Sugar: The World’s Most Addictive Substance
Most people accept that addictive substances like drugs and alcohol can kill you if you take them to excess, and for this reason, governments tend to either outlaw them (as with drugs) or at the very least ensure they’re heavily licensed (as with alcohol). But there’s another highly addictive substance and it probably kills more people than booze and drugs combined. Yet, most people have no idea that you can become hooked on it – and it’s freely available at low cost in every supermarket and corner shop.
It might surprise you to learn that the thing I’m talking about is sugar, which I consider to be the world’s most addictive substance.
If you want to get an idea of how many people are hooked on sugar, just take a walk down any high street on a busy shopping day and take a look at people’s waistlines. According to UK Department of Health statistics, around a quarter of all British adults (24 per cent of men and 26 per cent of women) are classified as obese.1
This means they have a Body Mass Index of 30 or greater, which puts them at risk of a number of serious medical conditions. In 1993, just 13 per cent of men and 16 per cent of women were obese in the UK, so there’s been a huge rise.
Western countries are experiencing an obesity epidemic of mammoth proportions, and the thing that’s fuelling it is our insatiable desire for sugar.
An obese man is five times more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes, three times more likely to develop cancer of the colon and two and a half times more likely to have high blood pressure (which is a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke). Obese women are 13 times more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes, four times more likely to have high blood pressure, and more than three times more likely to suffer a heart attack.
The Department of Health describes this increase in health risk as ‘a significant burden’ on the National Health Service (NHS). In fact, the annual cost of obesity to the NHS is officially estimated at £5.1 billion.2
(To put that in context, it’s estimated that the cost to the NHS of alcohol abuse is at least £2.7 billion, although there’s a lack of comprehensive data.3) It’s feared that by 2050, the total cost of obesity to the UK economy will be in the region of £50 billion. Of course, none of these financial figures take into account the human cost of such a serious health issue.
In the USA, the obesity problem is even worse, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimating that 35.7 per cent of all adults – more than one in three – are obese.4 This phenomenon is manifesting itself everywhere you look, and our supermarkets could now be mistaken for mountains of sugar with a roof on top.
In the past, there’s been a lot of debate about the effects of a high-fat diet, but in the main I consider this to be a bit of a distraction. Of course, consuming too much saturated fat carries potential health risks, but over the last three decades, many Western societies have generally succeeded in decreasing the amount of harmful fats they consume.
Yet obesity rates remain stubbornly high in some countries, and continue to rise in others. The reason I’m so certain that sugar is to blame is because refined carbohydrates (another term for sugar) display all the hallmarks of an addictive drug in the manner in which they affect us.
They have the power to give us an instant buzz that’s both pleasant and mood altering. Indeed, there have been laboratory studies done on rats which suggest that sugar affects their brain chemistry in a similar way to cocaine.
You don’t need a scientist to tell you that food, one of our basic human needs, can also be extremely seductive. When we eat it creates pleasant sensations that can change our moods. Anything that’s packed with refined carbohydrates – such as cakes, chocolate, and any foodstuff containing processed white flour – will cause an instant release of energy that has the power to give us a strong lift.
When we consume refined carbohydrates it accelerates the absorption of an amino acid that our brain converts to serotonin, a powerful neurotransmitter that makes us feel good. It’s a similar process to what happens when you drink alcohol that gives you a buzz – you feel fantastic and you want to keep it that way. There’s really no difference between that and when you eat a bowl of ice cream or drink a glass of cola.
If we eat to the point where we’re full, it also creates a feeling of satiety, which can be very pleasant and dreamy. It can make us feel positively lethargic. I’m sure you know the sort of feeling I’m describing: it’s as if Christmas lunch is all finished, the fire is roaring away, and we’re dozing off in front of the TV without a care in the world.
So, if you’re feeling down, or ill at ease, it doesn’t take much to work out that comfort eating is an instant way of giving yourself a lift: and sugar is the crack cocaine of comfort eating. It’s for this reason that when a patient is admitted to an addiction programme at an enlightened treatment centre, one of the things therapists prohibit them from doing is keeping any chocolates or sweets in their rooms on the ward.
