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Simple sugar is really more poisonous and addictive than some of the banned drugs

Saying that eating large amounts of simple sugar is worse than small amounts of some of the banned drugs is one thing. But saying that sugar is poisonous, or simply worse than banned drugs, is a little too much.

That's especially true since our bodies essentially run on glucose. Supplying food closer to that state means faster utilization, which in turn helps a lot in situations of physical exertion. I would love to see the rat experiment repeated for athletic rats, where they train an hour a day or more.

On glucose and ketones, with glucose being the first choice.

and alcohol, with alcohol being the first choice.

Ok, maybe a bad choice of wording, or maybe not if you think about it. Definition of poison "In the context of biology, poisons are substances that cause disturbances to organisms, usually by chemical reaction or other activity on the molecular scale, when a sufficient quantity is absorbed by an organism." I think we could agree that eating 200-300gr cake filled with sugars IS causing disturbances (certainly more than a 150gr peace of fish and 150gr salad) that are bad and when you repeat eating that cake we all know where that leads to and what adverse effects it has on the body and mind. Compare that adverse and permanent damage that sugar can cause to damage that for example LSD was proven to cause (none). And you can go to jail for taking LSD, but on the other hand we subsidies sugar production and we empower bad behaviour of eating junk food in many ways. For example I watched yesterday that in UK many people who are not sick, they just are overeating and are overweight so they can not work now are given large amounts of money and housing. There are people that are using that help for decades and are not working, not loosing weight and not expected to, they are put in the category with really disabled people (which is really sad, this people can help themselves and people without limbs cant grow another.. or maybe it just shows the power of sugar addiction for some people).

But large amounts of sugar will make you sick. Hence it's poison (in the large amounts we eat it in).

Sugars is what the body runs on. Saying it is poison is equal to saying water is poison, because too much water will kill you. Or salt, or fats, or anything the human body depends on - you can have too much of it all, but it isn't poison.

One of the core tenets of toxicology is actually that everything is toxic; the varying amounts and damage it causes are what being toxic is all about.

Source: I gave a presentation once in middle school. ;)

There's also the old saying that "anything in excess is poison".

Downvoted for this comment?

Don't people remember the story of the woman who died drinking water to win a Nintendo? http://www.cbsnews.com/news/woman-dies-after-water-drinking-...

And there is such a thing as water poisoning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication

This, I can't imagine anyone reaching toxic levels of glucose in their bloodstream by oral means, as nausea and vomiting are symptoms of hyperglycemia, preventing further intake.

Though I might underestimate people's addiction, maybe there are IV glucose junkies out there now?

Google "glucose toxicity" and you will get many papers describing it under certain conditions or in excess amounts.

Also, there is diabetis, which should be enough evidence in itself that eating excessive amounts of sugar for a long time is really bad.

Then again, too much of nearly anything is bad. There are lots of known cases of people dying of drinking too much water, for example, but that doesn't make water a bad thing in itself.

Everything is toxic in high enough doses, even water.

I notice that you changed the text in the parents post from "some banned drugs" to "banned drugs", making the common mistake of grouping them all together and treating them as one category. (To me this indicates a fair amount of ignorance on the subject.)

Heart disease is the biggest killer in the UK, and I am assuming many other developed countries, so it could be could be easily argued that anything that causes obesity should be labeled more harmful than say psilocybin mushrooms, which I believe have very low toxicity. Just because they are banned, doesn't make psilocybin mushrooms harmful.

I don't agree with your last point, but very much do agree that we become acclimated to the high levels of sugar. Just last year I was eating a lot more sweet than I do now, usually in the form of a Starbucks or a Jamba juice. I cut that out completely, (not caffeine, just caffeine from Starbucks) and haven't had anything from either place in many months.

Last week the kids needed a snack and we stopped at Jamba. I ordered my old regular, Orange Dream, which I split in 3, and when I took a sip of mine, I literally spit it out. It had somehow become disgustingly sweet to me, I couldn't even drink it, just threw it away.

As we were walking back to the car I was just shaking my head, thinking, how the hell could I have ever liked that?!

One I've noticed is that the more I eat dark chocolate (and the darker it is), the less I like milk chocolate.

> Simple sugar is really more poisonous and addictive than some of the banned drugs

This is ridiculous. Marathoners, mountain climbers, and other endurance athletes survive on simple sugars during their activities, mainly in the form of maltodextrin energy gels. Maltodextrin is classified as "complex," but it's metabolized so quickly it might as well be simple. That's why it's used in sports.

I think using these during intense activity is probably somewhat different from sitting in front of the couch eating chocolate every night. I personally don't have much of a sweet tooth these days, but I do get cravings for sugar when I do a long bike ride, or climb a mountain.

Do you not eat fruit at all? I do not eat sugar often (cakes, cookies, desert, candy, etc) but I have fruit all the time.

I do not eat fruit when I am on a diet to lose weight. Just clean diet (meats, eggs, nuts, lots of vegetables, few types of oils and butters, mostly no dairy, no fruits (maybe a little of berries), no junks...) and exercise. Fructose is metabolised different than glucose and is bad to eat when trying to lose weight, you would not die of course or something like that, it would just slow the process. But otherwise when losing weight is not a primary goal I eat fruits, but max 1 fruit per day or equivalent of berries or other smaller fruits.

The sickness is industrial food uses mass amounts of sugar, artificial sweeteners, fat, salt, and manufactured 'flavor' to hide what was otherwise made to taste terrible in the process of being engineered to be easy and shelf-stable (and to a degree to exploit human food-psychology).

Sugar, fat, and salt are all essential to a healthy properly functioning body – it is just that industrial foods give you these things in unhealthy proportions and in foods deprived of much of their original nutrition.

Artificial sweeteners can also do weird things to your taste and metabolism.

A big source of the problem? Caffeine. Not it's slightly addictive stimulant properties, but it's bitterness which has to be covered up by extreme amounts of sugar and carbonation.