes me crave the real stuff more for many of the same reasons: sweet signal to the brain without corresponding leptin pathway activation).
Takeaway: you can still get fat and sick eating pasta, but it’s a hell of a lot easier if you eat sugar. Sugar carries all the same metabolic and health risks as alcohol, just without the buzz (meaning we’re much more likely to overindulge on sugar than on alcohol9).
Psych 101: The science of addiction
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illnesses 5th edition (DSM-5) is the American Psychiatric Association’s professional reference book on mental health and brain-related conditions. The DSM-5 covers 11 different criteria to assess substance abuse across four primary categories: physical dependence, risky use, social problems, and impaired control.
DSM-5’s criteria for substance abuse disorders:
Taking the substance in larger amounts or for longer than you're meant to
✅ The American Heart Association recommends no more than 6tsp of added sugar a day for women and 9tsp for men (to be clear, this is a MAXIMUM, there is no health reason to eat added sugars). The average American eats 17tsp of added sugar a day (plus all sorts of “natural” fructose like juice, applesauce, etc., resulting in twice as much total sugar)
Wanting to cut down or stop using the substance but not managing to
✅ I won’t speak for you, but I’ve tried to give up sugar many times over the last 15 years. Still working on it. I’m currently 5 weeks “sober” (and that’s giving myself grace for the little taste I had at a family reunion last week)…
Spending a lot of time getting, using, or recovering from use of the substance
❌I think this one is debatable, but since I think they’re going for “seeks out your drug dealer in sketchy back alleys,” I’ll leave this off
Cravings and urges to use the substance
✅ obviously.
Not managing to do what you should at work, home, or school because of substance use
❌Maybe one good thing about sugar is it doesn’t give a buzz… and offices generally keep the drug handy so we can stay productive while feeding the addiction
Continuing to use, even when it causes problems in relationships
❌Well, given the people you have relationships with are probably also addicted to sugar, this one might be a problem in the other direction!
Giving up important social, occupational, or recreational activities because of substance use
❌This one also probably has to be flipped to count for sugar
Using substances again and again, even when it puts you in danger
✅ Yep….
Continuing to use, even when you know you have a physical or psychological problem that could have been caused or made worse by the substance
✅ Yep…
Needing more of the substance to get the effect you want (tolerance)
✅ Yep….
Development of withdrawal symptoms, which can be relieved by taking more of the substance
✅ Yep…
The DSM-5 also provides a handy dandy scale to determine the severity of the substance use disorder depending on how many checkmarks we have above:
Mild: Two or three symptoms indicate a mild substance use disorder.
Moderate: Four or five symptoms indicate a moderate substance use disorder.
Severe: Six or more symptoms indicate a severe substance use disorder.
I checked off ‼️7️⃣‼️ and I’m not by any means unique here. We have a severely addicted population and yet, at a policy level, we’re doing almost nothing to combat it. IN FACT, the U.S. Sugar Program provides subsidies and other protections to the sugar industry.
Takeaway: Sugar is addictive. Period. We should treat it like anything else we’re worried hurts people when they get addicted (drugs, alcohol, gambling…).
A couple final considerations in case your health isn’t enough…
Industrial sugar production ain’t sweet
The homepage of the U.S. Sugar Association describes that “from it’s earliest beginnings, growing sugar has been a family business” with it’s roots in Louisiana in 1751. Sounds lovely and quaint. But let’s be real: anytime you see something vaguely agricultural-sounding in the American South during the 18th century, these are slave plantations, not small family farms. Sugar started as a brutal business and it still is.
Screenshot from U.S. Sugar’s homepage More happy reading / listening
Sugar production destroys the environment
Yes, this is largely true for most industrial agriculture and I’m not arguing that we should just make less food and let people starve but seeing as fructose is absolutely not required for survival, it’s a little harder to justify chopping down our rainforests to get it…
Step 1: cut and/or burn down local ecosystems in order to plant monocultures of sugarcane, sugarbeet, or corn. This is particularly devastating in the tropical climates where sugarcane is grown. In Costa Rica, where we live in the summer, there are now massive restoration efforts ongoing to try to undo some of the damage to biodiversity and the local ecosystem from sugarcane specifically.
