Patti Talks Too Much

Sugar: The Hidden Addiction

• Patti

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Sugar permeates nearly every aspect of modern Western life, yet few of us recognize our relationship with it for what it truly is – an addiction. In this eye-opening episode, I explore the shocking research from Penn University demonstrating that sugar is potentially more addictive than cocaine, with lab rats willing to endure electric shocks just to get their sweet fix.

The dark history of refined sugar reveals uncomfortable truths about our cultural dependence. William Dufty's "Sugar Blues" chronicles how sugar fueled the slave trade and dramatically impacted European health when introduced centuries ago. Meanwhile, dentist Weston Price's global research uncovered that indigenous communities untouched by Western diets maintained perfect dental health, while those consuming sugar and refined flour experienced physical degeneration over generations.

What makes sugar addiction particularly insidious is its ubiquity and social acceptance. I break down six telltale signs you might be addicted: secretly stashing sweets, sneaking treats when no one's looking, manipulating loved ones to get your fix, recruiting others to join your indulgence, rationalizing consumption with clever excuses, and experiencing mood lifts just knowing sugar is in your near future. Sound familiar?

The politics behind our sugar consumption are equally troubling. Big Sugar has successfully changed food labeling laws to hide just how much we're consuming – the average American takes in 34 teaspoons daily, nearly six times the recommended amount. With one in three Americans now having diabetes, the consequences are severe, yet powerful industry lobbying prevents meaningful regulation or warning labels.

Ready to break free? I share practical strategies for gradually eliminating sugar, identifying hidden sources in everyday foods, and addressing the gut imbalances that often drive our most intense cravings. Your journey to optimal health begins with recognizing this powerful addiction for what it is and taking small, consistent steps toward freedom.

Speaker 1:

Hello again. This is Patti with. Patti Talks Too Much, and today I'm talking about an addiction that afflicts the majority of us in the West. We don't really think we're addicted, because we're addicts. We're addicts. Thanks for joining me today.

Speaker 1:

The subject that I'm talking about is something that's been bothering me for a very long time, so it is something that is a bit of an addiction for particularly those of us in the West, especially in America, and yet it really doesn't get talked about in the way that we are alarmed about just about every addiction addiction. There is no AA or NA or some special group that is out there that is helping people kick this addiction. So what is it? Have you guessed? Well, you know when I say it you might get upset with me for that, but if you're really upset with me, is that a sign that you might be addicted? Hmm, so just bear with me because I'm going to go through some of the reasons why this is definitely an addiction, of the reasons why this is definitely an addiction, signs that you can tell, six signs that you can tell that this is an addiction for you and a few ways that you can kick it if you really want to. All right. So what's the addiction? Sugar. If you guessed sugar, you're right. If you've been able to kick sugar, then I congratulate you, because there's almost no support out there for us to do so. If you are committed to kicking sugar and you have successfully done it, then I commend you highly, because this is one of the toughest addictions to kick. Now, if you were addicted to heroin and everywhere you went especially on that impulse buy area, by the checkout register at every grocery store and liquor store, and you know Target and wherever you saw you know your, your little heroin stash, it would be a little bit hard to kick heroin. If we had heroin kind of snuck into our food, it might be a little hard to kick heroin, but that is literally what we're up against if we want to kick sugar. Now, why kick sugar? What's so bad about it?

Speaker 1:

Well, if you really want to take a deep dive into the history of refined sugar, the refined sugar industry there are an its effects on our health over the last few hundred years in the West then there are two books that I highly highly recommend. One of them is called Sugar Blues by William Dufty. Now, this is an amazing book that goes back hundreds of years and chronicles the introduction to refined sugar in the diets of Europeans and Americans, and it literally links sugar production to all kinds of the darker aspects of our histories. For instance, did you know it was the sugar industry that catapulted the slave market in the Americas? What were they shipping? They were shipping sugar, sugar molasses. All right. So the sugar industry and sugar cultivation sugar cane out of the Caribbean in particular was a huge, became a huge industry because once the Europeans got hooked on sugar, they didn't care. Their morals could go straight out the window, because they needed their jams and their jellies and their pastries and their confectioners and all of those little sweet things that made them feel oh so civilized compared to the rest of the world. All right, I'm being sarcastic, but honestly, my sarcasm will often saves me from profanity. So you know, I think it might be a blessing. So Sugar Blues an excellent, eye-opening, jaw-dropping book that chronicles the history of the sugar industry and its impact on Europe as it was introduced. This includes the European politics, this includes the decline of health in European cities in particular. So it's a fascinating read and so, if you really want to read, you know the history of sugar and the introduction of refined sugar and its impact on our health and on our politics. And so, for the kind of the dark side of the sugar industry, sugar Blues by William Dufty is an amazing book. So that's one.