Food can become an addiction just like any other. The benefits to our mood decrease with the amount we eat – until eventually the consequences become extremely negative, as we continue to repeat the behaviour.
If this sounds a little crazy, let’s try comparing the effects of refined carbohydrates to another addictive substance – alcohol:
When an alcoholic is feeling down, they’ll take a drink in order to give themselves a lift, either consciously or subconsciously.
The same can be said for sugar. When we binge on refined carbohydrates we consume way beyond a healthy calorie intake, and the reason we’re doing it is to change the way we feel.
Alcohol is a substance that a large proportion of the adult population overindulges in, to the point where it causes them serious health problems.
This can be said of sugar, too. In fact, if you accept the official NHS statistics in the UK, the negative cost of obesity to the nation’s health is far higher than the cost for booze.
Alcoholics seem to have no control over the amount they drink, regardless of the negative consequences.
It’s the same with sugar. No rational person wants to overeat to the point where they become morbidly obese, yet there are people all around us who cannot help themselves from doing exactly that.
Alcohol causes people to behave in a way that’s harmful to themselves and to others. They consume more and more, with diminishing returns to their welfare.
The same applies to sugar. It might not be as overt at first glance, because the effects creep up more slowly, but I’ve seen many lives ruined by the misery caused by compulsive eating. In fact, I estimate that in rehab units today, we treat as many women for eating disorders as we do for alcoholism.
An alcoholic wakes up in the morning and thinks: I feel like crap because I drank too much last night. I’m a piece of shit.
The same applies to sugar. A compulsive eater wakes up in the morning and thinks: I feel like crap: I ate too much last night. I’m a piece of shit.
Yet, despite all the evidence, I regularly come into contact with people who seem to pooh-pooh food addiction – they think it’s not a genuine phenomenon. I suspect this is because food addicts don’t always implode in dramatic circumstances like alcoholics or junkies are inclined to do.
If a drunkard crashes his or her car the consequences are instant and noticeable. For food addicts the effects build up more slowly, but they eventually reach a low point that’s just as painful in its emotional impact. Food addicts go through a rock bottom just like other addicts – the only difference is that it’s not as obvious to the outside world.
For example, if a cocaine addict spends four days holed up with hookers in a hotel room, that’s an obvious meltdown. But someone with food addiction will come more quietly to a state where they can’t cope with life anymore. As their weight increases, their self-esteem falls and they feel worthless and unable to face the world.
It’s important to note that in addition to overeating, food addiction can also trigger related eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia (which we’ll look at in a later chapter).
While obesity affects men and women in roughly equal numbers, it tends to be women who seek help in greater numbers for food addiction. Certainly, the emotional impact seems to be more overt for women. There’s an expectation in society that a woman should be a certain size or shape. Skinny women tend to be revered and held up as fashion idols, whereas the opposite is normally true for women who are overweight.
If somebody has low self-esteem, this creates a vicious circle. They comfort eat in order to alleviate their emotional distress, but this causes weight gain, which in turn lowers their self-esteem even further. So what do they do? They comfort eat even more.
Sometimes this process can be going on in the background for many years, and it can be linked to all sorts of emotional pressures or issues. A friend of mine is a recovering alcoholic who spent years boozing every night while his charming wife sat alone at home. All that time she was overweight, and she tried every diet under the sun in order to slim down. It made her desperately unhappy, but she just couldn’t shift the weight. But when her husband gave up drinking, the pounds suddenly fell off of her.
It didn’t take me long to work out what had been going on in their marriage. While my pal was out getting plastered, his wife was at home comfort eating because she was lonely and miserable. But when her marriage improved, because he gave up drinking, her self-esteem grew and her eating habits became healthier.
The fact that being severely overweight is usually linked to emotional problems is an extremely interesting point – and it has profound implications for the diet industry. People often overeat because an emotional issue in their lives is causing them distress. They’re trying to alleviate this discomfort through food.
This probably explains why almost every diet plan fails to be successful in the long term. How many times have you heard somebody say that they lost weight through a certain type of diet, but as soon as they stopped they put it all back on again?
