Your Brain Is a Zombie for Sugar

Your Brain Is A Zombie For SugarAmericans love sugar more than a fat kid loves cake.. actually pretty much exactly the same as a fat kid loves cake.

Which is to say… a whole, whole lot.

We eat about 100 pounds of sugar each every year.

When Hostess filed for bankruptcy last year, we went into a national state of crisis over the impending lack of Twinkies. We were buying them up on Ebay for a thousand bucks a box and hoarding them in the attic like the zombies were coming for our Twinkies instead of our brains.

Truth is it’s our brains that are the zombies… zombies for sugar.

Here’s the big fat lie us big boned folk like to tell ourselves about our addiction to food: We tell ourselves that being addicted to food is different.

You don’t HAVE to smoke cigarettes, drink booze or snort drugs. We HAVE to eat.

Well, yes. We have to eat.

I have a buddy who’s fascinated by the hoarder culture and the impending apocalypse. He and I have had several what if conversations…. What are you gonna do when the zombies attack. What if things did go to hell for while?

What would you need to survive? Water, an energy source, tools, shelter, protection… and way, way down at the bottom on our zombie preparedness checklist was food.

You can live without water for maybe 3 days, but the truth is you can live without food for 30 days. If push came to shove, you could live on a pound of dried beans and a jar of Jiffy Peanut butter for months.

Yes. We have to eat for survival. For Fuel.

But mostly we don’t eat for survival and mostly we don’t eat for fuel.

We eat for sport. And mostly, we eat for sugar.

We’re not addicted to food. We’re addicted to sugar.

And it’s not just the sugar in the fat kid’s cakes and candy bars. We’re addicted to sugar in all its forms. All the junk foods. All the fast foods. And we use the term foods loosely, cause most of what we eat ain’t food. It’s calorie dense, partially digestible food-like substances.

It’s not food because it contains almost no nutritional value, just empty calories…. and sugar.

Sugar is a glorious thing. It makes your brain sparkle.

But Sugar isn’t a food. It’s a drug.

Food fuels you, nourishes you, strengthens you, gives you the energy you need to lead your life.

Sugar just tastes oh so sweet and scratches an itch in your head. But like heroin, or nicotine, or booze it provides no lasting sustenance or relief. Only the desire, the need to scratch the itch again. And soon.

Hell, it says so on the package: no one can eat just one.

We’re addicted to sugar and its horde of carbohydrate carriers. We’re no more likely to put down an open bag of cookies than a crackhead is to put down the pipe.

But the first step to overcoming any addiction is admitting that there is a problem.

Food isn’t why you’re fat. Food isn’t the problem.

Sugar is the problem.

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Terry LancasterTerry Lancaster is the VP of Making S#!% Happen at Instant Events Automotive Advertising, father of 3 teenage daughters and a Beer League Hockey All Star, as if there could ever be such a thing.

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