Why is sugar and processed foods the enemy? It tastes so good and I cannot imagine a life without it. 

Evolutionarily speaking: Anything sweet, initially fruit was a signal that it is spring or summer, a time of abundance. This taste was so scarce that we built a heightened sense, memory and desire for it. An addiction for the sake of our survival. The world has changed dramatically but our bodies mostly remain the same. 

Once fruit entered our forefathers stomach, their bodies released the most powerful pleasure hormone dopamine to etch its memory of how and where we found this nectar of survival. This is the main reason why sugar is so addictive. After which it released another hormone insulin, to store all unused sugar as fat in the liver, around our organs and under our skin. Making us temporarily FAT. This stored energy was our life insurance during autumn and winter, the seasons of scarcity, until the advent of sharp tools and our ability to communicate in masses, we were unable to hunt big animals for food, so we ate scraps of food left over by other prime predators. Sometimes we hunted small animals and scavenged for roots. Very often we ate nothing. But today we are drowning in abundance. So we rarely tap into this stored energy in our fat, leading to obesity and every lifestyle disease you are capable of naming.

Advent of modern food: Most foods that are easily and cheaply available to us today are processed at some level. Processed foods are designed with the purpose of increasing shelf life, maximizing profit, enhancing taste, color and appetite, it does so by adding artificial additives, color, sugar, salt and artificial fats. 

What all of this leads to is an increased appetite as our bodies are not designed to read the satiety signals from these foods, which leads to our appetite regularity system to malfunction, causing us to over eat. 

Overeating of processed food and sugar forces our pancreas to chronically produce insulin making you diabetic. Currently more than half a billion people are living with diabetes. Being diabetic increases your risk for kidney failure, heart attack, blindness, nerve damage and amputations. 

Overconsumption of sugar and proceed foods are the leading culprit causing obesity, heart disease and cancer. Please consume them sparingly. 

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