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Why Are We Losing the Weight Loss Battle?
We have a big fat problem.
America is a fat nation, and we are failing to solve our big fat problem. Failing big-time. Almost 70 percent of Americans are overweight. In fact, one in two Americans has what I call diabesity—the spectrum of imbalance ranging from mild insulin resistance to pre-diabetes to full-blown type 2 diabetes. The scariest part is that 90 percent of those suffering from this serious health condition don’t even know it (to find out if you have it, take the quiz on the next page).
Being thin today puts you squarely in the minority, and of that thin 30 percent, about one-quarter are what I call skinny fat. That means that while they may not be technically overweight and may even look skinny on the outside, they are fat on the inside, with the metabolic features of a pre-diabetic obese person: low muscle mass, inflammation, high triglycerides, low good cholesterol, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure.
To help you understand why so many people are suffering from similar health problems, I’m going to explain the underlying causes of both the weight-related problems and the chronic diseases that plague us. Then I’m going to show you how you can beat the odds and take back control of your weight and health.
WHY ARE WE FAILING?
Why are nearly 70 percent of Americans and almost 1.5 billion people worldwide—projected to be 2.3 billion by 2015—overweight?
Why do so many of us eat the foods that we know aren’t good for us, that cause us to gain weight, that aggravate chronic symptoms, or make us feel sick, bloated, and guilty?
Why would anyone choose to use a substance they know destroys their life?
The answer is simple. Addiction. We are a country—no, make that a world—of food addicts. The industrial food complex has hooked us with a steady stream of hyperprocessed, highly palatable, intensely addictive foods that are sabotaging our brain chemistry, our waistlines, and our health.
THE PROOF IS IN THE MILK SHAKES
The science of food addiction is clearer now than ever before. A powerful study recently published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition proves that higher-sugar, higher-glycemic foods are addictive in the same way as cocaine and heroin.
Dr. David Ludwig and his colleagues at Harvard proved that foods with more sugar—those that raise blood sugar quickly or have what is called a high glycemic index—trigger a special region in the brain called the nucleus accumbens that is known to be ground zero for conventional addictions such as gambling and drug abuse. This is the pleasure center of the brain, which, when activated, makes us feel good and drives us to seek out more of that feeling.
Previous studies have shown how this region of the brain lights up in response to images or when the subject eats sugary, processed, or junk food. But many of these studies used very different foods for comparison. If you compare cheesecake to boiled vegetables, there are many reasons the pleasure center will light up in response to the cheesecake and not to the vegetables. The cheesecake tastes better or it looks better. This is interesting data, but it’s not hard proof of addiction.
This new study took on the hard job of proving the biology of sugar addiction. To be certain of their results and to ward off any potential criticism (which the $1-trillion food industry inevitably churns out in response to studies that don’t reflect well on its products), the researchers did a randomized, blind crossover study using the most rigorous research design.
They took twelve overweight or obese men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five and gave each a low-sugar, low-glycemic-index (37 percent) milk shake. Four hours later, they measured the activity of the brain region (nucleus accumbens) that controls addiction. They also measured blood sugar and hunger levels.
Then, days later, they had the same subjects back for another round of milk shakes. But this time they switched the milk shakes. They were designed to taste exactly the same, look exactly the same, and be exactly the same in every way as the first round of shakes—except in how much and how quickly they spiked blood sugar. In contrast to the first shakes, this second batch of milk shakes was designed to be high in sugar, with a high glycemic index (84 percent).
Not only were the two sets of shakes engineered to deliver precisely the same flavor and texture, they also had exactly the same amount of calories, protein, fat, and carbohydrate. Think of them as trick milk shakes. The participants didn’t know which milk shake they were getting, and their mouths couldn’t tell the difference, but according to the study results, their brains sure could.
Each participant received a brain scan and blood tests for glucose and insulin after drinking each version of the milk shake. Without exception, they all experienced the same response: The high-sugar, high-glycemic-index milk shake caused a much greater spike in blood sugar and insulin levels, and also yielded reports of increased hunger and cravings four hours after it was consumed.
This part of the study findings was not surprising and had actually been shown in many previous studies. But the breakthrough finding here was this: When the high-glycemic shake was consumed, the nucleus accumbens lit up like a Christmas tree. By contrast, when the low-glycemic shake was consumed, the nucleus accumbens showed no such response. This pattern occurred in every single participant and was statistically highly significant.