Speaker 1:

Now, another book that I highly recommend is a book that was written by Weston Price. He was a dentist, so check this out. In the 1930s, this dentist, weston Price. He's noticing that all of his patients have everybody has cavities and rotting teeth. What's going on? What's going on?

Speaker 1:

And his curiosity eventually led him to do his own scientific research on the dental health of people all over the world. Did everyone suffer from decaying teeth? And why was it that we had to pull wisdom teeth? Why did wisdom teeth? Why didn't our mouths have room anymore for our wisdom teeth? Our mouths have room anymore for our wisdom teeth.

Speaker 1:

So what he did was he went around the world and studied indigenous people who had not yet been introduced to the Western, let's say the, a civilized diet of refined sugar and refined wheat. All right, so those are the two main culprits, but sugar is definitely a big, big culprit. So he went around and he found that among these people they had perfect teeth. They had perfect teeth. He went to these areas where the Western diet had not yet been introduced, and these people had perfect teeth. They also had jaw lines and sinus cavities that were shaped in a way that allowed all of their teeth to be present. They didn't have to have teeth pulled. There was room enough in their mouths for the teeth that they were growing.

Speaker 1:

Hmm, so what was it about the introduction of the Western diet that caused the, that caused this? It's kind of like this devolution in health. And literally what he came to realize in his research was that this Western diet was shaping, was, was changing the shape of our heads was changing the shape of our heads was changing the shape of our sinus cavities, our jaws, and so that eventually, after generations, our jawline, our sinus cavity, the cavity, the shape of our mouths, no supported, no longer had room for all of the teeth that were growing. All right, that is what happened after several, several generations. And so his book is called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration and Physical Degeneration Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A Price, dds. It is a fascinating book. It's thick, it's dense, it's got pictures. It's really an amazing book of research that kind of chronicles the impact of the Western diet on our teeth, on our dental. We're not even talking about other health issues, we're just talking about the effect on our teeth and also the effects on the shape of our mouths and our sinus cavities. Fasc, fascinating stuff. I highly recommend these two books If you really want to take a deep dive into the history of sugar, the refined sugar introduction into you, know, our civilizations and the impact of that on our overall health, and also the impact of the introduction to sugar and refined wheat on our teeth as compared to other groups around the world Fascinating stuff. So I highly recommend that.

Speaker 1:

Now the question is is sugar really addictive? Yes, my dear, it is. It is one of the most addictive substances on the planet. I do not say that lightly and I will cite a Penn University research study that was done to show how amazingly addictive sugar is. All right, so this goes back a ways. It was a research project that was done at Penn University, all right. So you know and I feel sorry for the lab rats, you know they always get the brunt of everything right and all those poor animals in those labs. So that aside.

Speaker 1:

So imagine this you've got two cages containing two different groups of rats and in one cage you have the, the water dispenser. Right that they go over and they, they lick, there's a little ball on the bottom and they lick it. Now that dispenser. Right that they go over and they lick, there's a little ball on the bottom and they lick it. Now that dispenser. In that dispenser the water is laced with cocaine. Okay, in the other cage they have a water dispenser that is laced with sugar.

Speaker 1:

All right, now the experiment goes like this is where it gets kind of cruel to those poor little rats. Once the rats in each cage kind of get to enjoying that water, whether it was laced with cocaine or laced with sugar, right, they're enjoying it At some point they start giving. The floor of the cages were electrified and so they could kind of send shocks through the cage floor to the rats, and so they began to shock the rats as they approached the water dispenser. All right, so they did that in the heroin laced water cage and they did that in the sugar laced water cage, and what they observed is that eventually the rats in the heroin laced not the heroin, the cocaine Did I say heroin, that's a whole other thing and we're going to talk about heroin but in the cocaine laced water, they eventually stopped approaching it. It was too painful, right, it wasn't worth it. They didn't want to electrocute their poor little you know paws on that. They didn't want to go through that pain, so they stopped. That wasn't true for the rats in the sugar-laced water group. They kept coming for the sugar even as they were being electrocuted. That's some crazy stuff right there, all right.

