Asaccarian Manifesto
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Owing to technological advances in the food industry, the production and utilization of sugar in nutritional products have exploded in the last 60 years, beginning with the convenience food wave. At the same time, metabolic disease and obesity have become prevalent. This is no coincidence.
Despite its undeniable negative effects on health, sugar has been forcefully put on our table by lobbyists in the processed food industry. Sugary drinks like Coca Cola choked up fridges around the world through aggressive marketing campaigns, and billions of dollars went into normalizing what should normally be called a health hazard.
There is one simple reason for this: sugar sells. For example, you increase the amount of sugar in a product by 2 teaspoons. Sales increase 20%. Now its competitors must ramp up the sugar content just to survive the market. Sugar concentration in related products of a given market reaches a point of equilibrium. Then another product figures out how to add more sugar, and the whole thing repeats. It’s a vicious cycle caused by the lack of regulation.
Asaccarianism is the way of gathering against and resisting the normalization of high sugar consumption, in order for us to have a chance at having healthier bodies and clearer minds.
Below are the facts an asaccarian strives to get through:
1. Sugar is an Addictive, Psychoactive Substance that Must be Regulated
Without regulation, processed food companies can continue spurting out life-wrecking products whose sole purpose is to get their consumers addicted and reap sustained profits. Through asaccarian activism, higher authorities should be convinced to install regulations — e.g. sugar tax — that will prevent strategic usage of sugar for competition.
2. Sugar Makes You Docile
Its daily consumption causes insulin resistance, which messes up your metabolism and makes you sluggish, unable to think and move. It causes you to gain weight and slow down. It takes you from the driver seat of your own life and puts you to the passenger seat.
3. Sugar Decreases Willpower
Sugar not only gets you fat, but always having sugar under reach guarantees its daily consumption in the form of comfort foods. It weakens your will, pushes you into depression, and makes you unable to resist the hardships life brings.
4. Sugar is *the* Gateway Drug
Sugar activates the reward system. Sugar consumption encourages rewarding behavior. With every teaspoon, you strengthen the pathways in the brain that cause drug addiction. Thus sugar, not marijuana, is the gateway drug we are exposed to from childhood. The addictive qualities of sugary products are under-emphasized, and on top of that, they are advertised as happiness-bringing. This should be forbidden.
5. Sugar Brings Pleasure, not Happiness
Comfort foods such as chocolate and ice cream are advertised as bringing happiness. In reality, they bring pleasure momentarily, which is soon after counteracted by the pain of their lack.
Happiness is a *sustainable* state of well-being, whereas pleasure is *unsustainable* because it throws you out of balance.
6. Sugar is Hard to Detect
Sugar in processed foods is engineered to hide from your senses. For example, salt is used alongside sugar to mask the sweet taste, but still be just as stimulating. You aren’t aware that you are consuming sugar most of the time; you just think that you really like this snack, or that drink. Whenever you enjoy a food or drink too much, it has a high chance of containing lots of sugar.
7. Fruits are Used Strategically to Disguise Sugar
The public image of fruits is used to justify marketing sugary products containing trace amounts of fruits as healthy snacks. In reality, fruits themselves are the result of tens of thousands of years of selective breeding. Fruits being healthy is partially a myth, and anything marketed as containing fruits is most likely harmful.
8. Artificial Sweeteners are Just as Bad
It’s the sensation of sweetness — which is not limited to sucrose — that is bad. If it’s sweet, you like it, and if you like it, it may be addictive. For example, Saccharine, Aspartame and Stevia are just as bad for your mind — they just don’t wreck your body as much.
What we can do
While it is easy to fat-shame and belittle indulgent people, it’s our current system that causes this epidemic. The companies responsible for putting food on our tables created a toxic nutritional environment. As consumers, we can fight back by organizing and subverting their attempts at marketing and normalizing substance abuse. We can:
1. Not consume sugar ourselves and be an inspiration to the ones close to us.
Quit sugar cold-turkey, and resist the urge for 4 weeks. It generally takes that much to detox.
2. Educate ourselves on the sugar content of products.
Discriminate aggressively against sweetened products. Check labels for the many names of sugar.
3. Recognize and stand for asaccarianism as the anti-sugar identity.
When offered something sweet, just say no. If they persist, tell them you are an asaccarian and explain why.
4. Take to the heart and spread the facts above.
Make these part of the common sense, just like they were before. Sweets weren’t consumed day-to-day; they were treats for special occasions. To incite true change, we need to spread the message and de-normalize sugar consumption.
5. Arrange meet-ups and help others quit.
Form a community around the healthy-eating lifestyle. Share your experience of overcoming the addiction.
6. Believe in asaccarianism.
Unlike certain other movements, asaccarianism doesn’t have to be spread by active evangelism. Instead, the changes you make in your lifestyle will inspire others to follow on your path. This will be because you will be a more active, sentient and clear-minded person. You will infect others with your life force.
We are what we eat. By making the right choices at this basic level, we can change our composure and become a better version of ourselves. We can liberate ourselves from the whims of this capitalist enterprise. We change the fabric of our society for good.
The change starts at the individual level. One must endure the pain of quitting a lifelong habit. One must endure the pain of seeing friends and family struggle with addiction. One must endure peer pressure and alienation. Having gone in the wrong direction for a long time, a step in the right direction might feel disorienting. But you’ll know in your gut that you are doing the right thing, literally and figuratively.
