Sugar and Addiction

The quick answer:  The objective in eating less sugar is not to replace sugar with sugar-like substitutes, but simply to eat less sugar.  The split pea soup recipe attached delivers wonderful sugar-free flavor.

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Addiction

What’s addiction but the inability to resist harmful behavior.  Though known through out history, the rapid spread of addictive behavior is a phenomenon of our time.  The growing variety of addictions suggests a fundamental human vulnerability triggered by the modern diet and way of living.  Though some people are more vulnerable than others, with repeated exposure anyone is susceptible. 

Food addictions, as we have seen, make a good business for the suppliers.  The success of Coca-Cola, which originally contained cocaine, and of other caffeinated and sugary drinks is testimony to this.  These and other sugary foods are mildly addictive to most, but some find them highly addictive.  A central challenge of healthy eating and living is to live free of addictions. 

Occasionally we hear the refrain, “moderation in all things.”  This is actually a way of saying everything is okay, and we know that isn’t so.  Some things, like tobacco, or trans fats, should be avoided completely.  Other things—like sugar or sugar substitutes—should be minimized.  It would be wiser to say, “moderation in all good things.”

The reader comments to the last post suggest that even diet sodas are addictive and one reader asked for ideas on how to quit.  Serious addiction requires professional help and programs exist to provide such assistance, but here are a few suggestions for the mildly addicted:

1. Make your home a safe place:  If something desirable is in your home, it will be eaten.  So keep your addictions out of the home.  Healthy Change #8, for example, said to “buy candy a piece at a time; never bring a box or bag of candy into the home.”  So if you’re unable to resist soda drinks, just buy one when you do your weekly shopping.  And get a hacksaw and cut the drink holders out of your car.  Ha ha.  
2. Seek friends who don’t share your addiction.  A recent book, Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks, followed the behavior of people who stopped smoking, a difficult addiction.  Those who were successful gravitated to social groups who didn’t smoke.  Try inviting your friends to quit unhealthy practices with you; the best outcome is when friends improve together.
3. Eat a healthy diet.  Poor nutrition is addictive nutrition—some researchers, for example, describe sugar as “the mother of all addictions.”  The science is not complete but there is evidence of the depressive effect of sugar on neuro-transmitters like serotonin, which leads to addictive behavior to compensate.  The sugar substitutes may also have this effect.
4. Remember you’re being watched.  There is scripture about the sins of the fathers passing to the sons, and their sons.   If you want to protect your children, work very hard at eating well and avoiding addictive behavior.  The generation X’ers who embraced street drugs grew up in a culture where adults abused prescription drugs.
5. Replace your addiction with something better.  Take a walk when you’re tempted to reach for a diet drink.  Water always tastes better after a walk.

Stevia

Readers have asked about stevia as a replacement for artificial sweeteners.  I think the question misses the point—to improve our diet the safest approach is to reduce all sweeteners, not just our sugar intake.  There is no research, to my knowledge, that shows a total health benefit from replacing sugar with any chemical that has the same sweetening effect.  To improve health and longevity, we need to de-sweeten the modern diet and return to traditional flavors.

Look at the history:  A new chemical or product is regularly discovered and marketed to replace one found addictive or unhealthy.  Since sugar was shown to be unhealthy in the amount being consumed, we have seen a series of potently sweet new chemicals being introduced, from saccharine to cyclamate, to sucralose, to aspartame to the most potent yet, neotame (acesulfame potassium).  Short-term, these products are probably safe to use.  The long-term safety remains unknown and may never be known due to the needle-in-the-haystack difficulty of proving what makes us ill among the thousands of foods we eat. 

Stevia is a traditional sweetener in Latin America and is now used around the world, especially in Asia.  China—not generally considered a safe source for processed foods—is a significant exporter of stevia sweeteners.  The leaves, once used intact, are now chemically processed to isolate several of the sweetening molecules.  Two, stevioside and rebaudioside A are marketed in different forms.  Rebaudioside A was approved for the FDA’s GRAS (generally regarded as safe) list in 2009, which simplifies its addition to food products.  Coca-Cola and Cargill developed a stevia product called Truvia, and Pepsi-Co developed PureVia.  The use of these products will grow and we eat at our risk.

We have used stevia products in our home but have stopped.  My beautiful wife didn’t care for the after taste and I decided I just didn’t know enough about how they are manufactured. 

Please comment:  Reducing sugar intake to the AHA guidelines of 6 tsp daily for women and 9 tsp for men is about a 75% reduction for the average American.  The goal is to de-sweeten our diet, not just to replace sugar with non-sugar sweeteners.  Please share your experience with eating less sugar (whatever the form). 

