• j4k3@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’ve lost over 150lbs, and can easily say sugar intake is closely tied to metabolism and brain activity. The habits formed around sugar intake are the hardest to control. It can be a major tax on mental agility and sharpness if a person is in the habit of using sugar to supplement their diet constantly. They can really struggle to find a different balance with healthy foods. There are a range of other factors that come into play that make it difficult. Chiefly, American budget food is typically very low quality, and most people have several minor food allergies. This makes people rely on junk food, likely unaware of issues like lactose intolerance that makes them unable to access healthy calories. Dairy is in EVERYTHING in American food. Like stupid stuff too. There is milk in most chips now. Like who the F puts milk in chips. It took me nearly a decade to fix how I eat, and realize we were all pretty much raised to be stupid consumers of whatever garbage is placed in front of us as Americans. Fixing the sugar addiction usually means fixing a bunch of other problems too.

      • Yeah, I hear you - I have an intense sugar addiction, and eat an absolutely disgusting amount of chocolate (see username). At least otherwise I eat pretty healthy.

        By the way, the reason milk is in so much is because of how much cheese we eat. When they make cheese, they separate out the whey, which they used to throw away, but now they use in stuff. It has a lot of names: whey, lactose, milk solids, and others. If you’re lactose intolerant, you have to watch for that for the same reason you don’t have to worry much about hard cheeses: the lactose is mostly in the whey, which comes out of the cheese.