MEDIO SOCIOECONÓMICO

Imagine you’re a space alien doing research on the most potent drugs in the solar system. You’ve already written reports on cocaine, opium, alcohol, and nicotine. But on planet Earth, there’s one more refined substance that seems to dwarf them all. There are few places where this substance isn’t imported and included with almost everything the residents eat and drink. It’s the first thing they ingest in the morning and the last they use at night. It’s the centerpiece of celebration. Overweight children and Hollywood movie directors carry plastic receptacles filled with colorful drinkable versions of the stuff as though they need it like air. And although, at some level, they know it’s killing

them, they just won’t stop.

Your report will show that the acreage and energy dedicated to the extraction, refinement, and export of this drug rivals that of criminalized compounds. It takes 1000 pounds of water to produce one pound of crude drug from cane and days of heating and refining to produce fine granules of saleable product. A quick study of planetary history shows that this substance has been so highly prized that it has functioned as currency for trade, and its flavor, “sweet,” has earned it a greater presence in the lyrics of popular music than any other drug.

The subject of your report is, of course, sugar.

Sugar is the ultimate gateway drug. We now have research showing that exposure to sugar early in life has lasting effects on the brain that can make us more prone to developing chemical dependencies. When researchers gave young rats a steady supply of chocolate Ensure, they found “daily consumption alters striatal enkephalin gene expression.” In other words, the study rats were programmed to consume substances that stimulate their opiate receptors.250 Sugar acts as a powerful epigenetic instructor, telling your child’s genes to construct a brain with a built-in hankering for drugs.

As Michael Pollan points out in The Botany of Desire, by producing chemistry desirable to humans, certain plants have domesticated us, turning people into pawns in their Darwinian battle to rule the landscape. Like THC in marijuana, the sugar in fruit and sugarcane entices humans, and other animals, to spread the plant’s DNA. But this relationship is taken to dangerous extremes as refined sugar commands us to reorder the surface of the planet; millions of acres of tropical rainforest are burned every year to sustain the ongoing habit of a growing population. We work for corn too. Each step in the production of high-fructose corn syrup is a giant leap forward in corn’s domination of the planet. Sugar-producing plants like corn, cane, beets, berries, and mangoes give us a legal high every bit as addictive as a hit of crack cocaine, though less intoxicating. What I am arguing, however, is that sugar’s hold on us is more dangerous than any illegal substance because its effects are subtler and more pervasive.

If a child were given a dose of heroin, the chemical would trigger a flurry of neural activity in the pleasure centers of his brain. Sugar, whether in juice, pureed pears, or infant formula, results in the very same kinds of responses “via the release of endogenous opiates triggered by sweet taste[.]”251 And if you regularly give kids sugar-rich commercial juices, sweet cereals, or daily cookies and candy, you’re inadvertently playing the role of “enabler.” Though sugar doesn’t actually contain opiates like heroin, it affects us in very much the same way because it makes us release our own endogenous opiates.

The effect is powerful enough for solutions of sugar to work as a pain reliever. In a common practice, called “sucrose analgesia,” nurses give a sip of sugar water to infants to calm them during heel sticks, injections, and other painful procedures newborns routinely undergo. It works well and has the benefit of reducing fussiness for up to a week after the procedures.252 In 2002, a group of neonatal nurses at several intensive care units throughout hospitals in Montreal, Canada wondered if there might be a downside to this common practice. Specifically they worried about the effect on the babies’ developing brains. In spite of the convenient benefits, the nurses were granted permission to give half the babies in their study plain water, while the other half got sugar water. They found that infants who got sugar in their first seven days of life suffered neurologic effects that were still measurable when the study ended, eleven weeks later. “[H]igher number of doses of sucrose predicted lower scores on motor development and vigor, and alertness and orientation…and higher NBRS [NeuroBiological Risk Score, a reflection of processes deleterious to brain development].”253

What does this study indicate? Little nips of sugar water given to alleviate pain impair a baby’s cognitive development.

How could sugar have such powerful effects? As I mentioned earlier, sugar induces endogenous opiate release. The study authors postulate that repeated artificially induced stimulation of the immature brain with endogenous opiates interferes with normal development of alertness and arousal systems, so much so that babies who got the most sugar became lethargic. Endogenous opiates normally play a role in making us feel okay after something bad happens to us. The authors suggest that using sugar to induce the brain to release endogenous opiates during trauma prevents the brain from developing strategies to deal with pain normally. Why do they lose cognitive ability too? That question has yet to be answered.

Life is full of stresses and trials. Normally, we deal with them and move on. But studies like this suggest that, when we offer kids sweet treats as an incentive to settle down, we’re rewiring their brains, potentially preventing them from learning normal, healthy, and more socially appropriate coping strategies than screaming for a box of juice. I have personally spoken with several child psychologists who feel that discipline among children is fast on the decline. For whatever reason, more and more adults seem unable to control their kids. My feeling is that if you start loading kids with sugar as a way of controlling behavior, you are not only training them to rely on external chemicals to feel good, you are training them to manipulate you to provide them with their fix. Sorry Willy Wonka, but my patients who’ve taken their kids off sugar tell me they can’t believe what a better, more balanced, healthier family life they now have.