Speaker 1:

So what did the scientists posit from this? Is that our evidence shows that sugar is potentially more addictive than cocaine or some of the strongest narcotics that we have. All right. So you would think that that would have sent up alarm bells, but it didn't, because by then and by you know the 19th century, sugar had become a huge industry in the politics, money, profit, all right. So I'm gonna give you an example of how powerful big sugar is in our country, and you may already be familiar with this.

Speaker 1:

But the big sugar is so powerful that they have been able to change the laws around how sugar is presented on nutrition labels. So I'll give you an example. If you look at a label, it has how much is contained in each serving of whatever that ingredient is? How much is contained in each serving of whatever that ingredient is and then it has the RDA, the recommended daily allowance of that particular thing. They managed to adjust the laws regarding food labeling so that sugary things like soda, which is all sugar, didn't show the RDA. Right? So it didn't show the RDA because the fact is most soda has about four or five days worth of sugar in one bottle that you get out of a vending machine that you consume in 10 minutes. Think about the effects of that on your liver. All right, so it wouldn't benefit the sugar industry to have on labels things like 567% of the RDA for sugar in this.

Speaker 1:

You know, people might have stopped, they might have said what, what, that's? That's a lot, because the the amount of sugar apparently that is allowed that is allowed like the RDA for sugar is about six teaspoons a day. The average American consumes about 34 teaspoons a day of sugar. So we're already, in one day we're consuming four days worth of sugar. Now I know some teenagers who are well beyond that. If you are someone who is downing Coca-Cola, right, and ice cream and all of those sugary, sugary snacks and treats, then you are well, well, well over. You know you might be consuming a whole week's worth of sugar in one day. And then we wonder why one in three Americans have diabetes. So it is a huge problem.

Speaker 1:

There is no warning label on soda. I've been a big proponent of this, like you really need to have warning labels on something that is so bad for you. But let's face it, we live in a country where, you know, I can stand in my classroom and watch students drink monster drinks, which are banned in other countries because they're literally liquid poison, which are banned in other countries because they're literally liquid poison. So we have a long way to go in terms of looking out for the general health of Americans. But that's a whole other thing. The dark side of that is well, you know you make a whole lot of money on sugar and you know if people have medical issues, well, you know we'll make a whole lot of money on that on the other side, right? So it ends up being a whole profit driven kind of thing. So big money, big politics involved in the sugar industry. The sugar industry is very, very, very powerful. There's a whole lot of money involved in sugar, big sugar. Now I'm going to tell you a little story which kind of was one of those things that got me on a tear for like we really this is outrageous. We really should do something about this.

Speaker 1:

So, back after my, my cafe closed, you know. I returned to teaching and one of the things you know and I took some nutrition courses, because it's very, very obviously I was. I've been interested in nutrition for years, but I was very, very interested in teaching nutrition and cooking to young people. So I got a. I got a um, a summer job, um, which I really really liked. So it was a job where you went around, it was kind of like an afterschool program, but they had a summer program and I was involved in that um, where we went out to schools and we taught nutrition and then we taught cooking. So, uh, it was a two hour thing and there was like the nutrition lesson, hands-on, like nutrition lesson, and there was like the nutrition lesson, hands on, like nutrition lesson, and then it would be followed by a teaching them how to make healthy snacks and and I loved it because that was that was right up my alley.

Speaker 1:

Well, in this particular summer, my boss asked me if I was interested. This was when I lived in Florida. I lived in Palm Beach County, florida, and my boss asked me if I was interested. This was when I lived in Florida. I lived in Palm Beach County, florida, and my boss asked me if I was interested in traveling out to Pahokee to teach nutrition and cooking classes. And I was like, well, well, sure, now it was an hour drive, right? And and she said, well, you know a lot of of people they don't like the drive. And it's also you know this is like one of the poorest communities in the state. And I said I know all the more reason. Yes, I will do this.

