If you light up a cigarette and start smoking in public place, then people may object it. But if you open it and start eating it, then no one cares. You may surprise that this harmless chocolate is more addictive than a cigarette for you. The whole of India is addicted with this intake of sweet stuff, it may be chocolate, Laddu, Barfi, Mithai, Rasgulla etc.
The drug that we’re talking about is also available in your grocery store and Sweet/ Mithai stores. You happily give that drug to your kids and elders yourself. Your kids are already addicted.
I’m talking about sugar. This white powder, which according to research, is more addictive than cocaine. But why? What effect does a harmless substance like sugar have on our body? To figure this out, we did a simple test.
We bought a weighing machine and your daily use products. And compared them to see how much sugar they have. The answer can be shocking for you.
And should we completely cut off sugar from our lives? You’ll get the answer to this question at the end of this article. So please read this article and if you find value in this article, then don’t forget to forward it to your WhatsApp groups.
What does sugar do? Dr. Nicole Avena is a professor at Princeton University. She did an experiment on rats. She started giving them sugar water instead of water. And observed their brain pattern. The results were shocking.
Their stress levels increased. They started drinking 3-4 times more water than normal water. They started binge-eating or binge-drinking. Then they stopped drinking sugar water and started drinking normal water. But they didn’t even touch that normal water. They started having withdrawal symptoms. Their cravings increased. Along with that, anxiety and stress increased. And after a few breaks, when they started drinking sugar water again, they started consuming more sugar water than before.
This same behavior happens in our brain Whenever we eat a high-sugar item like chocolates, sweet receptors get activated in our tongue. Then the signal reaches our brain directly. And Diwali happens in our brain.
The same area gets activated which gets activated when we do drugs. The reward system of our brain gets activated which we call dopamine. But along with that, stress hormone is also released also known as cortisol.
This is a weird combo. The similarity between drugs and sugar is that by consuming both, our brain says rationality went to get oil. Our brain doesn’t even know where to stop and when to stop. And then we overeat. We eat more than the limit. We binge eat.
Our brain is unpredictable like Instagram’s algorithm. And it constantly changes. It creates new connections. Today Pooja, tomorrow someone else. This is called neuroplasticity. By consuming sugar, our brain starts rewiring. New connections, i.e. neural pathways, start forming. Which makes us feel that there is only one way to be happy. To become sweet.
Which leads to addiction. And now, for a scale, addiction has become a part of our culture In parties, the end of the dinner never happens without desserts. It seems that if you skip dessert, you missed something. In celebrations, eating sweets has become a trend. The story of sugar doesn’t just stop at the brain. Sugar also goes to the stomach.
Sugar is a simple carbohydrate which is easy to break down for the stomach. To store glucose, our pancreas releases insulin. Insulin is called a storage hormone. But when we eat extra sugar, the body says, what should we do with so much sugar? Extra sugar is stored in our body as fat. And extra insulin is a disease. If this disease is explained in simple language, it becomes difficult for our body to digest sugars.
This disease is called diabetes. There are more than 10 crore diabetic people in India. And 13 crore people are pre-diabetic. That means, there is definitely something wrong in our society. If you don’t want to be one of these crores of people, then do watch the next video.
The Experiment with Sugar
Time for the experiment. There are such labels behind every product in the supermarket. Maybe some of you read labels. But it is not possible for you to visualize. Let’s solve that problem now. We collected some snacks of Rosemary.
Like cold drinks, chocolates, cereals. And along with that, we collected some things in which you don’t expect sugar. But still, there is sugar in them. Like tomato ketchup, protein bar, and even salad dressing. As you can see, we have blurred all the products. Because this is not an attack on any particular brand. And we don’t blame ourselves. This is a consumer awareness campaign through which you, as a consumer, can make the right decision. So, let’s see visually how much sugar is in all these products.
This one spoon contains 8 grams of sugar. Let’s start with the things that we happily give to our kids. Biscuit and chocolate. This biscuit pack contains a whole cup of sugar. Around 43 grams. Which fills up the sugar quota of the whole day.
A pack of chocolates contains 1.5 cups. A big pack of cereals contains this much sugar. And a bottle of cold drinks contains 80 grams. Which is about this much sugar. If you keep syrups at home, which are mixed with milk and drunk, then they contain this much sugar. Ketchup is not sweet.
But this small ketchup bottle contains 52 grams of sugar. This protein bar, despite being healthy, contains this much sugar. And this salad dressing, which we eat with salad to stay healthy, also contains this much sugar.
You see, this whole experiment addresses two problems. One, it helps you to visualize how much sugar is in the products in which you expect sugar. And two, you realize that the products in which you don’t expect sugar, also contain sugar. That means, with the combination of these two things, you can easily cross the WHO recommended limit every day.
How much sugar is okay to eat?
Often we think that sugar is equal to the sugar actually we use it in making tea. But sugar comes in different forms. Glucose, sucrose, lactose, maltose, dextrose, starch, corn syrup. These are all forms of sugar. WHO says that you shouldn’t eat more than 50 grams, that is, more than 10 teaspoons of sugar, which is this much. Now you will think, I don’t eat this much sugar.