This study proved two things. First, that the body responds quite differently to different calories, even if the protein, fat, and carbs (and taste) are exactly the same. And second, foods that spike blood sugar are biologically addictive.
So yes, food addiction is very real. Not only is it real; it’s the root cause of why so many people are overweight and sick. They are stuck in a vicious cycle of cravings. They eat sugary foods that spike their blood sugar, and their brain’s pleasure center lights up. This triggers more cravings, driving them to seek out more and more of the substance that gives them this “high.” They are powerless against their brain’s hardwired response to seek out pleasure. It’s no wonder so many people feel trapped!
ARE YOU ADDICTED TO FOOD?
My friend and colleague Kelly Brownell, PhD, while at Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, created a scientifically validated food questionnaire to help you determine whether you are a food addict. Here are some clues that you may be addicted to sugar, flour, and processed food. The more intensely or more frequently you experience these feelings and behaviors, the more addicted you are:
- You consume certain foods even if you are not hungry, because of cravings.
- You worry about cutting down on certain foods.
- You feel sluggish or fatigued from overeating.
- You have spent time dealing with negative feelings after overeating certain foods, instead of spending time in important activities such as time with family, friends, work, or recreation.
- You have had withdrawal symptoms such as agitation and anxiety when you cut down on certain foods (do not include caffeinated drinks such as coffee, tea, and energy drinks in this).
- Your behavior with respect to food and eating causes you significant distress.
- Issues related to food and eating decrease your ability to function effectively (daily routine, job/school, social or family activities, health difficulties), yet you keep eating the way you do despite these negative consequences.
- You need more and more of the foods you crave to experience any pleasure or to reduce negative emotions.
If you see yourself in these clues, don’t worry—you’re far from alone. Millions of people in every corner of the world have fallen into the food addiction trap. In this book, you’re going to discover once and for all the path that leads you out of biochemical imprisonment and into food freedom.
HOW DID WE GET HERE?
Governments, the United Nations, the Institute of Medicine, and the World Health Organization are all struggling to solve this big fat problem, which accounts for 80 percent of our health care costs and will create a global price tag of $47 trillion over the next twenty years. The National Institutes of Health spends $800 million a year trying to find the “cause” of obesity. Yet despite all this attention, we are still failing.
The causes are multiple, and it’s easy to point fingers. Big Food blames lack of exercise and our sedentary lifestyle. Parents blame schools, and schools blame parents. The government won’t blame anyone, for fear of losing lobbying and campaign dollars.
The food industry would have us believe obesity is the result of personal choices. Its implication: People are fat because they are lazy and gluttonous, not because their biology has been masterfully tricked into craving the toxins that these industries produce. If we all just took more personal responsibility, the industry’s paid experts assert, we could solve this problem. There are no good or bad foods, they claim; it’s all about moderation. And of course, we should all just exercise a bit more. What they don’t explain is that you would have to walk four and a half miles to burn off one twenty-ounce soda. To burn off just one supersize fast-food meal, you’d have to run four miles a day, every day, for a week. Oh, and thanks to the addiction-generating genius of fast-food engineering, once you’ve eaten that supersize meal, you’re going to want another one—soon.
It’s true that finger-pointing isn’t necessarily going to solve the problem. But I think it’s important for us all to understand that the real blame for our weight and health problems lies less with the individuals who’ve inadvertently become addicted to processed foods than with the food companies that designed food products with highly addictive properties in the first place.
BIG FOOD: THE DRUG PUSHERS
The last few decades have seen the emergence of a whole new breed of “food scientists.” Their job is to invent addictive, hyperpalatable processed and junk foods to ensure that their employers (Big Food) get the biggest market share, or what industry insiders call stomach share.
Food scientists focus on creating foods that maximally trigger the “bliss point,” that addictive reward pathway in the brain that keeps you coming back for more. They chemically exaggerate certain flavors while suppressing others and alter the chemical structure of fats to enhance the “mouth feel.” Their goal: to create a taste sensation so intoxicatingly appealing that no matter how much you eat, you feel you can never get enough.
If the food industry just happened to accidentally create addictive products in an earnest attempt to improve their recipes, we could understand that and expect them to correct their mistake. But these foods happen by design, not by accident.
