To think that sugar (chocolate) addiction is real?

[JustCallMeSliths]

Not necessarily up there with alcohol and drugs etc (as in harmfullness) but do you think people can be addicted to sugar, specifically chocolate?

I've gone cold turkey on chocolate. I was eating at least 2 family sized bars a day. I tried cutting down but couldn't do it. It's been 3 days and I'm struggling so much. I don't think it is just the sugar withdrawal.

Yes, I'm whinging and need to just do it.

While weaning yourself off high-sugar choc via the v high ocoa choc, I should have mentioned also:

cut out all other chocolate, sweets, added sugar

I think I need to learn more about refined carbs and their relationship with sugar, can anyone direct me to some good info please?

I am quitting sugar (again...managed it for 7 months a few years ago) but I love pasta so much that I wonder if I am replacing one for another. But also trying to be reasonable, still enjoy life, be healthy and not go down the rabbit hole.

Ohhhhh. Bloody sugar. Not especially fond of chocolate. Don't smoke, drug or drink. BUT around 2pm, regardless of healthy start to the day, I WANT SOMETHING SWEET. Quite a lot of it too. Even worse, if I don't have it, I feel like a snivelling, deprived child. Ridiculous.

Hmm, nevermind. I found info in BIWI's low carb bootcamp. Thing is, I wasn't particularly planning on doing a complicated 'diet' but if you read into sugar, it kind of leads you there (rabbit hole...).

This extract, from Healthline.com, explains how carbohydrates are digested by the body. (There are three types of carbs - starches, or complex carbs, sugars or simple carbs and fibre).

All the food you eat goes through your digestive system so it can be broken down and used by the body. Carbohydrates take a journey starting with the intake at the mouth and ending with elimination from your colon. There’s a lot that happens between the point of entry and exit.

1. The mouth

You begin to digest carbohydrates the minute the food hits your mouth. The saliva secreted from your salivary glands moistens food as it’s chewed.

Saliva releases an enzyme called amylase, which breaks down the sugars in the carbohydrates you’re eating.

2. The stomach

From there, you swallow the food now that’s it’s chewed into smaller pieces. The carbohydrates travel through your esophagus to your stomach. At this stage, the food is referred to as chyme.

You stomach makes acid to kill bacteria in the chyme before it makes its next step in the digestion journey.

3. The small intestine, pancreas, and liver

The chyme then goes from the stomach into the first part of the small intestine, called the duodenum. This causes the pancreas to release pancreatic amylase. This enzyme breaks down the chyme into dextrin and maltose.

From there, the wall of the small intestine begins to make lactase, sucrose, and maltase. These enzymes break down the sugars even further into monosaccharides or single sugars.

These sugars are the ones that are finally absorbed into the small intestine. Once they’re absorbed, they’re processed even more by the liver and stored as glycogen. Other glucose is moved through the body by the bloodstream.

The hormone insulin is released from the pancreas and allows the glucose to be used as energy.

4. Colon

Anything that’s left over after these digestive processes goes to the colon. It’s then broken down by intestinal bacteria. Fiber is contained in many carbohydrates and cannot be digested by the body. It reaches the colon and is then eliminated with your stools.

Note that even complex carbs are dealt with like this, and - along with sugars and simple carbs - turned by the body into sugars, and ultimately glucose/glycogen.

TL:DR carbs = sugar/sugar = carbs.

And by having that kind of approach you’re setting yourself up for failure. “It’s not my fault I threw myself head long in to that box of chocolates. It’s addictive after all”.

I totally disagree with this statement.

What it is failing to understand is the genuine cravings that hormones in the body will generate in response to sugar/carb digestion. Once the glucose has been metabolised the body literally looks for the next hit and releases all manner of hormones looking for more.

When you put this down to simple ‘willpower’ you are doing a total disservice to people. The cravings are real. And relying on willpower alone is the thing that will set you up to fail

Going cold turkey and significantly reducing your sugar/carb intake will be a few days of hell, but speak to anyone who has done this and they will universally tell you, you never need to rely on willpower. The cravings go all on their own.