Speaker 1:

So I began to drive out to pohoki. Now pohoki is one of the poorest communities in all of Florida. They're kind of isolated. They're out there almost on the banks of the Okeechobee Lake, okeechobee, and they and it's kind of like a food desert. So it's very hard to find grocery stores with a lot of produce or anything like that. Health food stores, forget it. There's a liquor store on every corner though, you know, and there's like fried chicken and all of that kind of stuff. But the but it's really kind of like a food desert. There's really not a lot of choices out there for people to eat healthy, and that was really reflected in the young people that I was working with. That was really reflected in the young people that I was working with.

Speaker 1:

But on this drive out to Pahokee it was an hour drive, a long hour long drive and there's nothing really between the eastern part of Palm Beach County and then out to kind of the banks of Lake Okeechobee. So it's just miles and miles and miles of farmland. And what I noticed when I was driving out to Pahokee was I had never, ever seen such fertile, such fertile soil. It was tar black. It was the richest soil I had ever seen in my life. I could not believe how rich that soil was. And you have to understand it's on the banks of Lake Okeechobee and historically Lake Okeechobee would kind of flood out and the waters of Lake Okeechobee really did feed that area and so that area had lots and lots of nutrients from Lake Okeechobee and it just became this ultra-rich, fertile soil, rich, fertile soil. But as I'm driving miles and miles and miles out to Pahokee, the only crop that grew in that long expanse of dark, rich soil was sugar. It was miles and miles and miles of just sugar cane. There was no corn, there were no green beans, nothing, nothing but sugar. I didn't see a bit of any other crop in this beautiful, beautiful soil, it was all sugar cane.

Speaker 1:

Now, back in the Zora Neale Hurston days when she wrote, their Eyes Were Watching God, she wrote that story based on the hurricane that went over Lake Okeechobee in 1929 and wiped out thousands of people who were migrant farmers around Lake Okeechobee. Because this land has been rich and beautiful for a very long time, it was perfect for growing anything really. So at the time of the hurricane, the migrant farmers were down there, and I'm pretty sure that the crop that was growing at that time was beans just loads and loads and loads of beans. And so these migrant farmers would come in and they would just pick beans until all the beans were harvested and then they would move on to somewhere else to harvest. So something happened.

Speaker 1:

Obviously after that, whereas there was no vegetable growing anymore around Lake Okeechobee, it was taken over by big sugar, and now the only thing that grows there there's not. I didn't see a string bean plant anywhere, or tomato plant, or corn or anything. It's all sugar. And so the? I'm sharing this story because for me it was a dramatic contrast. Here you had miles and miles of some of the best soil in the country dedicated to a crop crop that may be one of the most detrimental things that we could be growing right, and it's there and it's protected and it has just taken over the whole area and right next to it is one of the poorest communities where it's hard for them to, you know, to find a fresh tomato on a farm stand anywhere. It's just it doesn't grow. You don't see vegetables growing out there. It's all been taken over by big sugar. So the contrast to that and I'm going out there and teaching them nutrition and cooking and I'm thinking the odds are completely stacked against them. They're growing up in a food desert, right next to rich soil that's growing a crop that would. That is so detrimental that half the community was diabetic. So it's it was. It was kind of heartbreaking for me to see that kind of juxtaposition. So that's my story.

Speaker 1:

So let's get to how it is, how you would know if you're addicted. Now we know, like, if you've ever been around an alcoholic or somebody who's addicted to a drug, you know what the behaviors are. We often don't trust them because they're not honest and there's all kinds of shady stuff that goes on. Because you know, as the old saying goes, you don't do drugs. Drugs do you right, and there's a reason why they say that Drugs do, do you? They control your thinking. They can control, you know, your behavior. They slant and pervert your morals, all right, and so that is what an addiction does. So I'm going to go over six things that you know. If you're wondering, am I addicted, I'm going to go over six things that are an indication that you might be addicted to sugar.

Speaker 1:

All right, so one is hiding and stashing. One is hiding and stashing. So if you are someone who likes to sneak little candies or chocolate bars or whatever it's, somewhere in your bedroom or in your desk, or in a drawer or somewhere in your car or whatever, so you've got your secret stash. Just like people have their secret stash of cigarettes or their secret stash of liquor. Secret stash of cigarettes or their secret stash of liquor. You know, sometimes people will, you know, keep a bottle of liquor under the seat of their car, right, so they can take a swig when no one's, when no one's looking. All right, so that's a little bit like sugars. So if you are somebody who hides stuff or stashes it, you have to have your stash. It's kind of like your drug stash, where's my drug stash? Because you've got to know where your next fix is coming from, right. Where's my next fix coming from? If I can't get to this or that? I know where I've kept a stash, all right. So that's addict behavior.