Big Food spends millions on food science and hires “craving experts” to ensure that its customers will become addicted to deviously developed drugs, all of which are hidden in cleverly disguised delivery vehicles for sugar, fat, and salt. Think heroin lollipops.
You might think I’m paranoid, overstating the case. But in his book Salt Sugar Fat, Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter Michael Moss pulls back the veil on Big Food, using meticulous firsthand interviews and research into secret company documents to reveal just how strategically Big Food has altered our food supply to our detriment. Moss points the finger at virtually all the big boys in Big Food and their products, including Kraft, Coca-Cola, Lunchables, Kellogg, Nestlé, Oreos, Cargill, and Capri Sun. (About twelve companies control almost all of the $1-trillion food industry. Frighteningly, they have now also bought up most of the natural and organic food companies.)
Big Food markets the foods just the way Big Tobacco marketed cigarettes, making them “healthier” with come-ons like low tar and nicotine. They might label foods as low-fat or low-salt, but they are hardly healthy, and most still qualify as addictive Frankenfoods. Don’t be fooled. Even a serving of Prego tomato sauce has two teaspoons of sugar, more than two Oreo cookies.
The leading food companies target kids, who can’t tell the difference between a TV commercial and a regular show until they are around eight years old. The average two-year-old who is still just learning to talk can cry out in a supermarket for specific brands he or she has seen on television ads. That’s scary, because most of the cereals marketed to kids are three-quarters sugar, even the “whole-grain” ones. It is not breakfast. It is dessert! The cereal manufacturers just added “whole grains” when the government recommended we eat more whole grains. Good marketing doesn’t make bad food better. It’s still a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The food is intentionally manipulated to create cravings and addiction. The industry even refers to those of you who buy a lot of their products as heavy users. They know their products are addictive. Now you do, too.
THE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY PROPAGANDA
The mantra of the government and food industry is that people should just eat less, choose a “balanced diet,” and exercise more. How’s that working out for you?
Food addiction is a biochemical problem, not an emotional one. It makes me furious to see patient after patient blame himself or herself for his or her weight problems and diabesity. Yes, we all have choices, and personal empowerment and responsibility are important, but they are not enough if we are trapped in a food coma induced by the toxic influences of sugar and processed foods.
No one chooses to be fat. If you grew up not being able to identify a vegetable because you never ate one, if your school had only deep-fried food or the kind that came out of a box or a can and was stocked with vending machines full of sweetened sports drinks, juices, or sodas, or was ringed by convenience stores where you could buy a sixty-four-ounce Big Gulp on your way home every day, it’s no surprise that your habits and taste buds got wired that way.
If nearly every restaurant chain near you serves jumbo portions of sugar and fat and salt, if your workplace lunchroom is a toxic food dump, good luck staying healthy. If, unbeknownst to you, your yogurt contains more sugar than a Coke, and the main ingredient in your barbecue sauce is high-fructose corn syrup, how can the food industry point the finger at you for not taking personal responsibility?
Peer pressure to fit in is strong, and Big Food knows this. Big Food preys on people’s desire to be eating and drinking the “in” thing and uses manipulation to get customers hooked. Remember the Coca-Cola ad, “I’d like to buy the world a Coke”? Let’s get the whole world hooked! Now North Korea and Cuba are the only countries to which Coke is not distributed. Mission accomplished!
I found a 7UP ad from nearly sixty years ago featuring a baby being fed the soda. The ad proudly boasted that this eleven-month-old was not, “by any means,” their youngest customer. The ad with the image of the happy-faced baby went on with gems like these:
7-Up is so pure, so wholesome you can even give it to babies and feel good about it.
By the way, Mom, when it comes to toddlers—if they like to be coaxed to drink their milk, try this: Add 7-Up to their milk in equal parts, pouring the 7-Up gently into the milk. It’s a wholesome combination—and it works!
“Wholesome combination”? Who are they kidding?
The messages today are subtler, but clearly just as powerful. I remember working in an urgent-care clinic as a resident when a woman came in for an appointment and brought along her seven-month-old baby in a carriage. I saw that the baby was drinking a brown liquid in a baby bottle. I asked the mother what it was and she replied, “Coke.” I asked, “Why are you feeding your baby Coke?!” She said, “Because he likes it!”
Of course he did! He was biologically programmed to love sugar and was already an addict at seven months.
