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 challenge anyone who says sugar isn’t addictive to go a week without. No sugar. No sugar substitutes like fructose. I’ve done it. It is awful.
I’ve also done hard drugs. Quitting those are awful too.
The difference is that I haven’t done drugs in decades but I still have a pack of Oreos on my counter.
See, the impracticality here is not that I’d be jonesing for sugar, it’s that almost all processed food and most natural food has a little sugar in it, and also that our bodies literally require some simple carbohydrates to operate. Best case, you go on a hard keto overnight, and yes, the first week is terrible, because keto is a stupid fucking diet that doctors don’t recommend because it sucks.
Yes, if I eat nothing but beef and saltines for a week, I’m going to feel like shit. That’s not an addiction issue.
Fun fact exogenous sugar is not required in the human diet. The body will produce sugar in the liver through a process called gluconeogenesis converting fat into sugar. But it only needs to do that a little bit.
Very very little fat can be converted to sugar actually. It’s usually protein that gets converted.
Bruh saltines has carbs, cut that out too
but no simple carbs, no sugars. Got some carbs in on a technicality!
Carbohydrates are converted directly into glucose (sugar) in the liver. So they are effectively the same thing.
Well empty space eventually gets converted into LSD on the planet surfaces so it’s basically the same thing too
Directly?
To that challenge I would specify “in anything”. Sugar and equivalent is in almost all processed foods.
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That would be comparable with asking someone who smokes weed a couple of times a year to quit cold turkey.
Of course it’s not going to make any difference to you if you stop taking sugar or not.
However ask someone who “needs” to have that redbull every day. Who drinks sugary lattes, eats sweetened bread and so on.
Ask them to quit and they will most likely experience withdrawal symptoms and have a really hard time to keep away from sugar.
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To second your point with something that’s easier to grasp:
It’s quite common for people who are heavily addicted to nicotine to be able to enjoy a little bit of alcohol sometimes or completely go without. Or be able to go shopping without getting addicted to it.
Being addicted to one thing doesn’t mean you automatically get addicted to all other things that people can get addicted to.
Going without a basic macro nutrient making you feel bad doesn’t mean its addictive. You’d feel like shit if you tried to go without oxygen too. Your body doesn’t need as much sugar as many consume, but it’s more than nothing.
Sugar is not nutritionally required. Humans can live without sugar in their diet, including carbohydrates. Paleo/keto are viable diets the humans live with throughout history.
So it is not a necessary macronutrient. It is not necessary like oxygen.
Of course the literature has many assumptions about sugar, and it’s easy to get confused. Which is why we need more foundational nutritional research from the ground up not sponsored by corporations. To help clarify all of this.
But if you know of even one person who does strict keto, and there’s still alive, it’s clearly not as necessary as oxygen.
The human body can create glucose from fat sources, it’s called gluconeogenesis and it happens in the liver. But it only produces small amounts of blood glucose. And because it synthesize sugar from fat, exogenous sugar is clearly not biologically necessary
Well, your body needs carbs. And theoretically, you could do a low-carb diet, even a keto diet, but… keto is fucking dumb.
So, yes, in practice, you’re gonna want at least some sugar in your diet.
Sugar is not a basic macronutrient. The macronutrients are protein, carbohydrates, and fat.
I’m pretty addicted to oxygen at this point to be fair…
Are you just talking about refined sugar or are you including natural sugar in that too?
Is it even possible to eat healthily for a week with no sugar?
I feel like if I’m allowed fruit it’d be pretty easy tbh.
Is it even possible to eat healthily for a week with no sugar?
Healthy as in survivable sure, but I’m pretty sure at that point you would already notice the side effects of not having access to carbohydrates.
I feel like if I’m allowed fruit it’d be pretty easy tbh
Most fruits have a huge amount of sugars (and are therefore not healthy in large amounts), so I would say they count as sugar for this purpose.
Yeah I don’t mean survivable. I was thinking about the implication from the comment that sugar is this horrific substance which is prone to abuse and should be avoided at all costs.
If the point is for refined sugar then I’m with them. If they’re talking about sugar as a whole though, then it would be unhealthy to go for a week without any.
I challenge anyone who says sugar isn’t addictive to go a week without. No sugar. No sugar substitutes like fructose. I’ve done it. It is awful.
I’ve also done hard drugs. Quitting those are awful too.
ok that makes more sense.