Of course it’s possible to physically slim down if we limit our calorie intake, but if the emotional issues that caused us to overeat are still present, it’s no surprise that the pounds soon pile on again once we go back to our usual behaviour.
Most of us probably eat too much from time to time, just as lots of people who aren’t alcoholics occasionally get drunk. But for some people food can become a compulsion. If you find yourself regularly feeling guilty about eating too much chocolate, or sugary snacks, then it might be time to ask yourself why you continue to do something that’s ultimately making you unhappy.
If you’re a little overweight, but it doesn’t affect your self-esteem, you probably don’t have too much to worry about. But if you’re obese and it’s affecting your health – and causing you to be unhappy about the way you look – I’d suggest that your problem is almost certainly rooted in emotional issues.
There’s some evidence that obesity tends to affect people on lower incomes the most. It seems the poorer we are, the poorer our diet (although that’s not to say there aren’t plenty of wealthy people who are obese). But people on low incomes often experience other issues in their lives that make them unhappy.
There are lots of cheap, healthy alternatives to sugary foods, but this doesn’t seem to make any difference. In almost every case of food addiction that I’ve encountered, the behaviour is caused by emotional issues, which are either triggered by problems in childhood or occasionally by some traumatic event in later life.
Our issues around food often begin at a very early age. It doesn’t surprise me to learn that the official figures for obesity confirm this to be the case. According to UK Department of Health statistics, nearly one in 10 (9.4 per cent) of pupils in primary school reception classes (i.e. kids aged 4–5 years) are obese.5 By the time they reach Year 6 (aged 10–11) this figure has risen to nearly one in five (19 per cent).
I believe that one of the contributory factors is that parents are overweight themselves and children are taught they’re good if they eat up all their food. Instead of encouraging kids to ‘eat until you’re full’, we tell them they’re a good boy or a good girl if they clear their plates. Some of this is no doubt learned behaviour from previous generations who went through austerity during times of war, but that’s only part of the picture.
If we’re given love and affirmation, and told that we’re good for eating up all our food, it boosts our self-esteem and makes us feel better about ourselves. While this pattern won’t necessarily create a food addiction on its own, it does establish a link between food and self-esteem at an early age, which can cause problems in later life.
If you’re a person with an addictive nature, food automatically has the potential to be a mood-altering substance with addictive properties. When you eat well you feel better about yourself – so if you’re feeling low it feels natural for your body to crave more food.
I know that I certainly find it hard to resist a croissant or two, and there are plenty of occasions when I eat far too much. This is something that’s very common among recovering addicts. If you watch somebody as they start to recover from an addiction, very often you’ll notice that they start to put on weight.
There are lots of self-help groups for addicts, and if you ever attend one you’ll probably see plenty of caffeine and sugar being consumed. This is because people often substitute one addictive substance for another.
The early literature on addiction, which was written in the first half of the 20th century, actively encouraged alcoholics to use sweets and chocolates as a way of combatting booze cravings. This isn’t an approach I would recommend, since it’s really just papering over the cracks and transferring one addictive process to another, but it clearly illustrates the powerful effect of refined carbohydrates.
The adverse effects of refined carbohydrates have been very well documented in the USA by an accomplished author called Gary Taubes. In his book, Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health (published as The Diet Delusion in the UK), Taubes argues that refined carbohydrates contribute to a range of health problems.
I fully agree with him. The use of high fructose corn syrup – a very powerful refined carbohydrate – is widespread in the USA. This substance is not only very sweet, but also it’s said to switch off an enzyme in the liver that normally tells the body it’s full. So it’s little wonder some people have trouble limiting their calorie intake.
If anyone still has any doubts about the addictive nature of sugar, all they need to do is look at the effect it has had on human history. There were two products above all others that powered the transatlantic slave trade – one was nicotine in the form of tobacco, and the other was refined carbohydrates, as produced on sugar plantations.
Anything with a demand strong enough that humans will enslave each other in order to satisfy the craving it creates is definitely addictive in my view. For this reason, when treating obesity, we need to stop concentrating purely on the physical causes (i.e. too much food), and start looking for the emotional reasons why people overeat.