When sugar and junk are promoted and accessible in almost every school in America and in the convenience stores that surround them, can we really blame the kids for tripling the childhood obesity rate over the last few decades and for the epidemic of “adult” onset, or type 2, diabetes in seven-year-olds?
If we are feeding our infants, toddlers, and preteens addictive foods and they go on to become obese teenagers and adults hooked on these foods, how can we blame them for lack of “personal responsibility”? There are 600,000 processed food items in our environment, 80 percent of which contain added sugar. Most people have very little opportunity to make (or even understand) healthy choices before the food industry influences their palates and their default food choices for a lifetime.
And yet industry and government still love the personal responsibility story. It allows the food industry to push its addictive products without limit and the government to avoid any politically risky social reform. But when companies profit from getting people to consume more and more of their products—products that are designed to light up our brain’s primitive reward center and that have been scientifically proven to cause obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer—we have a problem.
When our government policies and agricultural subsidies have supported the flood of an extra 700 calories per person per day into the food system since 1970 (mostly in the form of high-fructose corn syrup from corn and trans fats), we have a problem.
When government food stamps (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) pay $4 billion a year for sodas for the poor (29 million servings a day, or 10 billion servings a year) and then the government must pay through Medicaid and Medicare for the obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer caused by soda, we have a problem.
Taylor Swift promotes Diet Coke, and Kobe Bryant promotes Gatorade. What if celebrities were featured in billion-dollar ad campaigns aimed at getting kids to try crack cocaine or heroin, all with the promise of a better, happier life? We would all be incensed. But that is essentially what’s happening with addictive foods and beverages today in America and, increasingly, around the world.
Nothing less than a comprehensive social and political transformation is needed to hold government and the food and agriculture industries accountable and thus change policy and behavior on a grand scale. We all have to work toward that, and I have outlined many ways to do so in the “Take Back Our Health” section of my book The Blood Sugar Solution, and in Part VI of this book.
But in the meantime, we can’t wait for food companies to act against their own self-interest, or for the government to regulate the food industry’s addictive products and underhanded marketing strategies. We can’t wait to free ourselves from the prison of food addiction.
Yes, the food industry has hijacked our taste buds, our brain chemistry, and our biology, but I will show you the keys to breaking free of cravings and life-destroying food addictions. Think of it as a Navy SEAL raid and recovery mission for your health.
Before we get into the active phase of that mission, though, I want you to really understand the science of food addiction. I want to show you precisely how your biology has been influenced. You’ll likely be astonished! Please try to read these chapters before diving in. The more aware you are of the biological forces at play—both in terms of how your cravings have been chemically induced and of how easy it is to break free—the more you’ll get out of this program. You’ll understand not only why this detox works the magic it does, but how to ensure that you never again fall prey to the manipulation of the food industry.
Even more, I’ll present to you the overwhelming evidence that being overweight is not your fault. Clearly seeing and owning up to your powerlessness in the face of an addiction is the first step of any twelve-step program. We have to start there. Then we can heal.
THE SCIENCE OF FOOD ADDICTION
A little earlier, I mentioned Kelly Brownell, PhD, the former director of the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. Dr. Brownell recently sent me a copy of his new textbook, Food and Addiction, A Comprehensive Handbook. For the first time, it assembles all the latest research into one comprehensive volume on how food addiction is the central driver of obesity and related diseases in our society. I want to share some of Dr. Brownell’s most startling findings with you.
Let’s break this down into two parts: how food addiction affects our behavior and how it affects our biology.
Food Addiction and Behavior (or Why “You Can’t Eat Just One”)
Just as with any other addictive drug, sugar and processed foods cause a temporary high followed by a crash, leading to a vicious cycle of abuse. Food addicts, the research shows, are no different from alcoholics or cocaine addicts. Their lives become increasingly out of control. As their health deteriorates, they gain weight, suffer from arthritis, have trouble getting around or just tying their shoes, and eventually get high blood pressure, diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, and even dementia and depression.
Disordered eating behavior interferes with work or school and family activities. Think about it: It’s nearly impossible to focus on your work if you’re consumed by thoughts of raiding your colleague’s candy dish. It’s tough to enjoy a family holiday party with your brain screaming at you to go get another handful of chips and dip.
