Go back two hundred thousand years ago. Imagine our ancient ancestors, the first Homo sapiens, exploring the African countryside where they originated, hunting for food. They probably ate a diet composed of meat, nuts, fruit, and assorted vegetables. Simple, clean, nutritious. The only sugar they ever ingested was that found in ripe fruit, or the occasional bee hive that they managed to plunder. Sugar was a rare treat, and over the next 199,000 years, we as a species were genetically programmed to like eating it, since food containing sugar was nutritionally dense and high energy. Our body learned to release certain chemicals at the sight of sugary food, giving our body pleasurable feelings so that we associated sugar with feeling good.

Think about it: we’re genetically programmed to like sugar. We learned to associate sugar with good nutrition. This was fine when sugar was only found in ripe fruit and honey, but when a little more than a thousand years ago sugar production was discovered and spread across the world, suddenly humans had the ability to trick their body into releasing those chemicals without needing to eat the nutritionally dense food. Raw sugar, without nutritional benefits. Our bodies don’t recognize this chance, and keep rewarding us without realizing we’re cheating. In effect, we’ve hacked our own brains.

Now, look at what has taken place over the last century. As food production became more centralized, as certain small stores became more successful and expanded, became thriving companies, merged, became huge conglomerates, expanded, went international, the people responsible for turning a profit figured out a basic truth. If you put sugar in something, you will get people to eat it. Doesn’t matter what the nutritional value of that object is, if it tastes sweet, people’s brains will release those chemicals and reward them for eating it.

The result is spread across our supermarket aisles. Look, for example, at the ingredients of Little Debbie’s Zebra Cakes: sugar, corn syrup, enriched bleached flour, riboflavin, water, palm kernel oil, dextrose, soybean oil, egg whites, emulsifiers, sorbitan monostearate, soy lecithin, sodium strearoyl lactylate, proplylene glycol monostearate… the ingredient list becomes increasingly strange and hard to pronounce. But what’s the first ingredient listed? Sugar. And how many of those ingredients, beyond egg whites, water and flour do you think your cavemen ancestors ate? And what effect do you think those chemicals have on your body?

A Gallup poll in October 2009 listed the rise of diabetes in the US as having climbed to 11.3% of all Americans (26 million), up from the 10.4% in the first quarter of 2008. If this trend continues, 15% of Americans (more than 37 million) will be living with diabetes by 2015. Obesity rates in America rose during the same time period from 25.1% to 26.4% of all Americans.

Go to your local supermarket, and look at all those brightly lit packages. Look at all those advertisements for sweets and snacks with sugar in them. Check the ingredient labels, and realize that your brain has been hacked. You are being tricked into rewarding your system for eating chemicals and sugar. Consider the rise in obesity and diabetes in the nation, and realize that as a nation, we need to understand our sugar craving if we are to take control of it, and find a way to turn these trends around.

Author Bio: Be sure to eat healthy and try Shakeology, a scientifically formulated smoothie that has 100’s of nutritionally dense ingredients. It’s ridiculously good good for you. Combine good food with exercise, and try the infamous P90X Workout. Revolutionize your body in 90 days!

Category: Wellness, Fitness and Diet
Keywords: sugar,diet,nutrition,obesity,diabetes,sucrose,glucose,fructose,weight loss,fat,unhealthy,junk food