It’s a harmless-looking, but dangerous white powder. It’s more addictive than heroin, cocaine, and alcohol. It’s sold everywhere; even a few meters away from your school, your house, or your workplace. It’s in practically every meal or beverage we consume. It’s a worldwide addiction. Once we consume this powder, it leads to a craving for more and more and more until we’re ultimately enslaved by it. What is this substance of abuse that causes the death of over 1.5 million people a year, worldwide? It’s β-D-Fructofuranosyl α-D-glucopyranoside. Still confused? It’s also known as sucrose, or table sugar.
As a scientific experiment, animals were put inside a cage and given the choice to drink sugar or cocaine, and we can predict what they chose to have. Sugar. It’s a drug that brings you closer to your demise. How? From diabetes, obesity, heart disease, cancer, and depression to dementia, and hypoglycemia, all these diseases are caused by this deadly and pernicious drug. Sugar impairs your cognitive skills and self-control, similar to any other psychometric drug. Even a single instance of sugar leads to a deficit in your attention span or memory. Though at first, sugar can make you feel on top of the world, individuals with type 2 diabetes have been reported to have increased feelings of sadness, distress, and anxiety. And if falling victim to all these diseases due to sugar was not bad enough, research shows that sugar interferes with the way your body fights diseases; your immune system. Sugar intake can cause behavioural and neurochemical changes similar to the effects of a substance of abuse. It shoots up the levels of serotonin and dopamine in our brains, similar to what a narcotic does. Hence, its definition as a drug. A drug you consume every single day, maybe even a few minutes before reading this.
So the next time you get a certain yearning for that doughnut or pastry, don’t lose sight of the fact that you’re not just satisfying your sweet tooth, but you’re stepping on a path, a path leading to an addiction to a deadly drug.