Sugar Over-Consumption Is Harmful To One's Health

First, we must establish whether sugar over-consumption is damaging to one's health. In the Vice article, the writer made an eyebrow-raising statement when she said, "sugar is devoid of any real nutrition, messes with your metabolism, and rots your teeth...How bad could it really be?" This was interesting to me because I always thought sugar was an extremely important source of energy and that our body had a built function to regulate the amount of sugar we consume. Hilary Pollack reported on a study found "in the journal Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience," the authors of the study concluded that sugar over-consumption could be analogous to "experiencing serious trauma" when they studied female rats. These results are important because it demonstrated that sugar over-consumption as a child can also be similar to experiencing serious trauma. Thus, I can understand why sugar over-consumption is an important issue considering the results of the "University of New South Wales Australia and the Indian Council of Medical Research study" (pollack, 2016).
Moreover, in the first Vice article, the author stated that eating too much sugar can reduce dopamine production which may force individuals to consume even more sugar to get a similar sugar high.
This is an important issue because people who are addicted to drugs experience the same thing and many of us have seen what the terrible things that drug addiction can do to a person. Thus, sugar over-consumption can and should be considered an addiction that can cause serious mental and physical harm (Swerdloff, 2016). I am in favor of regulating or even banning certain high sugar foods such as soda or industrial ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup to curb this problem. In Canada we regulate many addictive drugs, why not
sugar?

Second, before emigrating to Canada, I attended a school that banned candy bars and non-baked potato chips. However, we were still allowed to bring junk food to school. I use this example because schools and governments can only do so much to stop children from getting addicted to sugar. Parents should be the ones to regulate their child's diet to ensure that they are consuming a healthy dose of sugar every day. This may involve conducting research on various products, packing more fruits and vegetables, and carefully reading labels when shopping for snacks.

Finally, I believe that it would be disastrous to resort to using drugs like varenicline to treat sugar addiction because this drug has a long list of side effects, increases the risk of mental health issues, and may cause suicidal thoughts (FDA, 2017). Can you imagine the effects that this drug can have on an adult much less a developing child? Therefore, I say NO to using drugs to cure sugar addiction.

References

Why Sugar Addiction Should Be Treated Like Drug Abuse. (2016, April 10). Retrieved October 02, 2017, from https://munchies.vice.com/en_us/article/gvkkx4/why-sugar-addiction-should-be-treated-like-drug-abuse
Sugar Has the Same Effect on Kids' Brains as Abuse and Trauma. (2016, February 17). Retrieved October 02, 2017, from https://munchies.vice.com/en_us/article/gvk9qb/sugar-has-the-same-effect-on-kids-brains-as-abuse-and-trauma
Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. (2017). Drug Safety and Availability - FDA Drug Safety Communication: FDA updates the label for stop smoking drug Chantix (varenicline) to include potential alcohol interaction, rare risk of seizures, and studies of side effects on mood, behavior, or thinking. Retrieved October 02, 2017, from https://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/ucm436494.htm