Speaker 1:

The second one is stealing or sneaking. So if you are, you know, and this is where we kind of like we would never like take anything from anyone, like I'm not going to steal your pen, even though it's a really nice pen, and I want to put it in my pocket. I'm not going to do it because it's not moral. But, you know, maybe I'll, you know, take one of your cookies or I'll take something. So it might be small but or sneaking, if there's, if there's a table laid out with desserts, no one's around, you might just go over and take an extra dessert, right, put it somewhere. You've seen that. You've heard those stories of people at those all you can eat buffets, you know kind of sneaking whatever they can into their pockets or pocketbooks, right, that's a straight up food addiction, right? All right. So stealing and sneaking and I'm not talking huge, I'm just talking about these little things, these little things that you might not do with something else but you might do with sweet.

Speaker 1:

The next one manipulating. So addicts will manipulate to get what they want, and so if you are addicted to sugar, you might say something to a loved one or a partner that would, and you kind of pour on the charm or give them extra kisses. If they promise to bring you a sweet, then you're all smiles, you're not grumpy anymore, right? Oh great, you know he might get some nookie later if he brings you a treat. So subtle manipulations.

Speaker 1:

Another one is recruiting. All right, and I experienced this a lot at work. So I've kicked sugar and took me a while. It was not easy. I'm going to share some of that with you. But there are people at my job who are thoroughly and completely addicted to sugar and it kind of annoys them when I say no, you know. Oh, we've got donuts. Patty, you want a donut? No, I'm good, I'm good, oh, one of these days, one of these days, we're going to get you to eat a donut. Come on, just have a donut with us, it's just one, all right, there's, there's this, this kind of sense of like come on, you know, join us. Because being not addicted and being able to say no, there is a subtle sense like, subconsciously, they know. Subconsciously they know they're hooked and it's very uncomfortable to be around somebody who is not, and so there's a bit of recruiting going. Come on just one, all right. So if you find yourself doing that to someone who isn't interested in having a sugar treat, are you recruiting? All right. So that's another sign Rationalizing.

Speaker 1:

Rationalizing is something addicts do all the time. It's just that, you know, I didn't have breakfast, so it's okay if I have this for lunch, right? Or oh, I'll skip that later, right? Like I used to, when I was kicking sugar, I had to go through stages and when I kicked the refined sugar, I found myself rationalizing, eating other things that kind of had sugar in them, but it wasn't straight up refined sugar. Well, it's not as bad as that, it's not really sugar, you know, it's not really sugar. Or well, it's cane sugar, right? Or it's better than white sugar. This is this is not white sugar, it's brown sugar. That's better for you, all right. So all of all of those kinds of rationalizations are things that addicts do so that they can have their, what they're addicted to.

Speaker 1:

The next one is, I call it, following the dopamine trail, all right. So imagine this you're addicted to sugar and you haven't had your fix for the day and you're starting to get like the cravings. The cravings are setting in, you want your sugar right and you're getting grumpy. You're getting kind of grumpy because you haven't had your sugar. Sometimes people will be this way with coffee. You know, you're addicted to coffee. When you're grumpy until you have that first cup. You know, right, we're not talking about coffee right now. That's a whole other thing. People get really mad when you also talk about coffee as an addiction. They get very, very angry with you. So if, for instance, you're getting kind of grumpy right, and you have the thought, all right, 15 minutes before I can take a break and I have a dollar in my pocket and I can go to the vending machine and I can get those cookies for a dollar, all of a sudden your mood changes because now you know in 15 minutes you'll have your fix. So you follow the dope. It's like following the dopamine trail. Follow the dope. It's like following the dopamine trail.