Not literally everyone is addicted to sugar. I barely have it and many days don’t have any of it at all (and I know it’s not in the food I’m eating because I make the food I’m eating).
Do you also know what the plants you use to make your food consist of?
Onions are about 4% sugar, for example. And that is excluding more complex carbohydrates that are essentially the same to your body. I highly doubt you don’t eat any sugar for days on end.
You barely eat sugar. Sure. But not eating any is close to impossible I’d argue.
Often, yes. It’s something I’ve had to look up in order to properly reintroduce foods on the low FODMAP diet.
Anyway, this conversation is about refined sugar. I eat fruit, for example.
fruit is natures provider of “refined” sugar. you body doesn’t care whether you first actually refined it and then put it in a cake. It’s the same sugar while it’s still inside the apple (I know nobody refines sugar from apples but you get my point)
That’s not how sugar works.
I can easily go for a week without sugar. I did it recently. I wanted to lose some weight so I cut out sugar. Usually I have some desert after lunch but I just stopped. Usually I put sugar in my coffee but I stopped. I don’t drink sugary drinks so that was easy. I didn’t have any bad cravings or anything. I would simply think about eating ice cream and even if I had some in the fridge I would just say ‘nope’ and move on. I was doing this until I lost the weight I wanted to lose so for about 2 months.
If sugar is as addictive as drugs does it mean I just start smoking and doing drugs and it will be as easy to quit?
I have dropped all sugar a couple times. It’s not easy, but also not terribly hard for me. That’s not to say that is the case for everyone, just me. I have seen people come out of addiction to a few different drugs and it was not at all comparable. To compare my experiences with sugar would be as insulting as OP describes, if not more so.
But humans are all different, so I wouldn’t be shocked if for some it is comparable.
I did it many times and it wasn’t awful in any way. If you cut all carbs, that’s different though, and it has little to do with addiction and a lot to do with your body entering ketosis. That’s not to deny that food can be addictive. Anything can be addictive. People get addicted to porn, phones and computer games after all. But people blow this sugar thing way out of proportion.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10284150500485221
Studies done on mice, and mice addiction to sugar, and mice addiction to other drugs. Are these studies directly applicable to humans? That’s a good debate, it’s hard to say. But the studies do show that mice have a stronger preference to sugar than to other drugs.
I do keto, I go for the absolute absence of sugar, try to get less than 20 grams per day.
The first two weeks is very difficult. Especially the first 3 to 4 days. We’re talking hallucinations almost, deep cravings, it’s very difficult to kick the habit. I can’t compare it to other addictions, but the effect is very real.
In fairness, if I was locked in a box all day, I wouldn’t want to do coke either. Take the mice to a club and see if they stick to the sugar then ;)
This is exactly the famous rat park experiment. Yes, the rats consumed vastly less cocaine when they were in a fun rat park compared to a box, where they became totally obsessed cocaine fiends.
I wouldn’t do coke at Disney World with the family either. Get them away from the kids, turn the music up, and maybe throw in a few strobes. I bet you’ll see those little shits dancing then :D
😂
I didn’t go full keto, but I did tighten up my sugar consumption once and tried to keep it as close to zero as possible for a couple of weeks.
I can’t say I had hallucinations, but the cravings are seriously real. I didn’t even stop because of the cravings though, I stopped because sugar is so ubiquitous in everything that trying to find a drink to buy while working that didn’t contain sugar and I actually liked was difficult. I tried drinking tea with stevia as a main drink, but the taste of it never really acquired for me.
For drinks you are way better off getting used to water and sparkling water as primary drinks, use mio or crystal light if you really need flavor at first. Once you get used to water, it’s pretty easy to stick to just water.
I say do the study directly on humans! Now give me some cocaine ;)
I’ve heard it’s as addictive as sugar. Be careful.
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I know caffeine and sugar affects people differently but caffeine was a lot easier to stop consuming than sugar for me. I was only drinking a cup of coffee a day, compared to having a really bad sweet tooth though.
The sugar cravings were so bad it’s all I thought about for like 36 hours. After the 3rd or 4th day, the hump, everything became significantly easier.
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I was only drinking a cup of coffee a day
Yaaaaaaawn. Let us know when you need an entire pot just to go to bed. No wonder you had such an easy time “quitting” lol
Same bro. I decided I can’t be doing more than 20 grams of coke per day any more
The thing that really causes addiction isn’t so much the physical dependence, but the psychological dependence.
