“It all comes from the same plant, maaaan.”
That’s the typical I’m-outta-whatchya-want-try-this-instead drug-dealer pitch I thought of when I saw this food documentary last night. I mean, I’ve written about how refined sugar makes your body make fat before. But what I didn’t realize until I saw this was how (addictively speaking) comparable high-fructose corn syrup is to cocaine or heroin. Yes, the claim seemed awfully dramatic at first – but it kinda makes sense after I saw some of the background and bio explanations behind it. I mean, something like the coca plant alone is fine in its original form. People make non-addictive tea outta its leaves. Same goes for corn. But, what I learned, is that when you refine either’a these things down enough – they become unnatural (kinda like when I strip my head strands platinum till the whole thing ain’t even hair anymore. And we all know going blonde is addictive…)
You’d think I’d have known about this earlier on – what with bearing a bio degree and agreeing to go vegan despite my inner Cartman’s ardent resistance and chronic demand for dairy infused confections. But I didn’t. And it’s so simple that it’s stupid. When you overly refine something down – be it HFCS or heroin – it’s no longer natural like the plant it came from. That I do remember from O.Chem lab. We’d start with one thing, add a buncha pungent elixirs to it, refine it down, and end up with this white powder (which, despite my nagging curiosity, I declined to insufflate) that was totally chemically different from whatever we’d begun with. It wasn’t the same thing.
So what happens when you’re looking at two piles of refined white powder – one of them sugar from corn and one of them cocaine from a coca plant? They’re both addictive. Both cause an imbalance in your body, hijack the addiction/reward system in your brain, and make you crave more. The tricky thing with the high-fruc-stuff, though, is that it also trolls your body machine into thinking you’re getting something you’re not. It tastes sweet, sure. But cuzza that whole “refining” process (a word that sounds a lot cleaner and classier than what actually happens to you), it doesn’t bring any party favors to your body’s food fiesta – like nutrients or minerals. They’ve been erased via refining. So what happens is that you end up reaching for more of whatever crap you’ve been shoving into your face hole because your body’s going all Ariel mermaid on you.
Your body doesn’t know there’s zero life-sustenance in what you’re eating.
It just knows that stuff that tastes like natural sugar is meant to have the health benefits of it.
So when you don’t realize those benefits, you undergo a craving – and keep reaching for more.
A delicious lie – every bite of it.
The good news, though, is that since we’re all evolved humans who know better than to sin against our bodies by shoving shiz into it that’ll lead to fleeting euphoria for a half minute before misery ensues, we can change that. By nixing the shit that’s not natural and eating the produce, nuts, seeds, and stuff that is. Yep, a dietary mod. Aaaand… this is where I lose 99% of people. And this is also where you know that sugar is an addiction. And that you are an addict. Lucky for you, the corporations feeding your addiction kinda rule the world enough to make yours chicer, cuter, and condonable than, say, a smack habit. Which is illegal. The thing, I suppose, is to decide whether laughing about the addiction (or you might go by the euphemism of “vice”) you share with heaps of other peeps (which makes it okay, right?) is comforting enough to get you through the door in a couple of months when you’re auditioning to be the next star of TLC’s “My 500 lb life”.
Luckily, though, if you’ve got both a sugar and cocaine addiction simultaneously, you probably won’t get that far.
Mostly cause you’ll eventually move onto something cheaper than coke to enjoy with your coca cola.
And won’t be able chew anymore as gaping gum holes slowly replace your teeth.