The human brain runs entirely off of glucose, so it is natural to some extent to crave sweets. However, while we do need sugar daily in the form of seeded fruit, refined sugar and concentrated cooked starches (carbohydrates) are more of a drug than food.

The major symptoms that are a result of eating refined sugar, refined grains, cooked grains period, all cooked starches like potatoes, as well as hybridized, seedless fruit, are candida fungal conditions, hypoglycemic/hyperglycemic and diabetic conditions, heart disease, obesity, early aging, and metabolic syndrome. The fact that insulin is the ONLY chemical in the human body to deal with an overdose of glucose, namely cooked starches or unnatural seedless fruits, means that we never adapted to be eating these things. Insulin has found to be one of the major causes of heart disease, so it is clearly not a chemical that we should be causing our bodies to release by eating foods our bodies are not designed for. Insulin and insulin-like growth factor (IGF), both caused by excess glucose in the body, are also associated with decreased immunity and increased growth of cancer cells. Read about Insulin and its metabolic effects here.

The entire reason the human race began to get away from the natural fruigivore diet that we are physiologically and anatomically designed for is due to the addictive nature of cooked starches.

We're Natural Frugivores

Herbivores:eat raw leafs and grass: grazers like cattle, rabbits, horses, and sheep

Granivores:eat raw grass grains: primarily birds

Frugivores:eat mostly raw fruits,succulent fruit-like vegetables, roots, shoots, nuts, mushrooms and seeds : apes, gorillas, chimps, monkeys, orangutans, wild man

Carnivores:eat raw meat: cats, lions, tigers, wolves

Insectivores:eat insects :ant-eaters, amphibians, etc.

Omnivores: all plant and animal foods: hogs, brown bears, raccoons, etc.

We aren't designed for heavy cooked starches

Human saliva has the starch enzyme ptyalin (amylase) which only herbivores and fruigivores have, carnivores do not. Carnivores have acidic saliva with little or no effect on starch. Omnivores like pigs and dogs have large amounts of starch enzymes, while frugivores like chimps and humans have alkaline saliva with a minimal amount of only one starch enzyme-ptyalin.

Frugivores thus are not designed to eat the heavy amount of starch found in cooked grains, beans, and tubers (potatoes and yams), but instead are perfectly designed to eat the small amount of starch in leafy greens and fresh fruits (nuts are part of the fruit family as are many vegetables like tomatoes), as well as a small amount of uncooked tubers, roots, and mushrooms. Cooking root vegetables, like tubers, causes too high a concentration of glucose for the body to be able to handle at once and this shoots up the creation of insulin by our pancreas, which we want to try to avoid at all costs for a long healthy life. Cooking starches also renders some of the starch to be unrecognizable by the human body, making them essentially toxic to our system. So when we eat cooked starches are blood sugar rises suddenly while the rest of the meal is left behind in the colon to ferment.

As soon as humans accidentally discovered cooked starches, either when a tuber fell into a fire, or some cooked tubers were discovered after a forest fire, humans have been addicted to this fast, concentrated source of sugar. The addiction became even worse once we started cooking grains, because grains contain even a higher concentration of starch sugar then cooked tubers. Additionally, grains have natural opiates in them that become concentrated when we cook them, literally giving us a drug effect. My husband recently just had a couple of bites of pasta for the first time in 2 years and he said within seconds he got really high in a very uncomfortable way and didn't like it at all. He asked me why everyone doesn't experience that, and I said they do, they just aren't aware of it because they haven't been on raw foods for 2 years like you have!

Our Addiction: the Discovery of Cooked Starches

What happened during this initial discovery of cooked starch by our ancestors, is that the natural inbuilt biological taste change (alliestic change) to stop eating a food would not have happened like it does with any natural mono-eating of food in the wild, when suddenly what you are eating begins to taste too sweet, salty, bland, or bitter because your body is telling you that you have had enough. So our ancient ancestors would have kept eating more and more until they were extremely full and literally felt a great hyperglycemic high. Then the next day they would have noticed that their desire for figs and other wild foods was greatly diminished, but there desire for more concentrated starch was viscous! The satisfaction and high that came with injecting the system with so much sugar all at once would have been greatly addicting and the concentrated flavor would have made any natural fruit taste bland in comparison. Our ancestor's taste buds would then have been literally changed after consuming cooked starches for a while, and everything would have tasted different. Also, for the first time, they would have felt the sensation of heaviness and fullness from the cooked starch, and this sensation would have also been addicting, even if entirely unnatural and unhealthy.

Put a basket of fresh organic seeded grapes, raspberries, or figs in front of you and after eating all your body needs in the moment you will experience the natural biological taste change and you will stop eating before you feel any sense of fullness. You will be satiated though. These seeded fruits are a healthy part of a diet designed to avoid reactive hypoglycemia.

Let's Understand Hypoglycemia...

Now a lot of people who are not educated in medical terms confuse hypoglycemia to mean hyperglycemia, but they are opposite conditions. One is not enough sugar in the blood stream, while the other is too much. Now I am not a doctor but I did get an A in human physiology and other nursing classes, so I have a little better understanding of these problems then the average person. That, combined with my experience with blood sugar balancing on the raw food diet over many years, tells me that hypoglycemia is generally the beginning of more serious pancreas problems from eating these foreign starches (refined flours and starchy cooked foods) for so long.

Once you are a reactive hypoglycemic it means there is a dangerously low blood sugar generally a couple of hours after consuming carbs. So, it seems to me that getting away from heavier cooked carbs altogether, would not only maybe get to the source of the disease and give the pancreas a rest, but would also help the immediate symptoms. Instead one could start using low-sugar fruits instead to get the sugar you are needing and more raw foods to begin to find a more balanced blood sugar effect.

*Special Mention: Stevia*

Stevia is a special issue that needs special mention, as someone was kind enough to notify me on. Some hypoglycemics have experienced positive results from using stevia while others negative. Interestingly enough, some have stated that they have no reaction from pure, raw stevia, while the processed stevia lowers their blood sugar too low. Basially though, when first beginning the treatement/healing process, be aware that stevia generally tends to lower the blood sugar and prevent carbohydrate absorption, and for a hypoglycemic this is not what you want. However, according to one study I read about, hypoglycemics had positive results with stevia because it apparently nourishes the pancreas and helps in the healing process.

So if dealing with hypoglycemia, definitely be aware that stevia may not be something you would want to use in the beginning- although as I have said, some have had positive results with it. It would probably be something to incorporate more once you are not having seriously low blood sugar reactions because obviously with low blood sugar you want to be absorbing your carbs and stevia can prevent this.

A more balanced way of life

For a diet for reactive hypoglycemia and diabetes nutrition, it would seem to make the most since to stop eating cooked starches and hybridized, seedless, laboratory-produced fruit immediately in order to start healing your pancreas. If you stop cooking your food then you will also not be getting advanced glycation endproducts , which are involved in both heart disease and in every disease process of diabetes. Really the first thing we need to do when leaving behind unhealthy cooked foods is admit that we are addicted to the hyperglycemic and filling effect they give us and acknowledge that we have to accept a different, more balanced way of life.