Almost all drugs (including Cocaine) have only very short term withdrawal effects. If it was only physical dependence, all you’d have to do to break any substance addiction is to lock that person up for a few weeks, until the drugs are out of the system and that’s that.
The long-term effects are purely psychological. Usually, your life is shit, you got some pretty heavy problems or you have other psychologial issues like depression. And you know that substance X will help you to feel good, even if only for a short time. So you take the substance again to forget and feel good.
Because of this, you can get severely addicted to stuff like gaming, smartphones, social media, shopping or gambling, even though there is no substance involved at all.
Remeber the high-profile study about a rat that was locked alone in an empty cage and the only things it had available to distract itself from it’s misery where a bottle of regular water and one filled with cocaine water.
The rat used cocaine until it died of an overdose.
This experiment was repeated, but this time there was a whole rat family in a really nice cage with a lot of things to do. This time some of the rats did a bit of cocaine sometimes, but never in excess and no rat overdosed.
Sugar, together with the physical withdrawals (which do really exist), is really tough on the psychological side due to its extremely easy availability and omnipresence.
To get cocaine you need to find a dealer, spend a rather big amount of money and you are always aware that if you are caught, there are some very serious consequences.
To get sugar, you walk into the kitchen. Worst case, you go down to the next shop, spendless than an Euro on the substance and consume it completely legal without fear of any repercussions.
Or you wait until someone gifts you some sugar for birthday, Christmas, Easter, or any other holiday. Or just because they are nice.
This super easy availability means, there are hardly any barriers where you can say “Actually, I wanted to stop” and stop what you are doing.
nice comment, thank you!
Sugar addiction is not the same as a drug that causes physiologic dependence, like cocaine or opiates.
But
You can become addicted to sugar, or anything that makes you feel good, because you’re basically hacking into the cocaine repository that’s already in your brain. Anything that triggers a hit of dopamine and/or noradrenaline - gambling, shopping, sex, food, weed - can cause addictive behavior, but you’re essentially addicted to your own neurotransmitters and not the thing itself.
I want to respond to your edit:
wait for consensus before you publish, don’t publish anything that isn’t peer reviewed and replicated multiple times.
You need to understand that publishing is the way scientists communicate among each other. Of course, all reputable journals conduct peer review before publishing, but peer review is just that: Review. The peer review process is meant to uncover obviously bad, or poorly communicated, research.
Replication happens when other scientists read the paper and decide to replicate. In fact, by far most replication is likely never published, because it is done as a part of model/rig verification and testing. For example: If I implement a model or build an experimental rig and want to make sure I did it right, I’ll go replicate some work to test it. If I successfully replicate I’m probably not going to spend time publishing that, because I built the rig/implemented to model to do my own research. If I’m unable to replicate, I’ll first assume something is wrong with my rig/implementation. If I can rule that out (maybe by replicating something else) I might publish the new results on the stuff I couldn’t replicate.
Consensus is built when a lot of publications agree on something, to the point where, if you aren’t able to replicate it, you can feel quite positive it’s because you’re doing something wrong.
Basically: The idea of waiting for consensus before publishing can’t work, because consensus is formed by a bunch of people publishing. Once solid consensus is established, you’ll have a hard time getting a journal to accept an article further confirming the consensus.
People have left some great comments here so to add: when the body gets something it needs nutrition-wise, it releases dopamine. We know this, that’s why we enjoy eating (pretty good biological functioning). However, there is diminishing returns on most things. The first steak you eat: delicious. Hell the first bite is the best. Every next bite, every consecutive steak, you get less and less dopamine release because your body recognizes it doesn’t need that nutrient as much. Drugs however (disregarding tolerance and dopamine fatigue because those work through different mechanisms) do not do this. There is no evening out or plateau on dopamine release for cocaine for instance. Sugar works the same way. No slowing or plateau. So in a very real and bio mechanical way, sugar is very analogous to drugs.
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.
That’s yet another example of “stuff gets more expensive if you are poor”…
A very annoying concept.
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.
I think when people make those headlines they forget that sugar is essential to the human body. It’s a nutrient. As far as I know you don’t get a deficiency disorder if you don’t use cocaine ever.
The problem is with the way our society is structured now: it’s hard to not rely on processed foods with tons of sugar and salt because most people don’t feel like they’d ever have to the time to prepare a healthy meal.
