Recently I decided to cut down immensely on eating refined sugar. I even fasted from the sugar for 3 days and now I do it for one whole day once a week. Eventually I would like to eat none, besides the natural sugar that comes from our God’s pharmacy of raw fruits and vegetables. While I did these fasts I felt a difference, now I know it was only a few days at the most but my stomach felt as if it was digesting properly and without pain. I eventually want to stop eating refined sugars all together. I was so amazed at how everything I ate on a daily basis had sugar. It was at least 1 gram of sugar that I saw in everything. Sugar, in all forms, is a simple carbohydrate that the body converts into glucose and uses for energy. But the effect on the body and your overall health depends on the type of sugar you’re eating, either natural or refined. And when you learn to read labels check out the chart below that Dr. Gloria Gilbere created of the hidden names of sugar, you will be blown away.

(See below for link to pic)

The Food Babe states in one of her blogs that refined sugar is the devil, and if you see all the negative effects that refined sugar does to the body it’s hard not to think that. She goes on to say that there is little to no nutritional value in these refined sugars. Eating refined sugar is addictive, makes you fat, tired, depressed, age faster, makes your skin dull, weakens immunity and when consumed in excess causes all sorts of diseases. This is why it is so important to be on a healthful diet with lots of raw fruits and vegetables, stay away from the processed foods, they are just making us sicker and dumbing us down so much.

I copied and pasted a blog written by Dr. Gloria Gilbere last year in May 2015. Read below:

“You obviously know how detrimental sugar is to your health. Yet, when working with clients and I ask them to avoid sugar in their wellness protocol they reply that they’re using a sugar they believe to be “healthy”…oh really? SO, I created a pdf that you can print so you don’t become victim of “Sweet Deception”…sugar is sugar…AND is more addictive than cocaine, yes, you read that right!

Do what I do and recommend, use a natural zero calorie sweetener like Stevia, LoHan, or Lakanto(monk fruit). The only one you measure for baking exactly the same as sugar is Lakanto, it comes in original and golden (which taste just like brown sugar with a delectable aroma)…no excuses, get the sugar out of your diet or later you’ll be forced to when you develop inflammatory disorders, diabetes or, worse yet, cancer…sugar feeds abnormal cell growth! Click to Download AKA Sugar ” I personally prefer Lakanto monk fruit as well.

This is SO true, and yes it is more addictive than cocaine. There are tons of studies confirming this. For example, The United States National Library of Medicine states

“Available evidence in humans shows that sugar and sweetness can induce reward and craving that are comparable in magnitude to those induced by addictive drugs. Although this evidence is limited by the inherent difficulty of comparing different types of rewards and psychological experiences in humans, it is nevertheless supported by recent experimental research on sugar and sweet reward in laboratory rats. Overall, this research has revealed that sugar and sweet reward can not only substitute to addictive drugs, like cocaine, but can even be more rewarding and attractive. At the neurobiological level, the neural substrates of sugar and sweet reward appear to be more robust than those of cocaine (i.e., more resistant to functional failures), possibly reflecting past selective evolutionary pressures for seeking and taking foods high in sugar and calories”

On the left is your brain on sugar. On the right side is your brain on drugs. Notice the similarities?

For comparison, this image shows PET scans of obese and cocaine-addicted brains.

Notice that the normal brain has a lot more red stuff highlighted in it — called Dopamine. This chemical is produced in the part of the brain that is associated with reward. When someone experiences a reward — say while eating a really good meal — their Dopamine (red stuff) level spikes. For addicts, the opposite is true: That spike in Dopamine only comes in anticipation of the reward, as opposed to the actual reward itself. Later, once the reward is gotten, the effects are blunted because the brain has been flooded with dopamine as it thought about eating.

You can always try honey as a sweetener as well, it has a lot of health benefits. Honey is considered by many to be the world’s oldest sweetener. The health benefits has been noted by many people over the centuries. Even the ancient philosopher, Aristotle wrote about the many nutritional and medicinal benefits of honey.

The Main Differences Between Honey & Sugar

• Honey is regarded as a natural product while sugar is a man-made, highly processed product.
• Both of these sweeteners have glucose and fructose in them. In granulated sugar, the glucose and fructose are bonded together, these components in honey are separate.
• Fructose is more sweet tasting compared to glucose, and this is why so much fructose is being put into our processed foods today.
• Fructose doesn’t convert to energy very fast like glucose does.
• Because of this, processed foods that contain high amounts of fructose will be converted to fat more easily than honey.

“My son, eat thou honey, for it is good” — King Solomon – Proverbs: 24:13

Health Benefits:

1. Helps prevent cancer and heart disease:
Honey contains flavonoids, antioxidants which help reduce the risk of some cancers and heart disease.

2. Reduces ulcers and other gastrointestinal disorders:
Recent research shows that honey treatment may help disorders such as ulcers and bacterial gastroenteritis. This may be related to the 3rd benefit…

3. Anti-bacterial and anti-fungal:
“All honey is antibacterial, because the bees add an enzyme that makes hydrogen peroxide,” said Peter Molan, director of the Honey Research Unit at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. This contributes to the incredibly long shelf-life of honey.

4. Increases athletic performance:
Ancient Olympic athletes ate honey and dried figs to enhance their performance. This has now been verified with modern studies, showing that it is superior in maintaining glycogen levels and improving recovery time than other sweeteners.

5. Reduces cough and throat irritation:
Honey helps with coughs, particularly buckwheat honey. In a study of 110 children, a single dose of buckwheat honey was just as effective as a single dose of dextromethorphan in relieving nocturnal cough and allowing proper sleep.

6. Balances the 5 elements: 
Honey has been used in Ayurvedic medicine in India for at least 4,000 years and is considered to affect all three of the body’s primitive material imbalances positively. It is also said to be useful in improving eyesight, weight loss, curing impotence and premature ejaculation, urinary tract disorders, bronchial asthma, diarrhea and nausea.

Honey is referred as “Yogavahi” since it has a quality of penetrating the deepest tissues of the body. When honey is used with other herbal preparations, it enhances the medicinal qualities of those preparations and also helps them to reach the deeper tissues.

7. Helps regulate blood sugar:
Even though honey contains simple sugars, it is not the same as white sugar or artificial sweeteners. Its exact combination of fructose and glucose actually helps the body regulate blood sugar levels. Some honeys have a low hypoglycemic index, so they don’t jolt your blood sugar.

8. Heals wounds and burns:
External application of honey has been shown to be as effective as conventional treatment with silver sulfadiazene. It is speculated that the drying effect of the simple sugars and honey’s anti-bacterial nature combine to create this effect.

9. Is probiotic:
Some varieties of honey possess large amounts of friendly bacteria. This includes up to 6 species of lactobacilli and 4 species of bifidobacteria. This may explain many of the mysterious therapeutic properties of honey.

10. Helps improve skin:
Its anti-bacterial qualities are particularly useful for the skin, and, when used with the other ingredients, honey can also be moisturizing and nourishing. For a powerful home beauty treatment for which you probably have all the ingredients in your kitchen already, read Carrot Face Mask.

And if you still don’t believe me, do the research yourself.

1 Corinthians 10:31

“Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.”

King James Version (KJV)

Works Cited:

gloriagilbere.com

foodbabe.com

cancercenter.com

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

hiveandhoneyapiary.com

care2.com

mic.com