Defending Beef by Nicolette Hahn Niman

Author:Nicolette Hahn Niman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Published: 2014-10-20T17:19:44+00:00

Dealing with the scourge of dietary sugar is an enormous public health and medical challenge. Humans instinctively seek out sweet foods. Exceptionally rare in nature, sweetness signals something ripe and good. It is said there is no known naturally sweet food that is poisonous. Fruits are ripe only fleetingly, and typically come around just once a year. And the sugar in fruits is tightly bound to loads of fiber, making it slow to digest and nearly impossible to overeat. Most experts agree sugar that occurs naturally in fruits and vegetables, including naturally occurring fructose, is not the problem.

Compounding the public health challenge, physiologically sugar functions like an addictive substance. Recent studies have documented that sugar affects the body and brain in much the same manner as drugs like cocaine.88 And like other drugs, it fosters a nearly irrepressible urge to consume more of it. Research at Princeton found that rats can be turned into sugar addicts.89 Clinical research on humans, done by the Oregon Research Institute in 2013, demonstrated that the brain’s “reward center” is activated by sweetness much more than fat.90 It’s the sugar we crave.

Carbohydrates, particularly sugar, are uniquely effective at triggering the brain’s reward center. Beyond an aesthetic state, “happiness is also a biochemical state, mediated by the neurotransmitter serotonin,” explains Robert Lustig. “One way to increase serotonin synthesis in the brain is to eat lots of carbohydrates.” Yet, analogous to other addictive substances, over time our bodies require more and more of them to get the same sensation. “Eating more carbohydrates, especially sugar, initially does double duty: it facilitates serotonin transport and it substitutes pleasure for happiness in the short term. But as the D2 receptor [in the brain] down-regulates, more sugar is needed for the same effect.”91

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