Sugar is not necessary for human existence. The body can synthesize sugar from fat in a process called gluconeogenesis in the liver. People can live 100% healthy lives without sugar or carbohydrates.
That is correct. Your Body mostly needs good protein sources (there’s no such thing as too much protein intake except if liver/kidney diseases exist already) since it can only reuse part of those in the body, not synthesize all necessary forms of it. Everything else (fat and carbohydrates) is purely energy. Sugar, starches and anything with sugar is just carbs to the body in different forms. The body can synthesize those as needed, whatever of both is deficient. Your body most likely runs a lot better on fat, according to anyone who tried.
Academic peer reviewed source supporting your claim that your body runs better on fat please?
No, that’s all keto pseudoscience.
So the fun thing is, if you reverse that ‘Academic peer reviewed source supporting the claim that your body runs optimally on carbohydrates’ is also missing. Nutritional research is massively lacking with “tradition” standing in for basic foundational science.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1743-7075-1-2 Ketogenic diets and physical performance
Basically the theory goes like this, bodies that are glucose adapted can only tap into the free glucose in the blood, which is like 3-5g, not very much. Bodies adapted to fat burning (ketosis) can tap into the entire stored fat reserve for performance. So long term endurance tasks win on ketosis. Glucose is great for burst activity (which is why cortisal/adrenalin cause the liver to produce glucose in the blood, to help with bursts)
Fun fact they talk about pre-modern Inuit diets in your link but completely avoid the fact the Inuit died of natural causes substantially earlier than almost all cultures. It’s weird how often those pushing keto reference the Inuit but avoid that bit. Modernity has changed this significantly so modern Inuit have similar lifespans to other people.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/82-003-x/2008001/article/10463/4149059-eng.htm
there’s no such thing as too much protein intake except if liver/kidney diseases exist already
Nope. “Rabbit poisoning” used to be a pretty common thing. Early north Americans whose main protein source was rabbit got too much protein and developed health issues.
You also act like vegtables aren’t a thing…
Vegetables do provide some nutrients and buffering, yet they’re not an absolutely necessary main source IF you have access to good quality meat, eggs, fish, etc. Those things have a very high micronutritiants-content, as long as they are of good quality.
On Rabbit poisoning, looked it up. That is based on an absolutely purely protein-based diet with little to no intake of fat and carbs, as far as I understand that right now. I did not state that eating purely protein is okay, just that the body can make up for deficiencies in fat or carbs as needed. So eating nothing but chicken meat without any fat or carbs would likely cause rabbit poisoning symptoms as well. Which is, again, not what I stated.
Fat and Organ meat are excellent sources of bioavailable compounds. Eating lean protein by itself would lead to a unbalanced diet with essential acids, minerals missing.
I did not state that eating purely protein is okay
You said:
there’s no such thing as too much protein intake except if liver/kidney diseases exist already)
Which is wrong.
Really nothing you’re saying is based in science, but considering how this went, I don’t think explaining it all is going to be productive
Rabbit poisoning is too much protein and not enough fat.
It is protein poisoning. Having fat available just means you can consume less protein in order to not starve.
So…
The person I replied to was wrong when they said you can’t eat enough protein?
Yes but the fix for that specific issue is fat not veggies
I never said it was…
I implied someone acting like a human can be healthy without eating vegetables doesn’t know what they’re talkng about…
And the person I replied to refusing to admit they’re wrong that there’s no such thing as too much protein means they’re likely getting their nutritional information from Joe Rogaine
Only very very little fat (the glycerol part) can be converted to glucose actually. The main source for gluconeogenesis is protein. And our bodies hate converting protein to glucose. You can guess why! This is why endurance athletes are constantly sipping on a sugary drink as they compete
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/13/8/2896
There have been some interesting studies on ketogenic endurance athletes, but TLDR They perfect just as well (after adoption) and have a larger capacity.
I’m aware the liver can convert protein to glucose, but it also has other sources available to it. Do you know / or can you point me to / information on how the source is decided?
The googling I’ve just been doing seemed to indicate lipid sources are more common in ruminants, but that feels like I’m just finding the wrong literature.
They don’t compete or do hard workouts without consuming carbohydrates though. The anaerobic metabolism doesn’t run on fat no matter how much you train, and it brings a lot of extra energy. You simply can’t go as hard as you can without carbohydrate.
