Sugar — The Most Damaging Narcotic in the History of Civilization
Narcotics in food. When we reflect on today’s “drug-culture” and the flagrant increase in drug-abuse, we generally think in terms of alcohol, heroin, L.S.D., marijuana, tobacco, cocaine and a variety of other mind benders. Certainly all of them have been and are today the cause of an untold amount of misery, of wrecked lives and the rapid breakdown of the health and morals of our race. Furthermore, the lasting damage to the gene pool is staggering.
Sugar. There is another narcotic that all of us have been using by the bucket ever since we were little babies that has undoubtedly done more damage to humankind over the last three hundred years than alcohol, tobacco, heroin, marijuana, and all the other “hard drugs” combined. It is something that comes disguised as a most pleasant tasting food, even your sweet, loving mother would administer to you by the bushel. That narcotic is sugar — ordinary, refined, crystalline, white sugar you buy at any grocery store.
Sugar a narcotic? Yes, sugar is a narcotic — an unnatural substance produced by industrial processes (mostly from sugar cane or sugar beets) by refining it down to pure sucrose, after stripping away all the vitamins, minerals, proteins, enzymes and other beneficial nutrients. What is left is a concentrated unnatural narcotic which the human body is not able to handle, at least not in anywhere near the quantities that is now ingested in today’s accepted lifestyle.
Sugar Addictive. The average American now consumes approximately 115 lbs. of sugar per year. This is per man, woman and child. The biggest reason sugar does more damage than any other poison, drug or narcotic is twofold: (a) It is considered a “food” and ingested in such massive quantities, and (b) The damaging effects begin early, from the day a baby is born and is fed sugar in its formula.
So it is with just about any factor that affects our health and well-being: It is the correct amount that is important. However, there are thousands of substances we ingest that are harmful, and doing a way with them altogether would be best.
Because of the quantities in which we have been consuming sugar is the main reason why sugar has been the most destructive culprit in all its history. It has all the right qualities for a destructive poison: it is sweet and attractive to the palate, you can never get enough of it. It is a narcotic and it is addictive. It takes years for the damages to become evident.
Sugar an Unnatural Chemical. Why is sugar so devastating to our health? One reason is it is pure chemical and through refining has been stripped of all the natural food nutritives that it originally had in the plant itself.
Sugar is first pressed as a juice from the cane (or beet) and refined into molasses. Then it is refined into brown sugar, and finally into strange white crystals C12H22O, that are an alien chemical to the human system.
Addictive. A second reason that sugar is so harmful is, it is addictive, and being delectable and seductive to the taste, it is also habit forming (there is a difference). Starting with sugar in the baby’s formula, people not only develop a strong taste for sugar but an insatiable craving for it so that they never seem to get enough of this poison.
Slow but Insidious. A third reason is that the damage sugar does is slow and insidious. It takes years before it ruins your pancreas, your adrenal glands, throws your whole endocrine system out of kilter and produces the multifarious damages we have listed in this chapter.
Foods loaded with Sugar. A fourth reason is the outrageous amounts of sugar civilized nations consume. Americans in particular are told how they are the best fed and best nourished people on the face of the earth?? If we are talking about processed junk food — this is true. If you examine the “foods” in any supermarket more closely and start reading labels, you will find just about everything contains sugar. Most of the foods are loaded with it — from cereals, to soups, to ketchup, to hotdogs.
List of Damages. We have stated that sugar is deleterious to your health: that it is more damaging than all other narcotics combined; that it is a long term chemical poison. Just what damage does sugar do to the human body?
The list is endless, but we will cite a few of the insidious ways sugar creates havoc with the human body. When we talk about sugar, we are including bad nutrition as a whole, since anyone who indulges in sugar has bad dietary habits per se.
1. Sugar is the main cause of diabetes, hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia.
2. It is either a significant or contributory cause of heart disease, arteriosclerosis, mental illness, depression, senility, hypertension, cancer.
3. It has an extremely deleterious effect in unbalancing the endocrine system and injuring its component glands such as the adrenal glands, pancreas and liver, causing the blood sugar level to fluctuate widely.
4. Sugar is by far the leading cause of dental deterioration — cavities in teeth, bleeding gums, failure of bone structure, and loss of teeth.
Do yourself a favor and stay away from this poison as much as possible, your kids will follow your good example!!
Harmonic Future 