Via my friend Jill Escher, I read this piece by David Bender on cravingsugar.net and wanted to pass it along. Though our backgrounds are fairly dissimilar, we’re brothers from his very first sentence, in which he says, “my goal is to raise awareness of food addiction.”

Bender adheres to the Paleo community, which I’ve skirted the fringe of but whose precepts I don’t follow. Our most profound commonality is the conviction that refined sugar is unhealthful, no matter how yummy you think it tastes.

Bender reports that the health of his entire family was suffering, particularly his wife, and all their medical entreaties were not helping. But when they removed refined sugar and other substances from their diet, everyone’s health improved, and not just in a recession of disease:

“My senses of smell, sight, sound and intuition greatly improved on this diet. Phobias and anxieties that I was ashamed of and had kept hidden evaporated. My kid’s grades improved. Our energy improved as well. We now go outside and walk and play catch with the kids rather than stay inside and watch movies or television. Karen has even begun to play a tough game of basketball.”

I believe a very substantial portion of Americans would experience the same sort of boon if they, too, removed processed foods from their diets, but most people are so, so far from any such move, even as just an experiment. “Give up sugar? I’d rather die!” — who has not heard someone say it? We, who’ve experienced the difference, value it, and our numbers are growing. But sometimes I despair of the gulf between us and the vast majority who have no idea they should even consider a different way.