Ruminants might be able to convert more fat to glucose, I don’t know about that, but humans can’t. Would be wonderful if we could, considering we can store almost infinite fat but only a meager amount of carbohydrate.
Wikipedia explains it well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis
I forgot to mention odd-chain fatty acids besides glycerol, but they also just give you half of a glucose molecule.
Academic source that proves humans can live healthy lives without carbs? Keep in mind no studies have been done on ketogenic diets in people with “normal” digestive systems that have spanned decades.
I suspect you are going to have to dial that claim back a bit. At best right now it appears as if it might be possible for adults to avoid carbs but we have no idea what that looks like over the course of a full life nor is anyone going to run this test on kids.
Great question: https://wellsrx.com/comparison-of-traditional-indigenous-diet-and-modern-industrial-diets-and-their-link-to-ascorbate-requirement-and-status
The Inuit’s famously had a very high fat, high protein diet consisting mostly on captured sea creatures.
The life of Stefansson Vilhjalmur is fascinating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilhjalmur_Stefansson
Stefansson documented the fact that the Inuit diet was then consisted about 90% meat and fish. Inuit would often go six to nine months a year eating nothing but fatty meat and fresh fish, which might currently be perceived as a ‘zero carb’ / no-carbohydrate diet. …Stefansson found that he and his fellow explorers of European, Black, and South Sea Islands descent were also “perfectly healthy” on such a diet.
To combat erroneous conventional beliefs about diet, Stefansson and his fellow explorer Karsten Anderson agreed to undertake an official study to demonstrate that they could eat a 100% meat diet in a closely observed laboratory setting for the first several weeks. For the rest of an entire year, paid observers followed them to ensure dietary compliance.
TLDR in one of the first observational society studies of a native ketogenic diet, the explorers reporting the findings embarked on a year long observed diet proving it worked outside of the native population. A really fascinating at one of the early rigorous approaches to dietary research.
We can only rely on observational epidemiological studies of native populations which have low carb diets to make statements about “carbohydrates are not necessary for human life”… but I as the Inuit exist, throughout history, on a very low carb diet, it demonstrates that carbs and sugar are not necessary for human life
I asked for academic sources for a reason nakely because there is a ton of bullshit broscience surrounding keto. Do you have peer reviewed academic sources? Wikipedia and a pharmacy group’s blog aren’t peer reviewed academic sources.
As an aside you might want to look into how much younger Inuits who ate a traditional diet died vs those that ate more plants. It doesn’t support keto as a healthy diet at all by comparison.
I’m sorry your dissatisfied with the sources I could find.
What are you referring to by mortality rates in Intuit children? I’m not familiar with that study
That’s because they aren’t what I asked for though to be fair Im also aware those sources do not exist because we haven’t done those studies.
The fact that the Inuit traditionally have a much shorter lifespan is a fairly well documented fact. It’s really hard living in the Arctic and it is extremely likely that you do need some plants to live a more normal life. You’ll note it’s never academics that bring them up as an example for how keto is “totes healthy” (again we don’t know if it is for decades on end).
Well documented fact, source: trust me bro
After complaining about actual sources.
Refined sucrose is not an essential nutrient, carbohydrates may be though even that is disputed these days the body refines glucose from any number of complex carbohydrates and even non-carb sources. In a natural environment sucrose would be consumed seasonally at a relatively low percentage of total calories when fruits were available, for much of the year sucrose would make up a very low percentage of calories consumed.
Who disputes the need for some carbohydrates? Our brains run on carbs.
https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/does-the-brain-need-carbs
The medical debate is ongoing, but the glucose requirements are satisfied by gluconeogenesis in the liver from fat, and the bulk (70%ish) of the energy can come from ketones (fat) directly
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6061736 Brain metabolism during fasting
The brain does not need any carbohydrates to function, it does require some glucose which the body can produce itself.
The fact that the brain needs glucose means your brain does need carbs. You might not need to eat carbs to get that glucose but that’s different.
The fact is we have no idea how healthy or unhealthy a keto diet is long term for people with “normal” digestion.
I’ve yet to see someone blowing people in a parking lot for caster sugar, so I can’t see how it’s as addictive as hard drugs.
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It’s also significantly easier to get ahold of.
you dont see huge bags of cocaine on grocery store shelves either.
Make sugar as rare as coke and you will see way worse shit than some simple street head.
