Sweet Poison: Sugar Addiction

Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 13 April 2023…

Hey Y’all!

Good morning and happy Thursday! It’s another beautiful morning in the Ozarks! This is the way Spring should feel. The trees are starting to show shades of green and the grass continues to grow. The animals are great today. The sheep and beef cows continue to pick at the grass growing in their areas while still eating hay. We still plan to get them on the move this weekend. The hogs only have a few days left on the farm and we are already planning for the arrival of the next 10 in a couple of weeks. I’ll chat a bit about each of the pics today. In the top pic, we tried to capture our make-shift video studio, on the kitchen countertop. You can see the incubators in the background behind the tripods, cameras, lights, and such. Our video session yesterday included 3 different camera angles of us chatting in the kitchen with multiple clips from other locations. We need to get quicker at editing…quickly. The hills are looking very green this morning. The animals would love to get loose on that new grass! The next pic is the first batch of layer chicks, completely comfortable in their outside coop. They are maturing quickly and even have tail feathers. Next is the second batch of layer chicks, hanging out in the brooder until they get more feathers and can join the first batch outside. Two ducks are next. The black one is a Cayuga and the tan one is a Buff Orpington. We have both Buff Orpington ducks and chickens. The green shimmer on the Cayuga caught my eye this morning. The last pic is a representative look at our pork freezers. We separate each cut/flavor into its own basket making it easier for us to keep inventory and find products. We have 11 chest deep freezers! We spent most of the day yesterday working on shooting our next video. Today, we will work on video editing and make cheese.

I feel like we have a good enough relationship at this point to start sharing some of my more controversial views on things. I’ll start with my view on sugar and a bold statement. Sugar is more drug than food. My thesis is that sugar is addictive and sugar addiction shares similarities with drug addictions and poses health risks. I’ll start with the health risks. Excessive sugar intake has been linked to numerous health risks, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and certain types of cancer. A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that people who consume more than 25% of their daily calories from added sugars are twice as likely to die from heart disease as those who consume less than 10%. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a study that found consuming high levels of sugar may increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, even in those who are not overweight. As of 2021, according to the CDC, over 34 million Americans—about 10.5% of the population have diabetes and 90-95% have type 2 diabetes. In 2021, the CDC also stated that 88 million Americans, 34% of the population, are pre diabetic. The CDC reports that the number of children and adolescents with type 2 diabetes has increased significantly over the past two decades and it is now one of the most common chronic diseases among children and adolescents in the US. In 2007, researchers at the University of Bordeaux found that refined sugar is 4 times more addictive than cocaine. There are many studies that discuss sugar’s impact on the brain by triggering the endorphin centers having a heroin-like impact. The abnormally high stimulation of these receptors by sugar-rich foods generates excessive reward signals in the brain, leading to addiction. A study published by the journal Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews found that sugar can be addictive in the same way that drugs are addictive, and that sugar withdrawal can cause symptoms similar to drug withdrawal. With this knowledge, I charge the food industry with creating foods, and adding sugar to foods, solely with the purpose of causing addiction thereby increasing profits. There are hundreds of different ingredients that you may see in food products that are actually sugar, just hidden behind an obscure word like galactose or treacle. I encourage you to take a hard look at your food ingredients and find the crazy places sugar is added. That’s it. Just find all of the places you are getting sugar. [Spoiler alert—It’s really hard to find all of the different names for sugar and all of the ways industry hides it from you.] We did this, 4 years ago. We were floored by all of the places industry hides sugar. Subsequently, we decided that we would take control of our health and end our sugar addiction.

Local Farm Report for 12 April 2023:

Harvest:

31 Chicken eggs

12 Duck eggs

1 Goose egg

3 Guinea eggs

6 1/4 Gallons of milk

Cheers! Psycho & Shelley