It is just as addictive as heroin, tobacco and cocaine.  In truth, it is the most common addiction in our society today.  You can find it in your cupboard, purchase it from any food store and consume it everyday in one form or another.  We bombard our children with it and it has an intoxicating effect much like that of alcohol.  In fact, the biochemical makeup is almost identical to alcohol except for one molecule.  It is considered a poor man’s drug because those who can’t afford to buy the name brand drugs buy this instead, and most times without realizing its intoxicating, addictive effects.

 

A poor man’s drug is a sweet, crystalline carbohydrate typically extracted from sugar cane and sugar beets by refining down to a pure sucrose after stripping away all the vitamins, minerals, proteins, enzymes and other beneficial nutrients.  It is refined white sugar and is marketed and sold as “table sugar”.

 

Refined white sugar is stripped of any nutritional value and is an empty calorie food.  In addition to that, in order to be metabolized by the body it has to draw from your vitamin and mineral reserves (especially Vitamin B and calcium) and therefore is responsible for depleting mineral and vitamin levels, which creates numerous health problems.  Not only is it addictive but is falsely believed to be harmless and is responsible for contributing to such conditions as diabetes, hypertension, and ADHD.  There’s a very significant difference between white refined sugar and naturally occurring complex sugars that are found in whole foods.  For our purposes we are speaking specifically of refined white sugar.

 

Many people believe that sugar can only be damaging when ingested in large amounts, when actually even “normal” amounts are damaging to the body.  Sugar is addictive.  The more you get the more you want! It used to be that only the rich could afford the luxury of sugar, but by 1840 the sugar pushers were handing out free samples.  Now, the sugar industries have the largest advertising in the world.  The average American some years ago consumed roughly 153 pounds of sugar a year with 24% of their calories coming from sugar. Today the figures would be even more astounding.  Many people are hooked on sugar, and those who attempt to quit the sugar habit find they have quite a struggle on their hands.  Going off sugar, like quitting most drugs, invites withdrawal symptoms.  The most common are headaches, chills, and body aches.  Sugar, like alcohol, is intoxicating.  It creates an imbalance of neurotransmitters in the brain.  Mental and emotional disorders are often linked to sugar in the diet.

 

Sugar has been around in minute quantities for several thousand years; it was practically unknown and formed an insignificant part of the average diet in the Classical civilizations of Egypt, Greece and Rome.  The Greeks (who had a word for nearly everything) did not even have a word for it.  Even in medieval Europe it was practically unknown and then only a rare delicacy in the royal courts.  During the last major Crusade that ended in 1204 some of the Christian Crusaders were introduced to sugar freely used by the Saracens.  The Moors, when invading and colonizing the southern part of Spain, grew sugar cane and refined sugar on Spanish soil.  When Spain drove out the moors, it inherited some of the cane plantations.  It was during this time that Christendom took its first big bite of the forbidden fruit and like it.

 

Just what damage does sugar do to the human body?  The list is endless, but just to name a few:

 

* Sugar is by far the leading cause of dental deterioration such things as                    cavities in teeth, bleeding gums, failure of bone structure, and loss of teeth

 

* Sugar is the main cause of diabetes, hyperglycemia

 

 

* It is either a significant or a contributory cause of heart disease, arteriosclerosis, mental illness, depression, senility, hypertension, cancer

 

* It has an extremely harmful effect in unbalancing the endocrine system and injuring its component glands such as the adrenal glands, pancreas and liver, causing the blood sugar level to fluctuate widely. 

 

A poor man’s drug, or a poor man’s poison, either way it  is purchased willfully and sometimes without consent while the buyer is unaware of the many extremely damaging effects on the human body.