Modified post. Read the edit at the buttom.
Now, call me crazy, I don’t think so! I have been an addict and I know how it is to be an addict, but I don’t think sugar is as addictive as cocaine. And I really am frustrated with people who say such things.
This notion that it’s as addictive drives me crazy! I mean, imagine someone gullible who says, well, “I can control my addiction to ice cream, heck I can go without ice cream for months, if it’s as addictive as cocaine, why not give cocaine a chance? It’s not like it’s gonna destroy me or something?” Yeah, I have once been this gullible (when I was younger) and I hate this.
I do crave sugar and I do occasionally (once per week and sometimes twice a month) buy sugary treats/lays packet (5 Indian Rupees, smallest one) to quench that craving, but I refuse to believe that it is as addictive as cocaine or any other drugs. PS: My last lays packet was 45 ago and I am fine, and this is the most addictive substance I have consumed.
I am pretty some people here have been addicted to cocaine (truly no judgement, I hope you are sober now), so what say you?
PS: If you haven’t been addicted to anything drastic as drugs, you are still welcome to chip in.
edit: thank you all for adding greater context.
I realize now that when they talk about sugar, they are not just talking abt lays and ice creams, but sugar in general. I get the studies now. But media is doing a terrible job of reporting on studies.
Also, the media depiction of scientific studies is really the worst. I mean, they make claims which garbage and/or incomplete data or publish articles on studies which make more alarming claims. Also, maybe wait for a consensus before you publish anything, i.e., don’t publish anything which isn’t peer reviewed and replicated multiple times. Yes, your readers might miss out on the latest and greatest, but it isn’t really helpful if the latest and greatest studies in science aren’t peer reviewed and backed up well by data.
I feel like a headline “SUGAR IS AS ADDICTIVE AS COCAINE” can and will be life destroying if you don’t give enough information. I feel like there should be an ethical responsibility to not sensationalize studies, maybe instead of “SUGAR IS AS ADDICTIVE AS COCAINE” give a headline like “Sugar and Addiction, what science says.”
also, https://i.imgur.com/VrBgrjA.png ss of bing chat gpt answering the question.
some articles: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/aug/25/is-sugar-really-as-addictive-as-cocaine-scientists-row-over-effect-on-body-and-brain
https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/experts-is-sugar-addictive-drug
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/cravings/202209/is-sugar-addictive
https://brainmd.com/blog/what-do-sugar-and-cocaine-have-in-common/
I was able to quit cocaine, cigarettes, and alcohol and of those 3, cigarettes was the hardest to quit, with alcohol being a close second. I don’t want to get into a discussion about the roles of behavioral addiction vs. chemical addiction when trying to quit something, but sugar has been just as difficult as alcohol and nicotine, if not more so. It doesn’t help that it is seemingly everywhere and included in all the food. It’s not as easy as “I’ll just stop having ice cream”, of course anyone can do that. If you start paying attention to all the foods sugar is added too and try to avoid those foods, you really have to completely rethink your whole approach to food (where to buy, the role it plays in your life, i.e. why you eat) and spend a lot more energy trying to find “healthy” foods.
Avoiding gluten, dairy, or sugar really requires getting proficient at preparing all your meals from scratch. It’s a good skillset to develop, but there’s major hurdles. What are the chances that every single day you’re going to have the time and energy to cook 2 meals from raw ingredients instead of grabbing a box/freezer meal or takeout? It’s not a pure question of whether someone has the willpower to say no to a craving, they have to have the discipline to plan and prepare meals before they are hungry.
Absolute adherence to dietary restrictions is very difficult even when addiction isn’t a major component.
Add to it: they need to have the money too. Getting a cheap frozen Pizza is by far cheaper than to get all the components fresh and preparing everything yourself.
I recently tried making a few of the simple and cheap foods you can easily buy ready-made.
Do you know how much time and money goes into making a simple Döner Kebab if you don’t have industrial kitchen equipment?
Or sausages?
Even stir fry. A bag of frozen stir fry mix at Kroger costs $1.79 here. Just a single bell bepper costs 79¢.
It’s pretty much all foods. Cutting out the retailer avoids a markup of ~40%. Buying in bulk straight from the farmers drops the price even more.
Buying a whole pig from the farmer costs roughly €200 or roughly €2.80/kg.
In the super market you pay €10-30/kg (at least over here).
And there is the same kind of markup on everything.
No wonder processed food is so much cheaper.
Well, i am a single guy living paycheck to paycheck, so buying bulk isn’t really an option. I have a local farmers market that i walk to regularly in the summer, but even that is only a marginal saving compared to the local grocery stores.
It really helps to cook in bulk if you want to cook affordably.
And for that it really helps to have a crock pot
I measure my blood everyday. I measure my ketones. The number of times I’ve eaten " clean " food that had hidden carbohydrates in it, shocking.
Oh this sausage has no sugar, next day plenty of sugar.
Oh this vegetable soup has no starch in it, next day plenty of sugar.
Oh this omelette’s keto, next day plenty of sugar.
When you’re not preparing your own food, you have to trust the other party understands what no sugar actually means. At least where I live sugar gets added to everything, especially in restaurants, to make the food taste a little bit better.
I’ve compensated for this by boiling eggs for snacks, measuring my own blood so I know what restaurants are clean through empirical testing… And doing one meal a day. After the first couple weeks of keto, eating once a day wasn’t a big deal, cuz the hunger cravings aren’t there. So cooking one meal becomes less work, and it’s easier to keep that one meal clean.
You’re not kidding. I’m a pretty experienced cook and it’s still exhausting preparing every meal yourself.
I’m currently on the reintroduction phase of the low FODMAP diet (trying to figure out digestive problems) and I sincerely don’t believe most people would be capable of properly following this diet. It is extremely restrictive and requires significant meal planning and knowledge about foods and food groups. The only reason I’m able to do it is because I have so much experience cooking and reading about cooking/food.
It’s also handy to have bottles of soylent tucked everywhere. Like if friends invite you out unexpectedly you can drink that soylent for some calories then get whatever tiny thing on the menu actually fits the dietary restrictions.
“I’ll have the parsley garnish please”
You don’t have the same incentive to quit sugar either. It’s not illegal, it won’t make you crash your car and kill someone, the police won’t arrest you for driving under the influence of sugar, you won’t lose your job because you were caught using sugar, your family won’t leave you because of your sugar habit, strangers won’t feel ashamed or depressed if they see you using sugar in a public place etc.
Sure, there is obesity and diabetes, but they are directly caused by an excess of calories, not sugar. Sugar might make you eat more, or so people say, but does it really? You can still overeat plenty of greasy salty stuff.
Fructose in particular causes liver damage at a much higher rate than other carbohydrates including glucose. It’s not as simple as excess calories.
There are more non-obese diabetics than obese diabetics. Yes, there’s a strong correlation between weight and diabetes, but that has more to do with metabolic disorders causing both weight gain and insulin resistance.
If you’d like to watch a presentation on the topic, this one by Robert Lustig is pretty good. www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDJsxw0uMLM
This is just more keto pseudoscience. Unfortunately people care more about YouTube videos than what reputable sources say: https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/diabetes/overview/symptoms-causes#type
Not disputing that excess fructose can cause liver damage, but most studies demonstrating this have mice ingesting absurd amounts. This doesn’t happen when you are eating a normal amount of food anyway. Excess water can kill you, but no one avoids drinking water because of this.