"I am addicted to sugar"

Why do we have such idea when it comes to deal with sugar?

Have we been influenced by the sugar obsession spread on the media? Sure.

The glitch is that we speak about addiction when dealing with foodstuff, which traduces clearly the conception and the importance that we have given to food and more particularly to this nutrient “sugar”.

For some sugar this is the devil embodied by our preferred food… For others, this is just part of a safe macronutrients consumed to generate energy.

Why is there such a difference?

The first aspect is the lack of information. Indeed, by getting this misconception around sugar, we vainly stay prisoner from some foodstuff. It is easier to find a scapegoat than to than re-evaluate our nutritive strategy especially when we struggle to lose some weight.

Yes! It can make you gain weight (become fatter) but it means that it has to go through a transformation process called De Novo Lipogenesis (DNL). It means that our body needs to transform that macronutrient (sugar here) in another (fat here) in order to be able to do it.

Well, our body is smart. But well, this is not without consequence, and maybe we should not forget that our body wants to save energy. Indeed, it is easier for “him” to stock fat… with fat as this is less complicated and less energy-consuming.

Our body, as a a well built and smart machine, it would not be worth to transform something that already plays its role, as we definitely need it.

Some other misconceptions precise that the glucose presence periodically inhibits lipolysis (fats deterioration). Even a big amount of sugar, won’t prevent the lipolysis processes through one day. Therefore, in order to stock sugar in fats, we would need a quick and massive of glucose with troubles to fill up the muscular and hepatic glycogen stocks.

You know people that can’t do without sugar? Yes…but no. You know people that can’t do without sugar AND fat (and sometimes salt). Donuts, biscuits or pizzas are way more addictive than raw sugar. Example: if you are hungry will you eat the donut first or the sugar cube?

Markus & Al

In order to give more information about this topic, Markus & Al (2017) have studied the responses from this famous “sugar addiction”. Let’s focus on the diagram below…

The goal to present such diagram is to show that the main patterns of addiction were highlighted to be in relation with high-fat savoury (e.g pizza, burgers…) or high-fat sweet (e.g donuts, chocolate) foodstuff, and definitely not sugar itself.

In fact, we can see that when we deal with a sugar addiction, this is mainly the fact that this is composed of other foodstuff such as fat than the sugar component exclusively. This is a whole.

They conclude that the findings point out that sugary foods:

“contribute minimally to 'food dependence' and increased risk of weight gain. Instead, they are consistent with the current scientific notion that food energy density, and the unique individual experience of eating, plays an important role in determining the reward value of food and promoting excessive energy intake.”

THE BLISS POINT

By the way, this “thing” that makes people addicted is called the “bliss point”.

This is a subtle mix of fat, salt and sugar. Just to justify it, you can crave for a pizza but look at the amount of sugar in it (this is small in fact). This "bliss point" has been looked by the industries from food processing to create a real desire.

FACTS

Just to spread some facts about sugar consumption from our body:

- Our brain consume 500kcal which would stand for 125g of glucose per day.

- Our sugar body stocks are called glycogen are situated at the muscular level and at the brain level. They stand for high levels before being full.

- Sugar has an important effect on metabolism and sustains the thyroïd activity which are key for body maintenance.

CONCLUSION

Maybe we should put more efforts to review our way to describe the word “sugar”. Besides, we need to distinguish the word sugar and carbs (you can see the difference on the food-packs).

One key element is the bliss point, which has been studied by the industrial food manufacturer to optimise the gustatory pleasure, in order to… make you buy their product again.

Then, we should favour qualitative and raw sources of sugar such as fruits, honey, maple syrup… instead of giving in for industrial sources of refined sugar.

Last but not least, our body depends so much on carbs that if he lacks it, he creates it…. It’s called “gluconeogenesis” which stands for a “metabolic pathway that results in a generation of glucose from non-carbohydrate carbon substrates”.

SOURCES

- Markus & Al - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28330706/

- Beyond Fitness - https://beyondfitness.fr/

Thanks for reading :)

Valentin