How Sugar Rules You

Since the day you're born, you're taught to think of sweet things as delicious, desirable, and good in general. "Honey" and "sweetie" are terms of endearment. When someone says something nice to you, you might blush and say, "Oh, that's so sweet." Let's start off with the roots of this. Sugar is a fuel for out body, and we're designed to seek it out. It's a carbohydrate, and our bodies like to run on carbohydrates. When we don't get much in the way of carbohydrates, our bodies start to freak out a little bit. We might even undergo a conversion into a physiological state called ketosis, but that's not even the point of this. The point is, our bodies love sugar. Love it. In the past, sugar's been a good thing; it's been found only in fruits and vegetables, and it stood to natural selection that if you had a love of sugar, you'd eat a lot of yummy fruits, which would increase your chance of survival, because they're good for you, and provide advantages. In this day and age, however, sugar is put to more nefarious purposes. We've extracted it, refined it, bleached it, and put it in little packets. We abuse it. We put sugar in places where it never should've gone. Ever. If sugar could talk, it'd be screaming at us for our disrespect. It'd be screaming, "Just leave me alone!"

Now, that's quite overly dramatic. Obviously. Though, it's very important to realize, the consumption of refined sugars amongst humans has gone from negligible to over a hundred pounds per year for the average United States citizen in a very short period of time. Just a few hundred years. That's refined white sugar coming from your donuts, your cakes, your pies, your sugared chewing gum, your sugared toothpastes, your "diet" bars, your "health" supplements, your medicines, and even places you wouldn't expect it.

Sugar is addictive. Have you ever tried cutting out refined sugar from your diet altogether, Dear Reader? It's not easy, and within a couple weeks, you'll begin experiencing some chronic discomfort. Headaches and the like. Because your body has gotten used to running off of highly-processed, toxic, bleached, refined icky-and-evil white sugar. This is not good. It is not natural. You do not want to be a slave to your sugar. Avoid it whenever possible.

Billions of dollars a year are spent by big businesses to try to get your kids to eat their sugary cereal. Young children, they don't know, really know, what they're getting themselves into by asking you to buy them the cereal they saw on TV that had a really catchy jingle or a memorable cartoon character. It's not their fault. But why do you think the cereals and cokes are located on the outside edges of the aisles in your local supermarket? Do you think that's by coincidence? No, Dear Reader, it is by design. It is a deliberate marketing tactic that they do not want you to know about. It shows a level of cunning and depravity and subversion that is dangerous and is damaging the health of our children. It's probably happened to you before. You've got your kids with you. You're walking past an aisle, and your kid looks down that aisle, and the first thing she or he sees is his or her favorite cereal or coke or snack. And she or he really wants it. Maybe she or he even walks over to it and stares longingly. You're in a hurry, so you say, "Fine," and you put it in the basket.

This is how they get you. Did your recognize it the first time it happened to you? Do you recognize it now? You've been had, Dear Reader, if this has happened to you. That's exactly what they expected you to do.

They will market to your children with catchy songs and commercial saturation and when you sit your kid down in front of the TV because you've got something else to do, be assured that you're exposing them to commercials and the brainwashing of the capitalist pigs responsible for twisting our youth on sugar and spice and everything nice. Rest most assured.

So what should you do? Educate your kids. Tell them why sugar is bad for them. Explain it. Tell them what it does. The information is out there, beyond just the "it causes cavities" that you always heard but never really cared about. Explain to them how it damages the nervous system. How it can contribute to disease; cancer, diabetes, arthritis. How it can make you fat, and will make you fat, and will cause you to be less energetic, and can cause adrenal burnout. How it worsens the complexion and can cause zits and pimples. How it makes you sweat more and smell bad. How it causes constipation. How the people who are trying to sell them these things are not their friends; the cartoons are not real; the songs are not that great. Most of all, teach them critical thinking from a young age. You can't be around them forever to watch over them and tell them not to eat that sugary thing, but you can instill in them the will to resist and to think. We all need to do this. The majority of the population is unfit and/or overweight.

Maybe there's no hope for us, Dear Reader. Maybe they've already won and we just haven't realized it yet. Maybe this what humanity is destined to be reduced to, maybe: cakes, pies, donuts. Dancing leprechauns and jolly vampires and giggling as-of-yet-unimagined-whatevers on TV in between commercials for pharmaceuticals. Fat children, fatter adults, dead before fifty.

Well, good for us. I'll take my spite, and yours too, if you won't have it.