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RE: A Sweet Tooth (and Over-eating) May Increase Your Risk for Alcoholism
What I found really astounding was the relationship between processed sugar and cancer. They've known since colonial times! In fact it seems that all processed foods seem to have that capacity...the more processed, the more carcinogenic.
I think it may well be related to the ability of most sugars and glucose in particular to damage proteins which can induce an inflammatory response. It has also been associated with accelerated ageing mechanisms.
What the Dufty book cites is that during colonial times, the plantation owners ate refined sugar while the workers ate cane, or raw (which I find much more enjoyable and tasty) The owners got cancer and the workers didn't. More recently natives in New Guinea that lived near the coast and ate a primarily Western diet got cancer while the people in the interior didn't even have a word in their vocabulary to describe it. I've noticed myself how people that consume a lot of sugar (pop which is high in glucose) tend to show their age more profoundly than those that don't. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to escape sugar consumption. If you don't eat sugar, sweets in general or drink pop, on the average you'll still consume 50 lbs a year. Sugar is 10x as addictive as heroin. That's why they put it in foods...it keeps 'em coming back!
Yes I know. Processed foods are full of hidden sugar!