Despite wanting to change or stop, those with food addiction cannot resist—even in the face of significant emotional or physical harm to themselves and those they love. They hide their addiction, they worry and obsess about cutting down, all against a backdrop of shame, embarrassment, and denial. They eat a whole sheet cake in the middle of the night in the dark. They say, “It’s like someone takes over my body and I can’t stop eating. I want to be locked up. I can’t keep living this way.”
The bottom line is this: Your biology controls your behavior, not the other way around. Yes, if you willfully decide to eat three packages of Chips Ahoy cookies, your biology will change. But for most of us, most of the time, our biochemistry dictates our behavior.
Our automatic behaviors are controlled by our primitive brain, the neurological machine we have in common with dinosaurs and other reptiles. These automatic behaviors include eating, our fight-or-flight response, and reproduction. This explains why we have so much trouble with food and relationships! According to the primitive brain, survival depends on our avoiding pain (danger) and seeking pleasure (sustenance and safety). When we have a life trauma, this part of our brain is on high alert, making us hypervigilant and protecting us against future threats. This mechanism is so powerful that it can even trigger full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder.
When our brains are bombarded with sugar, a potent pleasure inducer, we become addicted to that pleasure. Willpower and conscious choice are no match for these powerful, ancient drives for survival.
Food Addiction and Biology (aka Stop Blaming Yourself!)
Here’s where things get interesting. A 2009 study by Dr. Serge H. Ahmed, Is Sugar as Addictive as Cocaine?, published in the journal Food and Addiction, proved that sugar was eight times as addictive as cocaine. When I first read this, it was hard for me to believe. But this carefully designed study found that when rats were offered intravenous cocaine or sugar (in the form of artificially sweetened water), they always went for the sugar. Even previously cocaine-addicted rats switched to the sweetened water. When higher and higher doses of cocaine were injected intravenously, just below the amount that would give them seizures, they still went for the sweetened water.
Think about it. The rats preferred the equivalent of a Diet Coke to being shot up with intravenous cocaine. Sugary sweetness (in this case created by artificial sweeteners) has a stronger draw than even heroin, which is much more addictive than cocaine. Other studies comparing table sugar and cocaine found the same results, including one done at Connecticut College that showed that rats who were fed Oreo cookies had significantly greater activity in the pleasure center of their brains than those who were injected with cocaine or morphine. And yes, this is an animal study, and rats and humans are different, but the same types of results have been found in human studies.
As I just explained, we are hardwired to seek pleasure and reward. It is a survival mechanism. Anytime we have access to hyperpalatable sweet or fatty foods, we are programmed to eat a lot of them and to store those excess calories as belly fat to sustain us through scarce times that may lie ahead. That’s what your body is supposed to do; the problem is that the scarcity we’re storing up for never comes. The diabesity epidemic is really just a normal biological response to the inputs from our abnormal environment. What saved us as hunter-gatherers is killing us now.
You’re probably wondering why we don’t have a built-in control mechanism to tell the brain we have had enough food. We do. Your body’s natural brake on hunger is a hormone produced by your fat cells called leptin. Unfortunately, in many of us, that natural brake line has been tampered with.
Two bad things happen when your biology is damaged by sugar and processed foods. First, your body becomes insulin resistant, so you have to pump out more and more insulin in an attempt to keep your blood sugar normal. Insulin is a powerful fat-storage hormone, one that encourages your body to pack on dangerous belly fat.
Second, you become leptin resistant. That means that no matter how much of this fabulous appetite-suppressing hormone your body makes, your brain cannot read the signals. It is “resistant,” or numb, to the signals from leptin. But wait… it gets worse.
High levels of insulin produced through all the sugar and fructose consumption (from high-fructose corn syrup and other sugars) block the leptin signals in your brain, so your body thinks it is starving even after a Big Mac, fries, and a large soda. Ever wonder how you can still be hungry right after a big meal? It is the insulin surge and the leptin resistance. This is how sugar and junk food hijack your brain chemistry and your metabolism.
Unfortunately, the story doesn’t end there. The fructose (mostly from high-fructose corn syrup) gets directly absorbed from your gut and goes to the liver without passing through the normal controls that glucose has to deal with. Insulin is required to get glucose into the cells, but fructose gets mainlined directly into the liver. This switches on lipogenesis, the mechanism that turns sugar directly into fat. Think fatty liver. Think foie gras—not in a goose, but in you.
