May-June 2003

NEW DAWN

www.newdawnmagazine.com

MIND

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BODY

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SPIRIT

ure white, deliciously sweetand nutritionally useless.Sugar in the morning, sugar

ach wall causing blood sugar levels torise, then plummet. First, the blood sugarlevel skyrockets and causes the pancreasto secrete insulin to compensate for theexcess blood sugar. Afterward, the bloodsugar level drops below normal. Thisstate has been coined the sugar blues.The downside of the sugar blues is a stateof depression, lethargy and irritability.The biggest reason sugar does moredamage than any other poison, drug ornarcotic is twofold:(a) It is considered a “food” and in-gested in such massive quantities, and(b) The damaging effects begin early,from the day a baby is born and is fedsugar in its formula. Even mother’s milkis contaminated with it if the mothereats sugar, and(c) Practically 95% of people are ad-dicted to it to some degree or other.It has been said the criteria as towhether a substance is harmful or medi-cally beneficial is the quantity used in thehuman body. To point to a dramatic il-lustration: we all know the venom of arattlesnake, cobra, water moccasin, coral,and other venomous snake is deadly tothe human system. There are somesnakes whose bite is so deadly it cancause death within a matter of seconds.Nevertheless, even snake venom, deadlyas it is, has been used for therapeutic,medical purposes when used in minutequantities.

History of Sugar

Whereas sugar had been around inminute quantities for several thousandyears, it was practically unknown andformed an insignificant part of the aver-age diet in the Classical civilisations ofEgypt, Greece and Rome. The Greeks(who had a word for nearly everything)did not even have a word for it. Even inmedieval Europe it was practically un-known and then only a rare delicacy inthe royal courts.During the last major Crusade thatended in 1204, some of the ChristianCrusaders were introduced to sugar usedby the Saracens. The Moors when invad-ing and colonising the southern part ofSpain grew sugar cane on Spanish soiland refined sugar. When Spain drove outthe Moors, it inherited some of the caneplantations. It was during this time thatChristendom took its first big bite of theforbidden fruit and liked it.

An Unnatural Chemical

Why is sugar so devastating to ourhealth?Sugar is pure chemical and (likeheroin) through refining has been strippedof all the natural food nutrition it origi-nally had in the plant itself.Heroin and sugar are arrived at byvery similar processes of refinement. Inproducing heroin, the opium is first ex-tracted from the poppy. The opium isthen refined into morphine. The chem-ists then work on the morphine and fur-

SUGAR:THE SWEETEST POISON

By Helen Cannington

in the evening, sugar at supper time.As a chemical, sugar is poison forthe body and the cause behind nu-merous ailments. We’re addicted toits taste and find it impossible toavoid… but as we will see later inthis article, safe and healthy alter-natives are becoming available.

As we pass through the supermarketaisles perpetuating another generation ofdental decay, obesity, weakened bones,diabetes, hyperactivity, emotional imbal-ance and dysfunctional immune systems,we must ask ourselves the compellingquestion of why we consume sugar, andespecially, why we give sugar to children.In Australia we eat about 65 kilo-grams of the stuff a year or 35 teaspoonsa day. And it’s in everything — chickensoup, pickles, pork and beans, peanut but-ter, bread, macaroni and cheese, sauce,mustard and relish, jam, yogurt, cannedfruit and vegetables, salad dressings, notto mention the endless list of desserts, jampacked and stuffed to capacity with sugar.The white crystalline substance weknow of as sugar is an unnatural sub-stance produced by industrial processes(mostly from sugar cane or sugar beets)by refining it down to pure sucrose, af-ter stripping away all the vitamins, min-erals, proteins, enzymes and other ben-eficial nutrients.What is left is more like a drug thanfood, a concentrated unnatural substancewhich the human body is not able tohandle, at least not in anywhere nearthe quantities now ingested in today’saccepted lifestyles.It quickly passes through the stom-

Why is sugar sodevastating to our health? Sugar is purechemical and (likeheroin) through refininghas been stripped of allthe natural food nutrition it originallyhad in the plant itself.

