Check out the posting from Dr. Briffa: http://www.drbriffa.com/2011/12/30/is-now-the-time-to-target-sweet-foodstuffs-in-your-diet/
This article is reminder for us here as the New Year begins to target the sweets that are problems for us, especially that sneaky sugar known as fructose. Since fruit has long had a good reputation it is hard for many people to realize that fruit is still plain old sweet in the body. Fruit these days has been so hybridized that it has probably ten times the amount of sugar as in paleo times. Further, we get fruit year around from all over the world, whereas primitive humans would have had very little fruit for a limited time of the year.
Fruit, then, can trigger major sweet cravings, and as Dr. Briffa, Gary Taubes, and many others point out, the body is actually damaged by fructose as well as all the other sugars.
Additionally, Briffa reminds us that artificial sweeteners create a problem in our brains since they are 200-600 times sweeter than table sugar, so in effect when we drink a diet soda we are promising the brain that kind of food value, and when no food appears, cravings are increased even more.
The diet sodas have been a major challenge for me, so I have found that if I only have them with food, then I don’t seem to get the craving trigger. I drink very few compared to the old days, and find they don’t seem to taste as good either. As we all know, drinking pure water or seltzer is far better, but sometimes we want to mix it up a bit, but do so safely.
Yours for health in 2012,
Nan aka Sugarbaby
Sugaraholics 