Step 2: Fertilize like crazy; pollute local soil and water supplies
Step 3: When sugar cane is ready to be harvested, the fields are often burned again in order to remove the large leaves and make cutting the canes easier. This is obviously terrible for anyone who lives nearby, not to mention the planet more generally.
“Soot From Sugar Field Burning Plagues Florida Towns with 'Black Snow'" - The Weather Channel
WTF is happening with our school food?!
Let me preface: I am incredibly grateful that my kids go to a wonderful public school where they get a free quality education and that I do not have to pack them lunch. I admit to being a parent that regularly makes the “convenient” choice and packing healthy, fresh, nutritious meals with not a nut in sight is no easy feat. BUUUUUTTTTTTTT… here are the nutrition facts from the breakfast that the Boston Public Schools food service provider recently served our kids:
100% of the items served to the kids were primarily SUGAR (not just “carbs”, SUGAR). Muffin? Sugar! Pancakes (“Wholesome” Maple Chip?!) Sugar! Strawberry compote?!?!?! Sugar!!!!! Dried apple crisps and oranges (at least that’s natural sugar?!)…. Milk (I trust that it’s not chocolate but still….). 😱 And this is in hippy liberal Boston…. It’s waaaaaaayyyyyy worse in other parts of the country.
A proud TikTok from a lunch lady making a wholesome breakfast in Kentucky We can laugh all we want about the idea that pizza sauce could count as a vegetable, but it stops being funny really fast when you look at childhood obesity rates (a full fifth of kids these days are obese—not just a little pudgy around the cheeks—clinically obese). Not to mention the impacts of excessive sugar on the ability to sit attentively through a school day and learn something. While there is some directionally good news on this front (such as the USDA’s new school meal standards that limit added sugar) and increasing recognition that sugar is an issue, it’s still not nearly enough and powerful lobbying efforts by the sugar and packaged food industries make real progress hard.
I welcome folks sending me reasons why they should eat more sugar or why they’re still not convinced they can give it up. I’m happy to go deeper down the rabbit hole…
Take home exam: kicking the sugar addiction
This is inspired by Sweet Poison by David Gillespie and his Sweet Poison Quit Plan - I recommend his books!
Decide you’re really doing this and figure out why. I’ve spent about 15 years giving up sugar. There’s a lot to re-wire and if you want to do this, it’s worth spending the time upfront really investing in your education of WHY you’re doing it and different strategies to come at it. You can’t do this because you feel like you SHOULD; you have to get yourself to WANT to do this (this is especially important for kids!).
Plan some new “rewards”: Sugar is deeply culturally engrained. If I love you, I bake for you. If I had a great day, I celebrate with dessert. If I had a terrible day, I wallow in dessert. If I get cold, I want to put my hands around a cup of cocoa. When I camp, I want to make s’mores even though I don’t really like them. Life is worth celebrating!! If you go cold turkey on sugar and you don’t have a way to celebrate, wallow, or show love, you’re either going to be miserable, start eating lots of sugar again, or both. Come up with as many new ways to mark special occasions or sugar-laced habits as you can - I promise it can be fun (and feel indulgent). Here are a few of mine:
Walk>coffee: Instead of meeting for coffee (a cultural habit that comes with a chocolate croissant), I try to schedule an outdoor walk instead…
Tea>cocoa: I found a really wonderful/indulgent tea that I love and now find just as satisfying as a cup of cocoa if I let it oversteep a bit (and I don’t get a stomach ache later!)
Massage>dessert: When I want to celebrate something / treat myself, I book a massage or a facial instead of going out to dinner (and dessert).