Speaker 1:

Monitor your mood. Does your mood change when you know that it's just an X amount of time before you can have your fix right? So when it's in sight, when there's a light at the end of the tunnel and you know, okay, my sugar fix is coming. You kind of relax and you smile again. All of a sudden, now you're in a good mood because you're already feeling it. You're already feeling it, that's the dopamine hit, right, that's that's you like already. You're already, your body is already getting ready for that hit, all right. So it's really important for us to be kind of metacognitive about this. How am I feeling? Why did my mood change? As soon as you know, as soon as I realized that I was going to or so-and-so's coming over and they're bringing pie. Now I'm in a really great mood because I know that in a short amount of time I'm going to get my fix, all right. So those are, those are the six that I could think of. So we're talking stashing, stealing, manipulating, recruiting, rationalizing and following the dopamine trail. So if this is something that's familiar to you, then you know, don't, don't feel bad.

Speaker 1:

Almost all of us are addicted to sugar and it's really a travesty for because of you know, for our health, because of the kind of damage that it's doing to our bodies. But that kind of damage, and the alarm bells are not ringing because it is such a huge, profitable industry, supported by very, very powerful people, that we're on our own if we want to kick sugar. Because, just about you look, you know, everywhere you go, it's all about the sugar. And when you start looking around, you start trying to kick sugar. You realize, oh my God, I am surrounded by the drug I'm trying to kick Right, and that is. That really is a shame. Now I'm going to bring up another thing I forgot to mention, and that goes back to the politics of it. So Big Sugar.

Speaker 1:

When I was talking about how powerful Big Sugar is, there was a group of activists who at one time, went after the big cereal companies, which are notorious for, I mean, they just load up cereals like the worst. We should not feed our children cereal. It's half sugar, and then their other half is almost not food. All right so, but at any rate so much sugar. So you have these companies that are advertising specifically to children for the sugary cereals, and then what they'll do? These companies pay for their placement in grocery stores, and they literally would make sure that what they were advertising was at eye level to children who are being pushed in carriages down the grocery aisle. And so, at any rate, there was a whole it was a class action lawsuit brought against these.

Speaker 1:

You know these, these big serial companies. You know Kellogg's post, whatever, and they managed to use a free speech argument to win. So Big Sugar and Big Cereal, they're all kind of working together there. They won because they used the argument of free speech. Isn't that interesting. It's hard for the average citizen to use the free speech argument, but Big Sugar can when it's advertising to your children. All right, because, let's face it, if you can get children addicted, then you've got a customer for life. So and that's what is just the dark side of sugar, you know, get the kids addicted early and you have a customer for life. Another dark thing about sugar is that if you are addicted to sugar in your younger years, research shows that you are more vulnerable to drug addiction later on, or alcohol addiction.

Speaker 1:

When I had my coffee house, I had a lot of folks who would come to my coffee house from AA meetings, recovery meetings around the area, and one thing that I noticed was that most of them were chain smokers and they liked the most sugary coffee drinks. So it was nicotine, caffeine and sugar. Nicotine, caffeine and sugar. So basically, they had substituted a couple of other addictions for their former addiction, but they're all you know. But these are just legal. But I saw that very much among the folks that I knew who were recovering, were early in their recovery years, very early in their recovery years. And this is what happens is that you will substitute. You will find something to substitute to fill that in so that you get that hit.

Speaker 1:

So what do we do to kick it? Like, if you're serious, like all right, patty, all right, all right, maybe I'll try kicking it. It's like okay, I'm going to tell you it's really hard and it'll probably take more than one shot at it. It certainly was hard. For me it was a process that kind of extended over a few years. I had to keep going deeper and recognizing the next layer and the next layer in the ways that I might have been rationalizing or following the dopamine trail, like what am I doing? So I kind of thought about the stages and these are just suggestions. That it's kind of what I did.

Speaker 1:

But you know people do different things. Sometimes people will do cold turkey. I will tell you that if you're kicking sugar, it's really hard to do cold turkey because sugar is everywhere, it's embedded, it's hiding, and so you really have to do your research, you have to become a label reader, because they hide sugar everywhere and in different forms. So stage one is the easiest one, it's the most obvious Get rid of, like kick, all refined sugar, just all refined sugar, the sugar you put in your coffee, and that really does include a lot of things like that, that cake, that ice cream and that. All right, now you can go sugar free on things. But that also it can be a slippery slope because a lot of those sugar substitutes like you know, the stuff with sugar-free soda, what they use in sugar-free soda ends up being worse for you, like Diet Coke. It's probably worse for you than the actual sugar itself. So be careful with the sugar-free stuff, but definitely refined sugar, and you will find that that in and of itself is huge, because you realize, even with refined sugar, the most obvious sugar, the most obvious form of sugar, is everywhere and in everything. All right.

