Our life can be full of paradoxes, sometimes representing our collective way of turning our back on problems, and our approach to sugar addiction is one such area. We place a considerable amount of time, effort and resource (and rightly so) in the war against illegal drugs and in a battle to try and get people to turn away from smoking. Without a doubt, smoking is definitely the most widely spread single addiction in today’s society, and it’s directly linked to a large number of very serious illnesses. Quite surprisingly however, when it comes to sugar, almost nothing is discussed in the mainstream media about its ability to cause a powerful addiction, ticking away in the background of our lives – day by day, causing debilitating health issues in people everywhere.

Professionals in the field of holistic nutrition say that our diets should be balanced, and that we should cut out any ingredients which are commonly known to be counter-productive or potentially dangerous. Unfortunately however, government nutrition experts do almost nothing to inform people of the significant issues caused by our dependency on sugar, and how this surprisingly simple and uncomplicated product can result in an addiction as difficult to overcome as some of the drugs listed on the restricted schedules.

Just as with every other addictive substance, refined sugar has next to no value at all for your body. Quite the opposite actually, as ingestion of this substance tends to leach away vitamins and minerals from your bloodstream to be metabolized. It’s difficult not to notice the blatantly obvious analogy between many of the most addictive and dangerous illegal substances and our simple act of eating or drinking large quantities of sugar. All of these substances create an unnatural “high,” and can result in long-term organ damage if used regularly over time.

When we add sugar to foods or drinks or rely on processed items that are heavily infused with simple sugars, then we are choosing that initial boost of energy and reward because of our “sweet tooth,” with a subsequent crash and a conversion of the ingredients into stored fat. While most of the illegal, scheduled drugs might be widely known to cause significant problems for our major organs, excessive use of simple sugar can lead to a pattern of repeated highs and lows of insulin production, which over a period of time, can lead to the onset of diabetes. All that stored fat will invariably lead to obesity and all the problems that condition brings with it.

When sugar was first introduced to our diet it was touted as the purest form of food and one which required very little in the way of preparation. It is this very simplicity that has undoubtedly caused simple and refined sugars to become one of the scourges of our modern diet. Drugs often represent the easy way out within any situation and sugar represents an easy, every day, “acceptable” fix.

In most instances, holistic health solutions focus our attention on eating a balanced, natural diet, leading a healthy lifestyle, exercising and avoiding any kind of excess. Moderating our sugar intake ranks very highly on a list of concerns and requires us to realize that our sugar addiction can be very damaging indeed.