Many scientists believe our love of sugar may be an addiction(瘾). When we eat or drink sugary food, the sugar enters our blood and influences parts of our brain that make us feel good. Then the good feeling goes away, leaving us wanting more. All delicious food does this, but sugar has a specially strong effect.
"It seems like every time I study an illness and trace a path to the first cause, I find my way back to sugar," says scientist Richard Johnson. One- third of adults in the world have high blood pressure and up to 347 million have too much sugar in their blood. Why? "Sugar, we believe, is one of the culprits, if not the main culprit," says Johnson.
Early humans often had very little food, so our bodies learned to be very efficient in storing sugar as fat. In this way, we had energy stored for when there was no food. But today, most people have more than enough. So the very thing that once saved us may now be killing us.
So what is the solution? It's easy to see that we need to eat less sugar. The trouble is, in today's world, it's very difficult to avoid. More and more foods are filled with it. Some producers even use sugar to replace taste in foods that are advertised as low in fat.
But there are those who are fighting back against sugar. Many schools are replacing sugary desserts with healthier food like fruit. Other schools are growing their own food in gardens, or building places for students and others in the community to exercise. The battle has not yet been lost.