A fatty liver is an inflamed liver. This, in turn, causes even more insulin resistance. Your cells become numb to the effects of insulin, but your body desperately wants to get the sugar into your cells. The body then pumps out more insulin, creating more belly fat and inflammation. This is the cause of most heart attacks and strokes, many cancers, and even dementia. In fact, insulin resistance is the very cause of aging itself.
THE PLEASURE CENTER: THE POWER OF SUGAR
Calorie for calorie, sugar is different from other calories that come from protein, fat, or nonstarchy carbs such as greens. As you’ve seen, it scrambles all your normal appetite controls. So you consume more and more, driving your metabolism to convert it into lethal belly fat. There is no doubt about it: By any definition, sugar is a toxin. Paracelsus, the great medical philosopher, said, “The dose makes the poison.” We are all overdosed at an average of twenty-two teaspoons of sugar a day per person in America.
Remember the milk shake study? Sugar lights up the pleasure center in the brain and releases dopamine, the “feel-good” chemical. It works on the same parts of the brain as cocaine or heroin, but it is much worse. When researchers provide direct electrical stimulation of the reward centers in the brains of rats, they still can’t compete with sugar water. Cocaine lights up only one part of the brain, while sugar lights it up like fireworks on Independence Day!
Brain imaging studies in humans find the same thing. Eating—or even seeing pictures of—junk and processed food lights up the brain like heroin. People say they gain weight just by looking at a donut. They may actually be right, because the body pumps out insulin in response to even the thought of something sweet.
When you continue to “use” sugar and processed foods, your dopamine receptors are decreased. That means you need more and more of the addictive substance to generate the same amount of pleasure. This dynamic is called tolerance. It explains why a light or occasional drinker, like me, might feel significant effects from a single alcoholic drink, while a heavy drinker or an alcoholic may need to drink a fifth of vodka just to get a buzz.
When food addicts try to “quit” without proper support, they get withdrawal symptoms lasting up to seven days, including nausea, headaches, shakiness, disorientation, fatigue, cravings, irritability, disturbed sleep, and nightmares. (Don’t worry—these symptoms are much less challenging and last for a shorter time when you follow the 10-Day Detox Diet.)
For many, even gastric bypass cannot overcome this addiction. One patient of mine lost 200 pounds through gastric bypass and ate his way back to obesity through a constant stream of M&M’s. Too often, gastric bypass fails because it doesn’t fix the underlying biology of food addiction.
LIQUID SUGAR CALORIES (AKA LIQUID DEATH): WHY THEY ARE DIFFERENT FROM REGULAR SUGAR
Remember the rat study? It showed us that sugar-sweetened water (whether sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup or artificial sweeteners) is eight times more addictive than cocaine. Even more than junk food, fast food, or processed carbs such as bread and pasta or chips, sweet drinks have super-addictive properties. While regular old sugary or starchy food will still cause cravings and addiction, the liquid stuff wreaks even more havoc.
It’s easy not to notice all those empty calories hidden in sweet drinks. Drinks don’t fill you up, which is why, if you include sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened drinks, you end up eating more total calories in a day. They are easy to consume without thinking about it; we call that passive consumption. They are just drinks, after all. But they add up fast and crowd out real food from your diet. Plus, artificially sweetened drinks jack up your cravings, driving you to eat more food over the course of the day.
Liquid sugar is absorbed very quickly, driving up blood sugar and insulin and mainlining fructose to your liver, setting off a cascade of events that causes weight gain and more cravings. When your insulin spikes and your blood sugar drops, your body sees it as a life-threatening emergency, so you are driven to go looking for your next sugar fix.
It’s not just soda we have to worry about, but also sports drinks, sweetened teas and coffees, energy drinks, fruit drinks, and hundreds of other sugary drinks. Ounce per ounce, orange juice has more sugar than cola. If you consume these highly sweetened drinks, your taste buds become adapted to this high-intensity sweetness, and other real, whole food such as vegetables or fruit tastes bland and boring.
Fully 90 percent of kids and 50 percent of the US population drinks soda once a day. One billion cans of Coke are consumed daily around the world. In a review of all the relevant research, scientists found that the number one cause of obesity is sugar-sweetened beverages. One can of soda a day increases a kid’s chance of obesity by 60 percent, and in a study of more than 90,000 women, one soda a day increased the risk of diabetes by 82 percent.
