Out From Under: Treating Your Own Addictions, Appendix 11

What signals is your body giving you? Are you a sugarholic? This quiz will help you determine how pervasive refined sugar is in your life and what effect it's having on your body. Refined sugar includes sucrose, honey, fructose, glucose, dextrose, levulose, maltose, raw sugar, turbinado sugar, maple sugar, galactose, brown sugar, invert sugar, dextrine, barley malt, rice syrup, corn sweetener, and corn syrup. All of these are simple sugars. They take very little time to digest and get into the bloodstream, where they perform the same disturbance to your body chemistry as table sugar. These substances are found in doughnuts, processed foods, jelly on your toast, ice cream, candy bars, packaged cereal, soft drinks, catsup, beer, chewing tobacco, chewing gum, and any product which lists sugar among its ingredients.

Answer each True or False question as truthfully as you can; you're not going to be graded, and no one is looking over your shoulder. Be honest with yourself—your health depends on it.

1) I don't eat refined sugar every day.
2) I can go for more than one day without eating some type of food containoing sugar.
3) I never have cravings for sugar, coffee, chocolate, peanut butter, or alcohol.
4) I've never hidden candy or other sweets around my home in order to find and eat them later.
5) I can stop after one piece of candy or one bite of pastry.
6) There are times when I have no sugar of any kind in my home.
7) I can go for three or more hours without eating and not experience fatigue, perspiration, irritability, depressions, or anxiety.
8) I can have candy and other sweets in my home and not eat them.
9) I don't eat something sweet after every meal.
10) I rarely drink coffee and eat doughnuts or sweet rolls for breakfast.
11) I can go for more than an hour after waking up in the morning without eating.
12) I can go from one day to the next without drinking a soft drink.

If you answered "false" to more than four of these statements, chances are you are sugar-sensitive. You probably are allergic to sugar, and probably also addicted to it the same way an alcoholic is addicted to alcohol. You crave sugar, have withdrawal symptoms when you don't get it, and probably feel better for a short time after you've eaten it. In eating sugar to feel better, you are actually making your condition worse.

If you answered "false" to four questions or fewer, that doesn't prove you don't have a problem with sugar. Perhaps you aren't addicted to it, but perhaps you don't quite realize how much sugar you are eating. According to the u.s. Department of Agriculture, the average American consumes more than 130 pounds of sugar and sweeteners a year, most hidden or contained in other foods (96% of cranberry sauce's calories and 63% of catsup's calories are sugar). We eat over 10 pounds of sugar each month, nearly 4.5 cups per week, or 30 to 33 teaspoonfuls of sugar every day. That's over 20% of our daily caloric intake spent on a refined food which upsets body chemistry and has not nutritional value, since refined sugar is 99.4% to 99.7% pure calories -no vitamins, minerals, or proteins, jut simple carbohydrates.

From Lick The Sugar Habit by Nancy Appleton, Ph.D., published by Avery Publishing Group, Inc., Garden City Park, N.Y. Reprinted by permission.