When you put this down to simple ‘willpower’ you are doing a total disservice to people

Not doing a disservice to anyone. Unless of course looking for an excuse. It’s empowering people. It’s not addictive so this is all on me - and damn it... I’m not going to go for that second biscuit

You are so very wrong Romax

Do you really think a whole generation of humans just suddenly lost their willpower?

It is much more complicated than willpower, your body responds to the type of food it is eating. A very rudimentary understanding of biology will show you that carbohydrate metabolism does very different things to your satiety and appetite hormones than protein and fat.

I was just idly wondering yesterday what would happen if sugar and chocolate were made illegal overnight and removed from the shelves. Would people seek them out on the black market and risk a sentence to get hold of them and consume them? I bet they would.

'No, I don’t.Many people find chocolate delicious, really delicious, hence the overeat. Addictive? No.'

This ^ Everyone loves chocolate cakes and biscuits, everyone. Greed is not the same as addiction. We all crave chocolate, I'm sat here thinking I could just polish off a packet of chocolate biscuits but I won't, because I know if I did that every day I would very quickly become overweight.

It seems more palatable for many people to medicalise everything. It's hormonal, it's addiction, it's not my fault.

People just need to understand getting 'the shakes' if they haven't eaten a cake for 2 hours is really not going 'cold turkey'. Just have banana, I guarantee the shakes will cease.

Heroin is delicious too. So I understand

Greed is not the same as addiction. We all crave chocolate, I'm sat here thinking I could just polish off a packet of chocolate biscuits but I won't, because I know if I did that every day I would very quickly become overweight.

It seems more palatable for many people to medicalise everything. It's hormonal, it's addiction, it's not my fault.

No one is saying greed is the same as addiction and well done for not polishing off those biscuits, you are clearly not addicted to food/sugar. But are you not able to think beyond your own experience and see that some people might be? That if your every waking thought is about food and you continue to eat so much sugar that your health is seriously suffering, you are disgusted by yourself and are sick of living like this that it might be an addiction? It is nothing to do with greed or willpower.

@woodcutbirds this is literally what happened during world war 2. Black market chocolate because people couldn't make do with rationing.

No. It's not. Compulsive eating, however, is a real mental health problem. Your vicee might be chocolate, for someone else it might be chips or crisps or peanuts or belgian waffles or whatever else... Chocolate is not 'addictive'. At all.

And if ANYONE would like to discuss it with a qualified Dietician, that can debunk any bollocks that someone has read that said it is, I can happily put you in contact!

I don't know if chocolate meets any technical definition of addiction. I do think it is definitely 'habit forming'.

I do know that if I can manage to go without for a few weeks the cravings disappear.

If I'm regularly eating it I crave it to the point of not being able to think of other things/searching the same cupboards repeatedly for something to eat to make the craving go away.

It takes very little for me to reform the habit, and I definitely emotionally eat.

Salem I didn't know that. That's fascinating.

Mauritius I think it's a bit disingenuous to believe that just because you can handle a given substance, it's not addictive. I can have one glass of wine and fancy another but decline it. That doesn't mean everyone else can therefore do the same, proving alcohol isn't addictive. It depends so much how your brain reacts to a given substance.

Another sugar addict here. I don't care whether it's technically classed as an addiction or not. The fact is that many people experience it as being like a form of addiction.
Cutting down doesn't work for me. The hardest part isn't resisting the chocolate in the first place (I occasionally manage that ). It's resisting the immediate and urgent compulsion to then eat ALL the chocolate in the world house as soon as the first mouthful hits the spot.

I think people are right about the sugar and fat combo. That's why chocolate is the most common culprit. When I had gallstones and had to cut out almost all fat, sweet stuff didn't appeal as much because all the really delicious sweet stuff has fat in it.

I'm quitting sugar and alcohol from today until july. Will see how that goes... Am hoping to then be able to have the occasional treat.

