How to get off bread & sugar….and by the way, it’s not your fault!

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If you are like most people, you`ve probably sworn off bread or sugar at least once in your lifetime. The trouble is though, that at the best of times willpower often cowers in the face of a true physiological or bacterial craving.

The truth is, if you can`t stop yourself from bingeing on bread or overdoing sugar, it is not your fault.

Here is why:

1) From a physiological perspective- if you have blatant or subtle nutrient deficiencies, your body is driving you to consume sugar and refined carbs to feel good (although only momentarily). Unfortunately, sugar itself keeps you both on a roller coaster and a hamster wheel! The dips and spikes of sugar ensure that you crave just one thing- more sugar!! And as far as the hamster wheel is concerned, sugar isn`t an empty calorie, it actually puts us in a nutrient defecit, thus perpetuating mineral deficiency and subsequent cravings!

2) From a bacterial perspective- if you have sugar cravings, there is a very high chance that you also have a bacterial imbalance in your gut…sugar feeds pathogenic bacteria. These bacteria beasties actually send chemical messages to your brain that will cause you to crave sugar and refined carbohydrates!

So as you can see, people crave sugar, because they have to -in the age of nutrient deficient food!

While there are many ways to nourish ourselves to make cravings a thing of the past, I bet you would love to know about the single most potent food to permantly eliminate sugar cravings altogether, am I right?

How about discovering one food that can address both the body`s physiological craving for food AND the bacterial one?

The food most ideally suited to stop your sugar and refined carb cravings is cultured foods!!

Culturing a food, means that you are infusing it with beneficial probiotic bacteria (you know, that good stuff inherently found in yogurt!).So just how DO cultured foods address the root causes of sugar and refined carb cravings?

1) Culturing your food increases the nutritional value of that food. For example, sauerkraut has 100 times the Vitamin C as its unfermented counterpart, cabbage. Eating some probiotic condiments with each meal also promotes better digestion and the assimilation of nutrients. That in itself is a 3 in 1 benefit of cultured foods in terms of meeting nutrient deficiencies!

2) Cultured food also feeds beneficial bacteria in your gut, therefore helping to crowd out the more harmful or pathogenic flora. In addition, cultured foods do not JUST add good probiotic bacteria to your gut, but they also provide lactic acid which is not only food for the GOOD bacteria, but it makes your digestive tract inhospitable to pathogenic bacteria! That is a 4 in 1 benefit!

and if that is not remarkable enough…..

1) Ancient chinese medicine has taken note that the unique flavour of cultured foods actually has a balancing effect that neutralizes or cancels out our cravings for sugar!2) Finally, one Ka-RAZY Kool effect of eating fermented foods with your meals is that if you give into a sugar craving and immediately eat a cultured food, the beneficial bacteria will immediately begin eating up the sugar you just consumed, therefore minimizing the amount that you end up digesting and assimilating! Now if my math is correct, that is at least 9 reasons why cultured foods alone, can curb your sugar cravings!So if cravings, are driving you crazy, and you want to immediately take action- you can purchase the following fermented foods and bubbly beverages at your local health food store:

1) Bubbies Pickles
2) Sauerkraut
3) Kombucha

Just make sure they say unpasteurized, because otherwise they will be devoid of probiotics from the heat.

However, if you have a sneaking suspicion that you will eventually get bored of eating only 3 kinds of cultured foods, day in and day out, then you are going to want to get the skills you need, to learn to make them at home (which is way yummier, simple and more affordable anyway)!!

Finally, if you want the knowledge, support, tools, accountability and community to wean yourself off sugar, click here to learn about our 28 Day Sugar Detox challenge where we help you nourish yourself from the sugar habit!

* This post is part of the Probiotic Food Challenge Linky at Real Food Forager.

  • Nataliereimeranderson

    Once again, great advice! I passed it on. :)

  • Donnaingram04

    is there a viatim u can take? the only one I know is Sauerkraut

  • Johnpatterson

    Awesome advice and very correct ! Beer used to be a “fermented” or “pre-digested warm mineral drink” of grains that once the process was done properly it would release the nutrients from the grains,by altering the mineral robbing “phytic acid” into mineral giving “phytase” and hold it in suspension,like a good stew or soup,and refresh the workers coming in from the fields at the end of the day…. kind of like sports drinks are SUPPOSED to be..but definately aren’t. I looked up Pellagra,a severe vitamin B deficiency,and found this info about the South Americans pre-digesting/fermenting corn,as corn,and ALL seeds is quite damaging to humans health unless this is done first or sprouted.Hence where the whole idea of “cooking” foods came from. I think this lesson will come from big nutritional deficiencies/problems experienced by the Raw Foods fads eating all that phytic acid and getting their minerals robbed..in the same way sugar does.