Now, you know how I feel about this.
Check out this video I spotted on MindBodyGreen, with Dr. Mark Hyman talking about sugar being a recreational drug (the good stuff starts at 11:28):
Quick notes:
“We’ve gone from 22 teaspoons a year, as cavemen, to 22 teaspoons a day today.” — WTF?
He mentions Snackwell cookies – that’s a story in itself.
‘One in two Americans either has type 2 diabetes, or is pre-diabetic, and that’s mostly because of sugar. Sugar is the biggest driver of heart disease, of cancer, of dementia…even things like depression, acne, and infertility…’ — For the record, there’s over 300 million of us Americans. For another record, we spend almost 3 trillion dollars on health care…largely because of something our food system is creating.
“Sugar is okay to eat… but it’s a recreational drug. I love tequila, but I’m not gonna have a glass of tequila in my hand all day long, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In America, we have sugar for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
Honestly, I don’t think sugar is a “recreational drug” – I think it’s worse, primarily because it’s so inescapable – if you smoked weed recreationally, you choose when your body does and does not consume it. With sugar, it’s so prevalent in so much of our food today, that it’s easy to become addicted to it in the right circumstances and, when necessary, easily accessible. You could get your fix from a bottle of ketchup. It doesn’t have to be ice cream.
I don’t compare that with tequila or any other form of alcohol because those aren’t as ever-present and, even though they’re deleterious to your health as well, you still have much more of a choice than you do with sugar. It takes great lengths to avoid sugar in its entirety, and I don’t think that should be discounted.
I mean, I get it—we DO have to find responsible ways to manage our sugar consumption… but is the phrase “recreational drug” bothering you the way it does me?
What do you think?