Recipe:  Split Pea with Ham Bone

In the post on legumes I promised to share our recipe for split pea soup.  It’s a traditional dish good for several meals, full of flavor without resorting to sugar.  We started with the Cooks Illustrated recipe, which follows the traditional ingredients for legume soups but took too long.  Split pea soups are a thrifty dish for using ham bones left over from a Sunday dinner.  We cooked this twice, once with a ham bone from the freezer, the second time using cooked ham hock/shoulder from the store.  Because the amount of bone will vary, we wrote the recipe per pound of bone:

Ingredients

1# ham bone with a little meat attached, or a ham hock/shoulder

4-6 cups water, or enough to cover ham bone

1-2 bay leaves

1 cup split peas, rinsed

½ tsp thyme, dried

1 T EVOO

1 medium onion, chopped

1 carrot, chopped

1 celery stalk, chopped

1 T butter

1 garlic clove, minced (optional)

1 new potato, cubed (optional)

Tabasco sauce (optional)

Directions

1. Place the bones with meat in a suitable pot with bay leaves.  Bring to boil and simmer 2-1/2 hours.
2. Remove the bone from the pot and set aside to cool.  Add split peas and thyme to the pot.  Return to boil and simmer 45 minutes until peas are soft.  (Steps #3 and 4 can be done during the 45 minutes.)
3. While the peas are simmering, add olive oil to a frying pan and sauté carrots, celery, and onion about ten minutes, until soft and moisture is evaporated.  Clear a little space in the pan and add butter and optional garlic, then stir into the vegetable mixture. 
4. Remove the meat from the cooled bone(s) and chop into small pieces.
5. Place the vegetable mixture, cubed potato, and meat in the pot of split peas.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Simmer for 20 minutes.  Add optional Tabasco sauce to taste and serve after cooling.  (During step #5 a green salad can be prepared and served with bread.) 

Note:  Not counting the 2-1/2 hours of step #1, this meal can be prepared in a little over an hour.  Cook it on a day when you have extra time and you’ll have enough leftovers for several more meals.  A 3# ham bone made enough to freeze a quart and provide two dinners and a lunch for two people. 

Comments

[Stephanie]

In our household (at least with my kids), our desserts tend to be some form of fruit. We have found that fruit is naturally so sweet, it works great at satisfying that after-meal-sweet-craving and helps us feel full and satisfied after a meal. We occasionally do some sugar (ice cream, brownies, etc) but we save those for special times. And because we control the sugar intake at home, I don't worry so much about the sucker my kids get after church or the snacks in nursery.

When I was the Young Womens Pres in my ward, I hated the fact that after every activity, everyone snacked on sweets. So I started bringing veggie trays and cut up fruit. One activity the table was full of my fruit (apples and PB) and veggies (carrots, celery, etc) and someone else's sweets. I had to refill my tray 4 or 5 times throughout the night! The teens actually preferred the fruit or veggie snack instead. (BTW, I bought the natural PB, not the kind full of sugar). It may have cost a little more money from the budget, but I felt we were teaching the youth a valuable lesson. And it started to change what the other leaders brought. I also try to bring healthy food (e.g. homemade bread) to auctions, etc. The last scout auction we had, I was the ONLY person to bring a not dessert food to auction off! But we have to start somewhere, right?

[Shirella]

I have found for me that there is truly a difference between not just eating less sugar, but not eating refined white sugar. When the refined white is eliminated (including in hidden places like catsup), yet other sources are used (like honey, agave nectar), the sugar craving is significantly less; you are satisfied with less and don't have the continual drive to eat the sweets until you're sick. So if you have a hard time avoiding the refined white sugar, do the other types of sweeteners religiously and with a nutrient-dense diet, you'll start to not have that sugar drive.

[Mims]

I have noticed that there are two different types when it comes to breaking an addiction, the ones that have to wean, and the ones that have to stop cold turkey. My brother and I are a good example of that (though admittedly, I have only done "detoxes" to minimize my consumption in the end). When I want to quit something I quit it directly and set a goal, one week without chocolate (my biggest problem) and I'll treat myself wit a trip to an exhibit I've wanted to see, one month without it and I can go to the weekend course I really want to go to or buy that coat I really want instead of a cheaper one that would be perfectly adequate. My brother on the other hand needs to wean himself off things, he usually starts by only allowing himself something at specific times of the day or specific situations, like no coke between meals except for the one directly when he got home from work, which then became only at meals, which became only at meals away from home (or when it would be rude not to accept). The tricky part is finding out which type you are.

[mhssdy mhssdy]

Many smart senior people (un-named because their companies are involved in this snake-oil sale) have confirmed this for me, saying "sentiment analysis software? don't bother" wrhprn wrhprn - Belstaff Leather Jacket.

[Levin]

Some of us are already suffering from serious addiction and professional help is a must already, but with those very helpful tips those that are just on the brink of being an addict can still be spared from such. I too am struggling to fight my 'sweet tooth cravings' but I already had a firm resolve to try healthy alternatives instead especially having a family member suffer from diabetes.

[Emily]

How much water do you boil the ham bone in for 2.5 hours? enough to cover it or more. It was never specified in the recipe, thanks!
-Emily

[Skip Hellewell]

Golly Emily, how did I not note the water? I use 4-6 cups, enough to cover the ham bone. I revised the recipe. This recipe can also be doubled if there's extra meat on the ham bone. Thanks for your comment. Skip