Popcorn>milkshake or nuts>cereal: I opt for the savory/fatty/salty snacks and decide not to feel guilty instead of having the sugary one. I’m not saying I’m a saint, I’m just trying to kick a sugar addiction. Splurge on fancy nuts. Eat a few chips. Just stay away from the sugar.
Cooking>dining out: I found that allowing myself to make “fancy food” more often gave me a way to show love and care (e.g. for my family and friends) without sugar. E.g. I could buy nice scallops or steaks at the store and still spend less than a dinner out. And with all that delicious dinner food, no one is feeling super deprived if there’s just fresh fruit or a nice charcuterie board for dessert. Side idea: Be a little French and end with a fancy cheese course rather than dessert.
Raspberries: I reallocate whatever money I save on sugar/dessert to raspberries. I probably go through a box a day when they’re in season. I sometimes hide them on the top shelf of our fridge and I don’t always share. So sue me.
Get sugar out of your house. If you’re an alcoholic, you can’t keep a bottle of booze on your shelf. If you’re a sugarholic, you can’t keep sugar in your pantry. Here’s my rule: if it has added sugar (incl. artificial sweeteners) and I would enjoy eating it by itself (so that excludes things like ketchup or taco seasoning) it needs to get out of my house. I hate waste, I find it very hard to bring myself to throw away edible food. Here’s what I did:
Threw away dredges of really terrible stuff (e.g. Krusteaz pancake mix, gross salad dressings, etc.)
Tried to give away pre-packaged foods to homeless people/shelters, friends (with full disclaimer that I didn’t think they should eat it), etc. (snack bars, Halloween candy, protein powders with artificial sweeteners, etc.) and put the rest on the curb (for taking or trashing)
Kept small amounts of sugar “ingredients” for special occasions: I have one sandwich-sized Ziploc bag full of white sugar, a small container of brown sugar, and a container of powdered sugar in my house, that’s it. It’s enough for special occasions if I deem it absolutely necessary to bake something “proper” and I can’t substitute a fructose-free alternative (brown sugar is the hardest one so far), and nothing more. I’m not at risk of just eating a plain spoonful of sugar and the extra steps involved in making something with sugar give me enough time to stop myself from following through.
Kept “condiments” that have sugar as long as they’re not actively sweet: I’m not at risk of bingeing on ketchup, I don’t want to throw away two Costco-sized ketchups, it’s wasteful, and I recognize that my body can handle SOME fructose, just not a lot. Next time I’ll buy a no-sugar version, but for now, I don’t sweat it.
Recruit your team: If you live with other people and they’re not on board, it’s going to be really hard. I became an evangelist for no sugar within my own house and now my kids are honestly better at giving up sugar than I am! A book recco on this front is: Year of No Sugar: A Memoir by Eve Schaub.
Note: I have found it to be WAYYYYY easier than I expected to get my kids (ages 7 and 9) on board with no sugar. My tricks:
Educate them. They really enjoyed “That Sugar Film” and even watched the Lustig lecture
Make sure they feel in control. I explained why I was giving up sugar but didn’t make them go “cold turkey” (though I did only let them keep 10 pieces of Halloween candy…10). Any time they have the option to eat sugar I say: “It’s up to you, but you should know that has a bunch of fructose in it” and I’ve been really proud of their decisions!!
Continue making it part of the conversation day in, day out
Don’t have sugar around the house… out of sight, out of mind (they’ll get enough at school even when they’re trying to be good)
Involve them in cooking and preparing food so they can make their own healthier treats. My kids LOVE grilled fruit, they love watching the Whole Foods peanut masher grind up peanuts and that helps them enjoy the “natural” peanut butter more, we even re-created The Great British Baking Show and they made vanilla soufflés without any added fructose (substituted glucose instead).
