> What I've Learned. Food Industry's Secret Weapon (WHY Sugar Is Addictive & in 80% of Food). YouTube, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPxIssabhTc>. Accessed 16 Aug. 2021. # Food Industry's Secret Weapon (WHY Sugar is addictive & in 80% of Food) > This video explores the addictive nature of sugar, why it's in all our food and how it is affecting our brains, bodies and overall health. - Sugar is 8 times more addictive than cocaine - Study where rats chose sweetened water over cocaine - Drugs and other substances become truly harmful when they are extensively refined - Morphine was derived from opium around 1810 to be used as a painkiller - After the Civil War, tens of thousands of soldiers became morphine addicts - Coca leaves have been chewed by farmers in the Andes for hundreds of years for a boost of energy without much harm - Cocaine on the other hand is highly addictive (100 times refined) - Refined drugs and alcohol trigger larger releases of dopamine - Sugar is the result of a heavy refinement process (10 times) - It also has a small opioid-like effect - The average American consumes 82g of sugar per day, the equivalent of 820g of sugar cane - Fibers slow the rate at which the sugar is absorbed by our body - 7 addiction criterias: 1. Bingeing 2. Desire to quit 3. Craving 4. Affecting life 5. Irrational use 6. Tolerance 7. Withdrawal - Tolerance makes you downregulate your dopamine receptors - Sugar is put in everything because of the recent low-fat craze - Removing the fat out of products makes it taste like garbage - You therefore put sugar in it to reach the *bliss point* - Sugar used to be expensive (50$/lb in the 1300s) - It's the advent of high fructose corn syrup which really made the price drop