NEW DAWN

May-June 2003www.newdawnmagazine.com

MIND

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BODY

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SPIRIT

ther refined it into heroin. This discov-ery, they proclaimed, was a wonderfulnew non-addictive pain-killer. So theysaid.Similarly, sugar is first pressed as a juice from the cane (or beet) and re-fined into molasses. Then it is refinedinto brown sugar, and finally into strangewhite crystals C12H22O, which is an al-ien chemical to the human system.A second reason why sugar harms isits addictiveness. Starting with sugar inthe baby formula, people not only de-velop a strong taste for sugar but aninsatiable craving that never recedes.A third reason is the slow and insidi-ous damage caused by sugar.A fourth reason is the outrageousamounts of sugar consumed by coun-tries like Australia and the United States.Westerners in particular are told howthey are the best fed and best nourishedpeople on the face of the Earth. If weare talking about processed junk food – this is true.If you examine the “foods” in anysupermarket more closely and start read-ing labels, you will find just about every-thing contains sugar. Most of the foodsare loaded with it – from cereals, tosoups, to sauces, to sausages. Even flue-cured tobacco can contain as much as20% sugar by weight. Some cereals areas much as 50% sugar.

Damage to the Body

Sugar plays a role in the cause ofmany modern illnesses and disorders.Most people already suspect its effecton children and adults who exhibit dis-ruptive behaviour and suffer learning dis-orders.We have stated sugar is deleteriousto your health and it is a long termchemical poison. Just what damage doessugar do to the human body?The list isendless.* By far the leading cause of dentaldeterioration – cavities in teeth, bleed-ing gums, failure of bone structure, andloss of teeth.* The main cause of diabetes,hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia. Sir Fre-derick Banting, the co-discoverer of in-sulin, noticed in 1929 in Panama that,among sugar plantation owners who atelarge amounts of the refined stuff, diabe-tes was common. Among native cane-cutters, who only got to chew the rawcane, he saw no diabetes.* It is either a significant or contribu-tory cause of heart disease, arterioscle-rosis, mental illness, depression, senility,hypertension, cancer.* It has an extremely harmful effectin unbalancing the endocrine system andinjuring its component glands such as theadrenal glands, pancreas and liver, caus-ing the blood sugar level to fluctuatewidely. It has a number of other extremelydamaging effects on the human body.* It initiates auto-immune and immunedeficiency disorders such as arthritis, al-lergies and asthma.Some of the other effects of sugaron the body are: Increases overgrowthof candida yeast organism; Increaseschronic fatigue; Can trigger binge eatingin those with bulima; Increases PMSsymptoms; Increases hyperactivity inabout 50% of children; Increases anxietyand irritability; Can make it difficult tolose weight because of constantly highinsulin levels which causes the body tostore excess carbs as fat.There are a number of books avail-able on the subject, but perhaps one ofthe most interesting ones is

Sugar Blues

by William Dufty.

Aspartame: A Dangerous Substitute

Unfortunately, the sugar substitute ofchoice is aspartame (known asNutraSweetTM or EqualTM). There isincreasing evidence aspartame poses aserious health risk. Eighty-five percent ofall complaints to the United States Fed-eral Drug Administration concernaspartame. Adverse reactions include diz-ziness, memory loss, headaches, blurredvision, insommia, fatigue, heart palpitations,sugar cravings, and muscle and joint pain.Aspartame consists of phenylalanine,aspartic acid, and methanol. The first in-gredient is an amino acid, but withoutany balancing neutral amino acids, it canbe deadly. In the brain it competes forreceptor sites with tryptophan, a serot-onin precursor. This leads to reducedserotonin levels in the brains, which cantrigger sugar cravings and panic attacks – even rage and violence.In high concentrations the second in-gredient, aspartic acid, negatively affectsthe central nervous system. Aspartamepenetrates the blood brain barrier, dete-riorating the neurons of the brain. It hasalso been know to cause seizures.The third ingredient, methanol, iswood alcohol. It is toxic to the opticnerve and can cause blindness. It may beno accident that retinopathy is so com-mon in diabetic patients. In the presenceof heat (such as 98.6 degrees of the body)it can metabolise into formaldehyde andformic acid, both known carcinogens(causes cancer).Most people haven’t heard aboutaspartame poisoning because the diet in-dustry is worth trillions of dollars to cor-porations, and they want to protect prof-its by keeping the truth behind aspartame’sdangers hidden from the public.After more than twenty years ofaspartame use, the number of its victimsis rapidly piling up, and people are figur-ing out for themselves that aspartame isat the root of their health problems.Clearly, aspartame is not a safe alterna-tive to sugar.

Safe Alternatives

One of the best sources of naturalsugar is found in raw fruits and vegeta-bles. These sugars are bound up withessential vitamins, minerals, fiber, oils andenzymes which are present in whole plantfoods. These aid in the metabolic processnecessary for digestion of the sugars. Inaddition, the sugars in natural whole foodsarrive in the body diluted in a large vol-ume of water to assist in its metabolism.However, the adoption of a diet highin raw vegetables and fruit is not an op-tion for most people.