One young woman with eight kids from New Zealand had a bad Coke habit. It killed her. She drank 2.2 gallons a day, or 2 pounds of sugar and 900 milligrams of caffeine. Autopsy reports show she died of a fatty liver and heart damage from the Coke. Though the American Beverage Association would have us think otherwise, sugar-sweetened drinks are a major contributor to our big fat problem.
Considering that 15 percent of our calories come from sweetened beverages, cutting them out is an easy way to dramatically improve your health. One patient of mine lost seventy-five pounds just by becoming aware of and cutting out his liquid sugar calories.
WHY NOT SWITCH TO ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS?
Diet soda and diet drinks make you fat and cause type 2 diabetes.
Wait… diet soda makes people fat? Really? How does that happen?
If losing weight were all about the calories, then consuming diet drinks would seem like a good idea. That’s certainly what Coca-Cola wants us to believe, judging by its ad campaigns highlighting its efforts to fight obesity. (And the other food giants making diet drinks push the same propaganda.) Coke proudly promotes the fact that it has 180 low- or no-calorie drinks and that it has cut sales of sugared drinks in schools by 90 percent.
Is that a good thing? I don’t think so. In fact, it may be worse to drink diet soda than regular soda. A fourteen-year study of 66,118 women published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (and supported by many previous and subsequent studies) discovered some frightening facts that should make us all swear off diet drinks and products:
Diet sodas raised the risk of diabetes more than sugar-sweetened sodas.
Women who drank one twelve-ounce diet soda a week had a 33 percent increased risk of type 2 diabetes, and women who drank one twenty-ounce soda a week had a 66 percent increased risk.
Women who drank diet sodas drank twice as much as those who drank sugar-sweetened sodas because artificial sweeteners are more addictive than regular sugar.
The average diet soda drinker consumes three diet drinks a day.
Let me lay out a few more of the evils of artificial sweeteners, just in case you’re not yet convinced:
Artificial sweeteners are hundreds to thousands of times sweeter than regular sugar, activating our genetically programmed preference for sweetness more than any other substance.
Artificial sweeteners trick your metabolism into thinking sugar is on its way. This causes your body to pump out insulin, the fat-storage hormone, which leads to more belly fat.
Artificial sweeteners confuse and slow down your metabolism, so you burn fewer calories every day. They make you hungrier and cause you to crave even more sugar and starchy carbs, such as bread and pasta.
In animal studies, the rats that consumed artificial sweeteners ate more food, their metabolic fire or thermogenesis slowed down, and they put on 14 percent more body fat in just two weeks—even if they ate fewer total calories than the rats that ate regular sugar-sweetened food.
The bottom line is that there is no free ride. Diet drinks are not good substitutes for sugar-sweetened drinks. They increase cravings, weight gain, and type 2 diabetes. And they are addictive.
THE WAY OUT
The evidence for biological addiction is overwhelming. You may be saying, “No, not me… I can control my eating. I can handle having some sugar or cookies. It really isn’t affecting my life that much.”
This is called denial. Food addiction affects more than just a few of the massively obese. It affects nearly all those who are overweight or have struggled to control their eating behavior, cravings, and appetite. The diagnostic criteria for substance abuse in the DSM-V (the psychiatry handbook) match exactly the behavioral characteristics of food addiction, including:
- Tolerance, the need for increasing amounts of the substance to feel anything (needing more and more to feel good).
- Withdrawal symptoms from not having the substance.
- Ingesting larger amounts or over a longer period than intended (bingeing).
- Persistent desire and unsuccessful attempts to cut down (guilt and shame).
- Spending a great deal of time to obtain the substance, use the substance, and recover from its effects.
- Reducing or abandoning significant social, work, or recreational activities.
- Continuing to use despite awareness of persistent physical or psychological problems that result.
Is there a way out of food addiction? A way to free yourself from the control that processed food and sugar have over your behavior and well-being?
Yes. If we can agree that there is biological addiction, then the only solution is to detox to break the cycle. Try asking a cocaine or heroin addict to “cut down.” Forget it. I wish it weren’t so, but I am simply the messenger for the science of food addiction. This is why I decided to write this book: to give people powerful tools to painlessly detox from sugar and processed food and reset, reboot, and restore their body to health.