Sugar is one of the worst foods you can eat. It’s so addictive that I still get the urge to have a taste of something sweet, despite eating a low-carbohydrate diet for well over a year.
According to Gary Taubes’ Good Calories, Bad Calories
Sugar is the worst offender because it is so quickly absorbed by the body, causing insulin levels to spike dramatically. All carbohydrates cause an insulin response, but complex carbohydrates take longer to process. You still need loads of insulin to handle it all, but the insulin hits you more slowly when you eat a sweet potato compared to drinking a glass of soda or fruit juice.
Yes, fruit is bad for you. I’m inclined to believe that the benefit from whatever beneficial vitamins and phytonutrients exist in fruit does not justify consuming all that sugar. Eating carbohydrates in any form contributes to chronically elevated insulin levels, which leads to all of the diseases of Western Civilization. This includes supposedly healthy fruits.
It’s fruit that I often crave. I long ago eliminated processed food entirely (and have never felt better), but I still eat bananas and oranges now and then. However, I know that it’s best to get the small amount of carbohydrates in my diet from non-fruit sources.
It’s hard to abstain from sugar. It is an incredibly addictive substance; probably more so than drugs. How many people have you known to successfully quit using alcohol, prescription drugs, or street drugs? Although many fail, many do succeed. Now, how many people have you known to successfully quit eating sugar? I know very few. It’s hard.
You might argue that few people have successfully quit sugar because few people believe that sugar is dangerous. I would argue that the evidence has been around for well over a hundred years, but nobody even wants to admit that it’s a problem because it tastes so good and causes no observable short-term problems like drugs.
We like to rationalize that because sugar comes from nature, it must be wholesome and good for us. Yet there are countless viruses, bacteria, and microbes that are extremely bad for us, although completely natural.
Maybe moderation is the answer, some say. I say, if you know something to be a poison, then why would you allow yourself a “moderate” amount of it?
So how do you quit sugar?
I can think of many compelling reasons not to eat sugar (and if you read Good Calories, Bad Calories
Sugar feeds cancer cells. Blood glucose (what you get when you digest carbs) is the exclusive fuel of cancer. And every one of us has cancer cells in our bodies. A healthy immune system normally deals with the small number of cancerous cells that develop among the trillions of cells in each human body. Cancer is inside of you right now, struggling to achieve unrestrained growth at the expense of your life.
When you eat carbs and sugars, you’re feeding cancer. Help your immune system fight cancerous cells and leave the fruit on the tree.
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3 Comments
Tod,
I enjoyed your post about sugar.
Nine months ago, I reached the same conclusions as you did in the post about carbs. I then eliminated *all* carbs and have not had any fruit or vegetables since then.
For nine months, I have eaten only meat, which includes beef, chicken, turkey, pork, and fish. My favorite is beef and I usually eat a ribeye steak everyday, as well as hamburgers.
In any case, I have noticed concrete positive results already. Examples include: I have rock-solid stable energy throughout the day (because my blood sugar level is constant), I no longer have allergic reactions to plant pollens, superfluous body fat has melted away, I am more alert, fecal elimination is much improved (it is a myth that we need to eat fiber), and I have a more stable mental state. There are other positive discernable benefits, but those are the ones that came to the top of my head.
I also expect that the elimination of carbs will keep me healthy for longer, such as the positive effect you mentioned about glucose and cancer.
If carbs are objectively bad and are “poison,” as you suggest, then why eat *any* at all? That was the question that I asked myself nine months ago and the answer caused me to eliminate all carbs. That is why I eat only meat and drink only water. That is certainly way outside the “mainstream” of our society, but it has given me robust health and, hopefully, will continue to do so well into old age, which, by the way, makes “retirement” a prospect much more appealing than sitting by a window and watching your body and health waste away. If I ever choose to “retire,” I look forward to many active years of enjoyment.
I stopped reading at “Yes, fruit is bad for you”
Im sorry but mother nature doesnt make mistakes.
“nature doesnt make mistakes”
Really? How about cancer, polio, and earthquakes?
The problem is your assumption that because it’s found in nature and it’s food, it’s okay to eat. It may be in the best evolutionary “interest” of fruit to be eaten by humans, but that does not mean it is in your best interest to eat it.
Also, modern fruits are very different than what were available to paleolithic man. We have selectively bred fruit to be sweeter during the last few thousand years. The apples a caveman might have eaten probably tasted more like crab apples. So what you see in the grocery store is as much a product of man as it is of nature.