To think that caffeine & sugar are drugs?

[dieselKiller]

The mood altering effects of caffeine & sugar are pretty obvious, I think, and both positive (more energy) & negative (anxiety, aggression). AIBU to think that we should be more explicit as a society that caffeine and sugar are mood-altering drugs?

Do you talk to your kids about the effects of caffeine and sugar so they’re not caught unawares by them?

BringBackTheBeaver, I’m talking about teaching people, including children, that caffeine is a mood altering chemical with both positive and negative effects. I would compare it to alcohol primarily. If discussing with teenagers, I might also compare it to pot. No one is saying that caffeine is as harmful as heroin. Just like no one is saying that the body doesn’t need carbohydrates. Not sure why you would assume people are saying that.

@Bringbackthebeaver our bodies can break down protein into glucose, which is how people survive on these diets.
I'm not encouraging this or a fan of it but it seems we can survive without consuming sugary foods.

Caffeine is a drug, but doesn't have the social and personal impacts of "drugs" like heroin, canabis or cocaine. Most people consume it moderately with few ill effects and it tends to occur naturally in foods. Some forms such as green tea or freshly ground coffee are considered beneficial to health. Healthy adults rarely cause themselves harm with regular levels of consumption.

Sugar is a food not a drug. Our bodies break foods down into sugars to survive. Eating excessive quantites and too many heavy processed forms of it can cause harm. Artificial sweetners are not consequence free either.

Many things can be addictive without being drugs. Even exercise can be addictive and exercise addicts can cause themselves physical harm when they overload their body and don't rest to recover over a prolonged period. It's common for exercise addicts to have disordered eating patterns too.

I talk to my children about nutrition and healthy lifestyles. I don't demonise individual foods, I go for a more holistic approach of looking if their diet is balanced between plants, proteins and different forms of carbs.

Framing sugar as a drug is not helpful at promoting realistic, healthy levels of moderation and caffeine isn't a major problem or something little known about.

Not worried about either in the way I worry about all the artificial crap and sweeteners in most food especially the so called healthy options these days. My kids drink tea with sugar but not often and tbh I will always give them sugar rather than sweetener, butter rather than spreads etc.

I don't get why you don't see this is completely the norm anyway? Caffeine is a drug, children are taught it is a drug, what exactly is your issue?

Sugar is not a drug, it is harmful in excess, children are taught so, what is your issue here?

Children are taught this in school.
They are taught the differences between legal, illegal, medicinal and recreational drugs.

I think the whole thread answers this question. Please also look at the current stats on the AIBU poll.

I have made a mistake including both sugar and caffeine in the same post. It is difficult to find time to make specific comments addressing both substances, so I’ll just concentrate on caffeine in my responses. Sorry about that.

I cut out alcohol and caffeine in the few year. It’s been far more difficult giving up my morning coffee and it took several attempts whereas the booze was pretty easy to drop. The withdrawal headaches were indescribably painful. I now have one cup of decaf per day and this seems to be my sweet spot. Since quitting I’ve noticed a huge improvement in my moods and my peri-menopause symptoms so it’s been worth it.

well, I voted YABU because you are! as I said, no one is ever taught that caffeine isn't a drug? It comes up in KS2. KS3 and KS4 - so what exactly is your issue?

And of course sugar isn't

@Bringbackthebeaver Look up ketosis.

You must definitly can live without consuming glucose. Our bodies are dual fuel and we are designed for metabolic switching.

dont be ridiculous

😂😂😂

This is ridiculous. Fruits contain sugar! And coffee is incredibly healthy. You’re being too simplistic. Like literally anything, both could be bad if done wrong (like in disgusting sugar filled energy drinks). The only thing I tell my children about caffeine is that I drink black coffee due to its health benefits. What else is there to say? It’s ridiculous to compare them to drugs.

Exactly this. Aspartame does far worse to me than a cup of coffee or a bar of chocolate does.
The stuff (along with the supposedly better for us crap sweeteners) should be banned as far as I'm concerned.

I wouldn’t be scaring kids and equating food products/ingredients with drugs - you will just give them a complex and could lead to restrictive eating or an eating disorder.

Or they will get a bit older, realise it’s not true and wallow in an orgy of UPF at every opportunity. Just try to promote balanced diet.

The kids I knew who had a very “clean” diet at home with no treats were noticeably greedy at parties or playdates because they never got sweeties or cake etc. at home. Not sure what happened when they got to be teens with autonomy over what they ate.

Really? https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/advances-in-psychiatric-treatment/article/neuropsychiatric-effects-of-caffeine/7C884B2106D772F02DA114C1B75D4EBF

Caffeine is absolutely a drug, it's the most widely consumed psychoactive drug in the world.

sugar doesn't change behaviour, that has been proven over and over again

As you can see from the thread, I didn’t know that caffeine was taught in schools. I’m not sure that counteracts the prevailing understanding of caffeine as exemplified in other posters’ responses where some people say that caffeine is not a drug. (Also note the people who start worrying about “bans” rather than discussing effects). You can also look at “Similar Threads” below this one like the “Giving up caffeine” thread where adults are taking large quantities of caffeine and then surprised at the positive effects of reducing intake. So over all, I’d say that people don’t have a good understanding of the effects of caffeine and my thread is in response to that.

We always preferred our kids to have sugar rather than artificial sweeteners. They didn’t like fizzy drinks anyway really and as adults aren’t really coffee drinkers. Would far rather they drank coffee though than, say, smoked cigarettes or vaped (they don’t).

I was looking this up.
There are 10 foods that can cause druglike symptoms.
Sugar.
Coffee.
Tea.
Peppers can give pain relief.
Turkey can make you sleepy.
Sweet potatoes make you mellow.
Grapefruit alters some heart drugs.
Milk again sleepy.
Willow bark tea pain killers.
Spices also cause things .
Can't remember the last ones.

Caffeine withdrawal is awful; headaches, flu-like aches and pains, can't think straight. I've been through it a few times over the years and it's always the same but generally over after about two days.

Whether people like it or not, caffeine is, in fact, a drug. For a long time drugs education has focused on helping children understand that there are drugs which can help us and drugs that can be harmful and much depends on how we use them. I'm surprised more people haven't experienced their children coming home from school and sneering at them 'You're on drugs' because they drink coffee and they've just been taught that caffeine is a drug.

A couple more comments about caffeine, the drug/medicine, for those still maintaining that caffeine either isn’t a drug or shouldn’t be discussed as one:

Do you suffer from allergies? I suffer from seasonal allergies (hay fever). Caffeine helps. I literally drink coffee as medicine to reduce the effects of seasonal allergies.

Do you know what Anadin Extra is? One of the active ingredients is 45mg of caffeine. It’s got a dosage. In milligrams. In a medicine. It’s a drug.

Do you know why caffeine is added to these pills? There are a number of reasons, but one of them is that caffeine withdrawal causes headaches. Yes, “caffeine withdrawal” is a thing because caffeine is a drug on which you can become dependent.

What are the side-effects of caffeine? Jitters, anxiety, irritability, acid stomach.

For those saying that caffeine consumption only affects the consumer, the main point of this post is that I know that not to be true. Caffeine increases anxiety and irritability and that affects how people interact with others.

None of this is a call for caffeine to be banned. I love coffee and I use caffeine. The point is just to be clearer about the effects.

nobody* is seriously disputing that caffeine is a drug, just that it has relatively few damaging side effects compared to other drugs,

*well maybe a couple of people who were not paying attention at school.

My point is, it is a drug, it is known to be a drug, it is taught at school that it is a drug and I don't really see what your issue it