Afaik sugar has a withdrawal period, peaks something like 2 days and a week and mostly tapers off by 2 weeks. No idea how non-processed sugar plays into it, only that dehydration thirst amplifies the symptoms and drinking food and water alleviates them after a time delay (possibly sugar withdrawal reduces propensity to drink, but that would be very hard to test and that one’s probably just me anyway). The high from a sugar rush, and the perceived good-tastingness of the processed desserts, depend almost entirely on how many days since the last dose, I think 2-5 days had the strongest effect. I strongly suspect that this is what makes people attracted to sugar, especially children, since they don’t count the days since their last dose.
I had a hard time finding good info about this, but a quick Google search explicitly for “sugar withdrawal” gave me results that all seemed to be pointing in the same direction. If Google were to make it easier to find than just for people who type in “sugar withdrawal”, maybe that would be interpreted declaring war on a large chunk of the food industry in a very severe and visible way. Or maybe tons of people are writing articles on a foundation of a few crappy papers. I verified the dehydration effect, the timelines, and the ultimate outcome with myself and my mother (biological), but genetic diversity will likely require larger sample sizes for better estimates.
But it really does seem like people can just quit, but there could be potentially harsh consequences for flip flopping and not quitting all the way, and without good data on the effect on the brain (some kind of swelling?) I don’t see people choosing to quit, even if the lion’s share of the reinforcement was proven to come from rare occasions where people end up eating sugar during a specific phase of withdrawal and get surprised by massive hedons.
Afaik sugar has a withdrawal period, peaks something like 2 days and a week and mostly tapers off by 2 weeks. No idea how non-processed sugar plays into it, only that dehydration thirst amplifies the symptoms and drinking food and water alleviates them after a time delay (possibly sugar withdrawal reduces propensity to drink, but that would be very hard to test and that one’s probably just me anyway). The high from a sugar rush, and the perceived good-tastingness of the processed desserts, depend almost entirely on how many days since the last dose, I think 2-5 days had the strongest effect. I strongly suspect that this is what makes people attracted to sugar, especially children, since they don’t count the days since their last dose.
I had a hard time finding good info about this, but a quick Google search explicitly for “sugar withdrawal” gave me results that all seemed to be pointing in the same direction. If Google were to make it easier to find than just for people who type in “sugar withdrawal”, maybe that would be interpreted declaring war on a large chunk of the food industry in a very severe and visible way. Or maybe tons of people are writing articles on a foundation of a few crappy papers. I verified the dehydration effect, the timelines, and the ultimate outcome with myself and my mother (biological), but genetic diversity will likely require larger sample sizes for better estimates.
But it really does seem like people can just quit, but there could be potentially harsh consequences for flip flopping and not quitting all the way, and without good data on the effect on the brain (some kind of swelling?) I don’t see people choosing to quit, even if the lion’s share of the reinforcement was proven to come from rare occasions where people end up eating sugar during a specific phase of withdrawal and get surprised by massive hedons.