The competitors in the first Great Wagner-Sinnott Bakeoff. Jonathan (left) won the award for presentation but James (right) won overall given that his tasted much better. Delicious, subtly sweet results. No fructose to be found (other than the chocolate chips Jonathan used to decorate).
2 weeks really sober: Just do it. You’re trying to break an addiction. Alcoholics don’t just “drink a little less everyday”, they get SOBER. I really do recommend a couple weeks totally cold turkey to re-calibrate your tastes, re-set your metabolic pathways, and re-set your brain wiring / appetite signaling, that means:
Nothing sweet-tasting (berries are OK, no other fruit, no artificial sweeteners, no sugar) - the goal here is to break the addiction to the sweet TASTE
Load up on fats and proteins (keeps you full)
No added sugars in your food
Drink lots of water (we should all do this all the time, but it’s particularly helpful when you’re changing your diet and rewiring what “full” feels like)
Notice how you feel. If you’re anything like me, your tastes will start changing (cashews and pistachios taste actively sweet to me these days), your energy levels will change (for the better), your skin will change (for the better), and you’ll lose some water weight.11 If you feel better, let that motivate you to keep it up. If you don’t feel better, re-watch one of the lectures about how sugar is poison.
Important: I still eat LOTS of fruit (my issue is with added fructose because there’s no reason to add fructose other than to make something sweeter and more addicting). There’s enough water and fiber in fruit that it’s hard to binge as badly… BUT when you’re in detox, I would cut out the stuff in the top left here. Add it back later when you’re in a healthier spot:
Here’s a handy table for the relative health of various fruits (fiber good, fructose bad)… I love fruit and the only way I will stay away from processed sugar is eating plenty of fruits. But when I can, I now like to make better choices (and honestly, eating raspberries does NOT feel like a sacrifice to me!) Start getting creative and efficient: If you successfully get through withdrawal, you can start expanding your repertoire by trying all sorts of new added-fructose free ideas, learning/re-learning that it doesn’t need to be pre-packaged and frozen to be fast, etc. I’ve made fructose-free cinnamon rolls, mousses, and cakes recently (again: not health food… but also less poisonous and addictive)! You might also invest in some new cookbooks or blogs (keto / paleo blogs tend to be good places to start, David Gillespie has a bunch of recipes on his, etc.).
NOTE: This is where you might be able to figure out if you’re a lucky, non-addicted person who can eat a “real” dessert in moderation (like once a week or once a month), but I’m not and so I have to find alternatives…
Good luck!
Bonus Content
Films:
That Sugar Film - a well-made documentary about an Australian man who goes from eating almost no added sugars to the average Australian’s diet… and does so eating only food labeled as “healthy”. A team of doctors measures everything about him over the course of the 2 month self-experiment. The results shouldn’t shock you after this.
The Bitter Truth - a dry lecture from UCSF processor Dr. Robert Lustig. If you liked the metabolic pathways above, you’ll like this.
I also like this article by Dr. Lustig
Books:
Sweet Poison and the Sweet Poison Quit Plan by David Gillespie
TL;DR: David was an overweight lawyer, gave up added-fructose and did nothing else different, and lost the weight. Easy, practical read.
Year of No Sugar: A Memoir by Eve Schaub
TL;DR: A family of 4 gives up added sugar for a year. Great practical advice for how to do this as a family
The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes
Another one! But this one dives a bit more into social, economic, and policy implications
🦃 A Fructose-Free Thanksgiving 🥘
NOTE: I am making no claims that this is a “healthy” meal, it is Thanksgiving after all, only that it is a way to enjoy the classics without any added fructose or artificial sweeteners.
You’ll want to buy one special ingredient: dextrose. As you read above, dextrose is the scientific name for D-glucose (the one found in nature). It’s a little less sweet than sucrose, but can be used basically 1 for 1 (by volume) and because it’s just glucose, it doesn’t come with any weird artificial tastes AND it maintains your insulin signaling pathways so you release and respond to leptin and feel full at the appropriate time. To really kick the sugar habit, I do recommend avoiding sweet things in general, but during the holidays, it’s important to be practical. This is a good first step.