Cutting down doesn't work for me
I understand what you mean. DP and I hadn't had sweet. Stuff for a while. We made a conscious effort to forego chocolate, cake, sweets etc ( in fact all the things we like!!!)
Not really a huge problem after a few days. We lasted about 6 weeks. Thinking we were out of some sort of danger zone I asked DP to make a tea loaf. It was incredibly sweet and lo and be hold, I'm not satisfied with one slice and finding I'm needing/ wanting sweet stuff again.

Back to terawing board!

'Mauritius I think it's a bit disingenuous to believe that just because you can handle a given substance, it's not addictive. I can have one glass of wine and fancy another but decline it.'

Cakes/chocolate/biscuits do not cause addiction like alcohol and drugs do. People confuse greed, cravings and habit with addiction. It makes them think it isn't their fault that they are overweight. It is.

Oh Mauritius, do give over now. It was known in the scientific community in the 1930s that obesity is a hormonal disorder. Do stop banging on about personal responsibility. Personal responsibility does not always stand up to a hormonal drive manifesting itself as hunger, cravings, lack of satiety.

It just so happens that sugar sends insulin haywire which has a proven link to excess fat accumulation.

If you know nothing about the subject and got no first hand experience of it either, maybe educate yourself.

I am fasting today and despite that I haven’t felt hungry. Aren’t I virtuous. But I know for a fact that insulin-resistant people who regularly consume simple carbs as part of their diet won’t be able to go 3h without feeling peckish or full-on hungry.

I haven’t got a superior personal responsibility to them. The difference is I have spent a long time weaning myself from sugar and try to severely limit other easily digestible carbs day to day. My will power around chocolate has improved immeasurably since I did that.

But I am in no doubt whatsoever, should I put a piece of chocolate in my mouth, it will all be back, the cravings, the inability to stop eating, extortionate appetite.

Please educate yourself and don’t blame people for the way their body chemistry works. You may as well go preach about personal responsibility to an alcoholic or a smoker. I am sure they could do with being enlightened, too.

Bravo Paradise!

I too must be a very virtuous person indeed as I’m 17 hours into a fast

Or, maybe I’ve just got an understanding of human biology and food metabolism and so I’ve no need for willpower at all.

'Please educate yourself and don’t blame people for the way their body chemistry works.'

I'm fully aware of how the body works thanks. Overweight people eat too much, some of them say they are 'addicted to sugar', because it absolves them of any responsibility. The brief energy boost one gets from eating a cake does not mean you are 'addicted to sugar'.

Fasting is incredibly unhealthy. Just eat less and don't snack.

Hear hear, Paradise. People with an axe to grind always talk about obesity as though it is only a question of willpower, or only a question of calories in vs calories out, or only due to a sedentary lifestyle etc. Whereas anyone with an ounce of sense can see it's got a complex mass of causes - physical, psychological and social.

I've just been reading a bit about whether sugar addiction is a 'proper' addiction. It seems it fulfils many of the requirements to class as an addiction, but that the social issues around eating muddy the waters. The conclusion of this report is quite interesting.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6234835/#__ffn_sectitle
Conclusion: "Finally, there is strong evidence of the existence of sugar addiction, both at preclinical and clinical level. Our model has demonstrated that five out of eleven criteria for SUD are met, specifically: use of larger amounts and for longer than intended, craving, hazardous use, tolerance, and withdrawal. From an evolutionary perspective, we must consider addiction as a normal trait that permitted humans to survive primitive conditions when food was scarce. As we evolved culturally, the neural circuits involved in addictive behaviors became dysfunctional and instead of helping us survive they are in fact compromising our health. From a revolutionary perspective, understanding the molecular, and neurological/psychological intricacies of addiction (sugar, drugs of abuse) will permit the discovery of new therapies (pharmacological and non-pharmacological) and possible management of at least one crucial factor in the occurrence of obesity."

I'd say this is a thing. I get a headache if I don't have enough sugar. I have cut down to 2 squares of lindt 85% at lunch and 1 low cal options hot choc when I get home. I am an utter bitch without sugar.