Speaker 1:

The second one is, once you think that you've you've kicked that and you're feeling pretty good, to start looking at foods that contain high fructose corn syrup. Now you might find that when you kick the actual sugar right, that you're going to gravitate towards things that you think, oh well, this is okay, it doesn't have any sugar in it. But then when you start reading the labels closely you see, and they've actually they're changing the name of high fructose corn syrup. Now they call it different things, so it's harder to detect. But you might find yourself gravitating towards things that contain or things that have high fructose corn syrup snuck into them. One of the things that I dealt with was that all of a sudden I was into condiments. It's like why am I into condiments? Why am I so into ketchup now and mustard? Why is that? You know, it was a substitute. It kind of gave me that little bit of a hit because of the high fructose corn syrup in the condiments. So that was one thing that I noticed when I kicked the refined sugar is that all of a sudden I was gravitating towards things like condiments that had sugar in another form.

Speaker 1:

Another thing to take a look at you might kick the refined sugar and the foods with high fructose corn syrup and then all of a sudden it's like now you have a hankering for dried fruits. Oh, I like these dried cranberries, I like these dried. You know, these dried fruits are awesome, but what you're going to find is in a lot of them, or you gravitate towards fruits with a high, high sugar content. So your body is still wanting that sugar. And the last thing I will say, sugar substitutes. It's still kind of giving you that sugar hit and it can prolong your addiction because it's still registering as something sweet, something sugary, and so you might find that you're not able to kick your cravings for it.

Speaker 1:

I do want to say a word or two about cravings. This is the stuff that ends up being pretty upsetting. Where do those cravings come from? So it's addictive. But I know I've talked a lot about the gut and the thing is is that sugar feeds bacteria, it feeds fungus and even some parasites, all right. So if you have a gut imbalance, often what is driving those cravings? Often what is driving those cravings are those little rascals living in your gut. So if you have a gut that's out of balance, you are more vulnerable to sugar addiction.

Speaker 1:

And it might be what is driving your sugar addiction, because you have billions of little critters in your gut saying sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar. Millions of little critters in your gut saying sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar, and they drive those messages to your brain and all of a sudden you've got chocolate cake popping up in your visuals. So they're not saying give me chocolate cake, they are stimulating a craving for sugar and your brain gets fixated on whatever it is that's going to that, whatever food that is Twinkies, hard candy, ice cream, something that is going to give you that, give you that hit. So again, candida will drive sugar cravings. So if you have an overgrowth of bad bacteria and fungus, fungus loves sugar. As a matter of fact, research is showing that there's also a link to some cancers that also feed on sugar.

Speaker 1:

So, and that is the devastating thing about it, is that there are these imbalances in our bodies that are generating these cravings, that make this addiction so darn hard to kick. So I will just say that rebalancing the gut, rebalancing my gut, has really made a difference in terms of my cravings, because now I don't have those cravings and I'm not always fighting to stay committed to my abstinence of sugar. You know, it becomes a lot easier when we rebalance our gut. If we have like a normal, balanced gut, we don't have these cravings for sugar. So it is worth doing the work to balance out the bacteria and such in your gut so that you can really reduce and even eliminate these cravings in the first place. So that's really what I have to say about sugar.

Speaker 1:

It may have been more of a rant today than anything, but it is something that I feel really strongly about. It is a blight on our overall health and we will go a long way in obtaining optimal health if we can kick sugar. It will literally transform our health, our moods. It can literally transform everything. So I encourage you to consider it. I know that sometimes when people are addicted to something, they get really angry with the people who point it out. So don't shoot the messenger. Just consider these things and if you decide you want to address it, then take baby steps. Don't be hard on yourself. Just take little steps towards eliminating sugar from your diet, or at least dramatically reducing it, and rebalance your gut so you don't have to deal with those overwhelming cravings. So that's it for today. I wish you all the very best of health. I will see you next time. This is Patty, with Patty Talks Too Much, ciao.