Granny may take your head for a cup of sugar, deary
If the studies are true, Granny is basically a drug dealer
Price…
If pure sugar/corn syrup cost the same as cocaine, then some people probably would.
If cocaine was legal, it would be cheap as fuck and comparable. Hell, it was legal once and relatively cheap, people weren’t giving blowies for it back then. But it was still just as addictive
I’ve seen people with diabetes unable to quit sugar even though it’s killing them, and THAT sounds like hard drugs to me.
You can buy a pound of castor sugar in any store. Plus it’s about $19,000 cheaper.
Well sugar is way cheaper and easier to access so that’s not a good comparison. I wonder if sugar suddenly became a black market item and jumped to comparable prices if people would resort to sucking dick for it?
I mean… the kind of people who would for sugar probably aren’t the same people you’d want sucking your dick tho.
When sugar became a rare commodity in Jewish ghettos in Nazi-controlled territory, people would literally trade diamonds to get it.
Oh people were definitely sucking dick for sugar there man.
When I gave up drinking I developed an overwhelming craving for sugar because it, apparently, hits the same dopamine buttons. I, ultimately, found giving up booze easier than sugar because it’s not socially acceptable to give those in recovery a bottle of wine as a present but people don’t think twice about giving you some chocolate. I’ve had to be explicit about this now.
In some ways the ease of access and social accessibility are key - I had a chat with a couple of former heroin addicts about addiction and they found stopping smoking harder. You can quite the heroin lifestyle but (back before the smoking ban and the rise of vaping) it was very easy to have a few drinks, accept the offer of a cigarette and before you know it, you are working through a pack of 20.
Also, never underestimate Big Sugar, they will use all the dirty tricks Big Tobacco used to avoid bans in smoking, with similar disastrous consequences for our health.
I’m addicted to air. At some point I’ll kick the addiction.
Not only is it hard to kick the habit, it’s incredibly hard just to avoid. For cocaine, in order to get a hit, you gotta call a dealer. For sugar, it’s in so many foods that it’s seriously hard to go sugar free, even if you never ate sugar before in your life.
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Anyone who has gone on a hard cut or fast will tell you how much they crave bread. People think sugar means refined white crystal sugar or honey.
Pasta is “sugar” Bread is too.
I completely agree as someone who has quit smoking and drinking. Sugar is by far harder to cut back on.
I think it is because at a fundamental level your body knows it needs carbs. Not so for chemicals like nicotine and alcohol.
I think this is part of why drinking is so hard to quit for some ppl. Their body wants the booze AND the carbs!
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I’ll start with saying I have pretty mediocre willpower.
I can definitely understand saying you’re “addicted” to sugar. I find it really hard to resist going for sugary treats, and it takes a substantial effort to make better snack choices.
But I can put some honey in my yogurt in the morning and not go on a sugary bender, so I feel like it can’t be as bad as hard drugs.
There’s a difference between not adding sugar to your diet, and going no sugar. If you do keto for a week, you’ll hit that sugar addiction wall hardcore.
You are dosing sugar with every meal, and with most in between snacks.
You likely couldnt make it a week properly cutting sugar from your diet. Most cant.
There’s a bit of social conditioning to it. If I put whiskey in my coffee every morning, people would be concerned, if I put a few pumps of syrup in I’m bougie. Sugar is a normalized addiction.
And not too long ago the whiskey would also have been considered ok.
In some jobs (e.g. sales) it’s considered essential to the job to be able to drink a lot.
At least where I am from, alcoholism is in many contexts still normalized.
Luckily, this is slowly changing.
Well sugar doesn’t inebriate you so that’s not a fair comparison at all. You’re not gonna accidentally kill someone while driving under the influence of sugar.
Depends on the amount of sugar ;)
If you go into a sugar coma while driving, that could be very dangerous.
But sugar has a very wide range between the amount that it takes to have a nice effect and the amount it takes to have severe accute consequences.
Alcohol has a much narrower range.
That’s also what makes Nutmeg such a bad drug, because it doesn’t take much more of it for a lethal dose than the amount you need for a good high.
In some countries people with uncontrolled diabetes are not allowed to drive vehicles because they can lose control and kill people. It’s a bit of a stretch but it is related to sugar intake
The Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast did a segment on this recently, looked at a bunch of different studies and came to the conclusion that the scientific consensus is all over the place on the actual adictiveness of sugar and of processed foods in general, but that there are definitely some affects going on.