One teaspoon of sugar in tea and two cups of tea. Then there is no problem. The problem is not visible sugar. The problem is invisible sugar. Because no matter how unhealthy a person is, he won’t be able to eat 9 teaspoons of sugar at a time. But by drinking a bottle of soft drink, he will consume 79 grams of sugar in no time.
The CEO of Coke said on record, our competition is not Pepsi, it is water. An interview with the CEO of Coca-Cola is famous. Where he says that if you want to stay fit, then you can drink sugar-free Coke. Whose tagline is, same great taste with zero sugar. In which everything is zero. Calories zero, fat zero, protein zero, sugar zero.
Bro, what is happening? How is that possible? The answer is chemicals. An 8-year observational study says that due to artificial sweeteners, the chances of obesity and fat gain increased. Due to phosphoric acid, the enamel of the teeth was destroyed and problems like teeth erosion are present.
And it did not have any effect on diabetes. Often beverage companies use aspartame to replace sugar. Which is 200 times sweeter than sugar. Which can also be correlated with cancer. Its study has been going on since 2013. And since this study is not complete, big companies are making efforts.
In short, whether diet soda is better than regular soda or not, this discussion has become pointless. You will get opinions from both sides on the internet. The conclusion is that it is better to stay outside the carbon dioxide body. My rule is no fizz in the body. That’s it.
Solution of Sugar Addiction
Okay, so what is the solution? Can we replace sugar with jaggery? Is jaggery healthier than sugar? The answer is yes, but very marginally. Sugar is 100% sucrose and jaggery is 85% sucrose. So there is not much difference in sugar and jaggery for our body.
Yes, jaggery has a different taste and our Indian food tastes better with jaggery. So if you prefer jaggery, then sure, go ahead and do it. But drinking jaggery coffee does not eliminate sugar.
It is important to understand this. Masala Labs has made a very good video on this topic. There is a simple technique that you can try yourself. Start reading labels. While buying any product, look behind it. It will be written on the labels what the ingredients are.
It will also be written what the serving size should be. Marketing people are smart. On a 500 ml cold drink bottle, they just write how much sugar is in 100 ml.
So you have to mentally convert it. And it is very difficult to visualize grams. So you can go to this website and convert grams into teaspoons. So that you can visualize how much sugar you are eating. Remember that sugar marketing is very strong. For the past 200 years, marketing companies have taught you how to fool people.
So they will try to fool you in the name of zero added sugar. High fructose corn syrup, fruit juice concentrate, brown rice syrup, agave nectar. These are all marketing terms.
But your body does not know the difference between sugar and these. You will find the complete list of such terms in the description of our YouTube video. So, the first solution is to eliminate invisible sugar. Understand this, that we don’t have to eliminate desserts from life. But we have to understand that some meals in life can be completed without desserts. Solution number 2 is make your own desserts.
In hotels, they give preference to taste. If the food should be fresh for a long time, then preservatives are added. It is impossible to figure out when packaged desserts are made, how long they stay in the fridge. But if you make desserts at home, then you yourself add the ingredients. You can consciously control them. Don’t eliminate taste from life. Sugar should be there for taste. Eliminate this compulsion. Solution number 3 is medicine.
I cannot recommend any medicine. I am not qualified, nor am I a doctor. But understand this, that everyone’s body is different. Stop looking for specific solutions on the internet. A proper way to approach this is to get your blood tested. Check your sugar levels and consult good doctors.
Our habit is to treat a doctor like a mechanic. If there is a problem in the car, then we go to the doctor. Otherwise, we don’t get tests done for years. That’s why we can’t figure out how a healthy looking body looks from the inside. Glucose Goddess is an Instagram account that shows you the glucose spikes after eating specific food in your body. And it also provides solutions on what can be done to maintain glucose levels.
It is possible that your brain is already a sugar addict. But after this video, you can consciously make better decisions. You can control yourself and your future.
In the beginning of this article, I compared sugar with drugs. But is a chocolate bar as bad as a cigarette? The answer is no. Because a cigarette has zero nutritional value. Your body gets nothing but cancer. That’s why we don’t put tobacco in the food category.
If you are stuck on an island and you haven’t eaten anything for two days, and you get an option, a cigarette or a chocolate bar, then obviously, you should choose the chocolate bar. That’s why in my humble opinion, where you can read the labels properly, where you don’t have to hide how much sugar is there, and where you can consciously decide how much to consume, that product is better. Because at least you have an idea of what you are putting in your body.
Cigarette and candy, the similarity of these two items is only limited to your addictive behavior and long-term adverse effects on your body. The rest of these two items are very different. And that is exactly why there is a stigma attached to cigarettes, but you also get the energy drink that gives you diabetes in the pharmacy.
This is not a coincidence. It’s a marketing technique to convince you that this product is healthy. If you got value from this video and got something new to learn, then don’t forget to follow us on social media.
Because anything after a limit becomes harmful for our body. A car has a fuel tank and every fuel tank has a capacity. If you exceed that capacity, then money and fuel are wasted.
Understand the limits of your body. Understand the fuel that goes into your body. Enjoy life, but don’t become an addict to sweets. And this is the bitter truth. It makes a difference to me by taking it to you.