Is sugar a performance enhancing drug (PED)?

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(Nigel Williams) #1

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) says this…

Simply put, PEDs have the ability or potential to drastically alter the human body and biological functions, including the ability to considerably improve athletic performance in certain instances. These drugs, however, can be extremely dangerous and, in certain situations, deadly. The negative effects these drugs can have on one’s body make USADA’s mission paramount as to why no athlete should ever have to consider PED use to succeed in sport.

I’ve read and heard quite a few LCHF experts say sugar is not a food but a drug. Then I have read sport and fitness people say their performance is enhanced on carbs/sugar compared to fat.

And finally in the long term sugar is very damaging to our bodies just like other performance enhancing drugs.

So should we expect in the next 30 years for sugar to be categorised as a PED and become a banned substance for sport and nonsport people?

#2

I consider it a drug in an attempt to give it a negative connotation to help avoid it - and because of its powerfully addictive nature. However, it probably does not enhance performance much. As much a PED a marijuana :wink:

(Allan Misner) #3

I don’t think it will. All of what you say is technically true, but I doubt you’ll get the USADA to test the A1C of athletes. Plus, would you class sugars in natural foods the same as you would for “added sugar?”

(Nigel Williams) #4

Perhaps its the other way round. As we all perform well on fat, the food and pharma industry will say all natural unprocessed fats should be banned, and replaced with margarine and low grade added sugar foods, that way we are all equal - equally sick at least :flushed:

#5

Our ancestors were triggered to like sweet tastes (fruits) in order to fatten up for the long winter ahead without fruits in season. So, there were feast and famine cycles. Unfortunately, today we can get strawberries (for example) 12 months out of the year. This interferes with the “performance” behaviour of sugar that was part of the natural environmental cycle.

(Steven Cook) #6

Being a sugar burner severely limits your ability in edurance sports insomuch as I have never “bonked” on a long distance bike ride (~200km) since I went keto, so for me ketones are the PED. :wink:

#7

I get the mindset, but as somebody that’s taken (real) PEDs… NOPE, not even close!

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #8

@lfod14 Talk about resurrecting a dead topic! I didn’t notice the date until after I gave a heart! Anyway, to try to make something useful out of it:

Not quite. Our paleolithic (Pleistocene) ancestors did not have any fruits, as we know them, to trigger ‘sweet’, as we know it, to ‘fatten up’ for winter. They fattened up for winter by eating meat and fat to excess when it was abundant and easy to get. The predecessor plants of our fruits and veggies were 90+% indigestible cellulose and quite useless for any ‘fattening up’. The only carb source of high energy was honey, and that was obtained only serendipitously.

The sense of ‘sweet’ developed to counter ‘bitter’ which is a warning not to eat something.

#9

I got a bad habit of doing that, gotta look at dates before I respond to stuff haha.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #10

Me too. :heart_eyes: