MSG in Nutritional Yeast? was Re: Stefansson's Book Online

[Guest guest]

--- Tom Jeanne <tjeanne@...> wrote:

> When I have " bad " cravings, i.e. I'm not really hungry but I find

> myself in the kitchen looking for something to eat, I always crave

> something with carbs. It's very irrational behavior to want to eat

> when you're not hungry, so that's compelling evidence that there is

> something addictive about the carbohydrate stimulus.

Tom, to me there's two aspects of the over-eating problem. One is the

short-term gimme more sensation that occurs while eating and the other

is the craving sensation that occurs more commonly when hungry, though

not exclusively. For me, the gimme more sensation is driven by sugar,

salt, and/or MSG being added to the food and that can cause me to eat

more than I should for a meal. The craving sensation can also be

driven in part by blood sugar dips caused by eating lots of refined

carbs, after the insulin kicks. I've read that low BG can causes

drowsiness and/or irritability. You want that sweet fix to take away

the no-sugar blues

I suspect fructose is addicting and also drives cravings for sweets in

particular, though I'm not sure of the mechanism. In my experience,

part of the fructose craving was mental and part was physical. The

mental part is the anticipation of a " feel good " high that occurs

shortly after eating the sweets and can occur at any time. It was so

strong that I would have multiple cravings to eat sweets every day.

The physical part is triggered by the sweet flavor that reinforces the

anticipation, plus the gimme more effect. Thus a double whammy with

sugar that has fructose. And yes, if you add refined sugar to refined

starches, lookout if you're addicted - cake, cookies, pastries are

especially bad and perhaps the added refined carbs in these foods do

make the craving worse.

Since I broke my sugar addiction about three years ago, I don't have

cravings for sweets any more. Oddly, I don't get the gimme more

sensation with starchy sweets any more. I can eat one cookie and not

want to eat 10 more like when I was addicted. But if I were to start

eating one cookie every day, I don't think it would take long before I

would develop an addiction again. I can sit and watch my wife and

daughter eat sweets without getting any cravings. In the past, just

seeing or smelling fresh baked cookies or other goodies would trigger

intense cravings, as in Pavlov's dog. Thankfully, that's no longer a

problem now.

I also don't get the gimme more sensation with fruits, nor do I feel

addicted to eating fruit once and sometimes twice a day. I usually go

for fruits that are high in vitamin C, since I don't take C

supplements. I guess the fructose in fruits doesn't metabolize as

quickly as from sweet goodies, and the amount of sugar in fruit is

typically much lower than most sweet treats that people eat. I put a

comparison of amounts of sugar in some foods here:

http://stay-healthy-enjoy-life.blogspot.com/2007/12/sugar-toxin.html

I suspect a common mistake that many sugar addicts make on switching

to a more traditional diet, is to replace the refined sugar with less

refined sugar, like maple syrup, rapadura, molasses, honey, etc, but

still in quantities that are much too high to be in the traditional

range compared to what people were eating hundreds, or even thousands

of years ago. For those who are not over-weight or gaining unwanted

weight, it may not be a problem. But for those who are over-weight or

gaining unwanted weight, it's probably a good idea to break the sugar

addiction.