Kia Ākina

Working towards lifelong recovery from obesity

Eat Well (Content) – Eat much less sugar

When we reduce the number of foods on the NEEDNT Foods List (NEEDNT is an acronym for Non-Essential, Energy-Dense, Nutritionally-deficienT), we automatically eat much less sugar, because sugar is a very common additive in processed food.

Sugar can be a strongly addictive substance which sparks compulsive overeating in the majority of humans and can land many of us in deep water, including obesity and diabetes.

The reality of sugar addiction is validated by research showing that rats prefer sugar over cocaine and heroin dependent rats will decrease their heroin if provided with sweetened drinks. (Remember, it’s only 75 million years since we had a common ancestor with rats).

Our sweet tooth developed during a time (>10,000 years ago) when sweet berries were a rare luxury and when it took a lot of effort (probably mainly by women) to assemble a good supply of them.

Today we can gorge ourselves from dawn to dusk on sweets, cakes, biscuits, icecream, chocolate, fizzy drinks etc etc, along with all the processed foods, which are sneakily full of sugar, like breakfast cereals, tomato sauce etc. The word “Nutrigrain” sounds like a seriously good health food and the packaging reinforces that image, yet is about one third sugar. Most breads contain a surprising amount of added sugar too.

Our metabolism will start purring when we cut back on these sugary processed foods, and replace them with whole grains and green vegetables.

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