Anna Marie’s Added-Fructose-Free Thanksgiving Menu
Pretty easy, the thing to be careful of here is the brine and any pre-packaged gravies or broths
Dry-brine your turkey a couple days beforehand (here’s a good recipe)
Make your gravy from scratch with pan drippings, flour, and butter and any other spices you like (here’s a good recipe)
Aunt Stephanie’s slightly modified soft dinner rolls
Easy to substitute dextrose for the sucrose (and in fact, I’ve found that in bread, the glucose helps the bread get a little fluffier and rise faster! I suspect this has something to do with it being easier for the yeasties to metabolize, but will need to do more research)
Easy to avoid sugar, just don’t top with marshmallows - which is gross anyway
I don’t particularly like mashed potatoes but other people do, so here ya go!
This one is a bit tough because two of the main ingredients are pre-packaged with sugar…. but here’s a try!
Cranberry sauce (OK - I don’t like cranberry sauce and honestly, this is just pure sugar any way you cut it… but here is a recipe that looks OK… it has a bit of juice, but don’t think there’s really another way to do it)
Pumpkin Pie with dextrose-sweetened whipped cream
This is why all the DraftKings billboards have gambling hotlines on the bottom …and why European cigarette containers have rotted out mouths, emaciated newborns, and dead lungs… why it’s illegal to buy/sell cocaine… why there was a $23 BILLION settlement with opioid manufacturers and distributors… Not just because these things can be dangerous (I can buy all sorts of poison at my local Wal-Mart), but because they are dangerous and addictive.
The steak and butter does sound better, I have to admit…
If you’re curious, my favorite book on the “go vegan” side of the aisle is How Not to Die by Michael Greger (there’s also How Not to Diet, which is by the same author and more focused on weight management)
My favorite book on the steak and butter side is Eat Bacon, Don’t Jog by Grant Peterson (this one is lower on the science, but a fast and easy read); this one purports to have a bit more science behind it. And I’ve done Whole 30 twice - the first time I felt amazing, the second time I felt like garbage. 🤷🏼♀️
It may be 100%, but given how much scientific research is funded by companies that profit from our sugar addiction, it’s possible some scientists—for their own sanity—have figured out how to rationalize it away…
Isomers are compounds that have the same chemical formula, e.g. C6H12O6 for glucose, but different atomic arrangements. In the case of L-glucose and D-glucose, they are what are called “enantiomers”, which means they are mirror images of each other: mirrored around their central carbon.
Emphasis on “added” - fruit is good for you! Too much can still be a problem, but it’s waaaaayyyy better than the alternative.
I’ll just note the acknowledgements of funding of the article I’m pulling the image below from here: “The author acknowledges The NutraSweet Company (Mt Prospect, IL), The Coca-Cola Company (Atlanta, GA) and Almendra (Thailand), Ltd. (Bangkok, Thailand).” There’s nothing nefarious with that article, but if you want to know who is funding the work on how we get that sweet, sweet feeling, you found them!
To be very clear, I still suggest that if you’re going to have a severe addiction, sugar is better than cocaine. It will kill you more slowly.
Interestingly, leptin proteins are also “cytokines” and are super important for the proper functioning of the immune system. You really don’t want to F it up.
Fun fact: my first physical signal of having had too much to drink is that the tips of my ears go numb.
But fun fact: they’ve forgotten entirely about their last two!!! It took a couple weeks and they’re avoiding fructose like the plague - their taste buds have changed dramatically!
Interestingly, after one of my prior attempts to give up sugar during which I’d been cold turkey for about a month, I went to an ice cream sundae party. I had a scoop and a half of ice cream and felt like I had food poisoning that night. It was about the clearest signal I could imagine for how bad this stuff really is for us, we just acclimate our bodies to the abuse…