This is not food, this is our worst enemy and we love it.

You bet I can find it in your kitchen. And I do not have to look for it. I just have to open your kitchen cabinet. I am sure, it’s there. I have it in mine. It’s a white granulated substance. And it’s not an illegal drug. It’s called sugar. It can be produced differently – from beets, from cane, even chemically, and then it carries a different name and it is sweeter than sugar.

This substance was invented long ago. In England it was documented in 1099, and at first it was a very expensive treat, a luxury. Poor people, I guess, were just lucky they could not afford it. The Persians had learned sugar making from India or may be India from Persians, who knows for sure, but it happened approximately around 540 AD. The knowledge of making sugar had been sent from the Holy Lands to Europe around 1099 AD. So, in Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries, sugar was known and used in England, France, Spain, and Italy same as and more often than honey! From Cyprus to the Canaries, Madeira, and St. Thomas, and from Spain to the New World, sugar was everywhere.

Sugar was priced higher than honey. While it was expensive for peasants, it was easily available to other classes. Then, device was invented that could turn the syrup into the white granulated powder we now all know as cane sugar. Sugar was like a spice, it was produced, used in trades, until mass production of it lowered the prices, spread all over the world and finally sugar became the product that everybody, rich and poor could equally use and … abuse.

The beginning of sugar addiction, and its accompanying health problems, began with the need for cheap labor in European factories. Sugar masks hunger; it helps endure the dull and endless physical labor. Almost as soon as sugar became a cheap food staple in the eighteenth century, doctors started to notice its bad effects on the human body. What we are telling people now was well known by doctors who warned against sugar since it had been invented.

A new study conducted in Sweden and published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggests that drinking two or more sugary drinks a day can increase your risk of pancreatic cancer by 90 per cent. Imagine, just 2 sweet drinks!

Dermatologist Dr Nicholas Perricone, author of Dr Nicholas Perricone's Programme (Thorsons, £8.99), says: 'Sugar and high-glycaemic foods, which rapidly convert to sugar, create inflammation on a cellular level throughout your body. Blood sugar reacts with the minerals in your body, such as iron and copper, creating free radicals, which then attack your cells. These cause damage such as wrinkles and accelerated ageing.'

A well known fact is that a 500ml bottle of cola may contain as much as 50g – or about 13tsp of sugar. Eating too much sugar can also contribute to arterial damage, the hormonal imbalances, hypertension, depression and hypoglycaemia associated with high intakes of sugar, and you can see why there's nothing sweet in it.

This is just plain statistics. Most of us in North America are consuming 22 teaspoons of added sugar daily, the equivalent of 350 calories. The average person consumes 150 pounds of sugar per year– compared to just 7 ½ pounds consumed on average in the year 1700.

Sugar feeds cancer – It gives cancer the ability to grow due to the environment it creates (see Otto Warburg and the cause of cancer).Sugar can contribute to heart disease by creating more plague in your arteries. Not enough? Here you are:

Sugar is addictive. This is from Wikipedia ‘Sugar and the taste of sweet stimulate the brain by activating beta endorphin receptor sites. These are the same chemicals activated by heroin and morphine.’ Here you go! Did I manage to scare you good? Is it enough to you to at least think about cutting on you sugar?

All those cookies and ice-creams, no wonder you are craving them so much! They are addictive, honey (no pun intended)! You just need more time to enjoy them to destroy your health than with street drugs. But you are going there for sure together with your innocent children. And if you are sugar sensitive, like me, if you are especially fond of all those sweet buns and candies and feel like you cannot live without them, then it’s time for you to run, run as fast as you can, if you still can, if your heart is still good, if you are not overweight and in a good mood. If not – run even faster. As always you have your choice. What you buy and what you eat – is all up to you. Make your research and your decision. I made mine.

There is another food, food that grows on your planet. That food does not need any alteration or enhancement, or adding lots of salt and sugar to it. You do not have to cook most of it. You can just wash and eat it. Just go to the local market – there you have it for any budget. Give your body the nutrition it needs, and you’ll feel the difference right away. Try just for two days to live without sugar in your food, I guarantee, you’ll see the difference. And don’t tell me that you need carbohydrates – if you have your fruits and grains every day, you’ll have enough carbs for the rest of your life.

Learn how to find the hidden processed sugars that our food industry generously and skilfully adds to everything on your menu.

Stay away from products that say ‘less fat’, because it means more sugar in it, because fat enhances flavour and sugar replaces that in fatless products. It’s not healthier for your body, it’s more damaging. Don't fool yourself. Do not use sugar substitutes. Pure chemicals, they damage your health faster than sugar.Train yourself to dislike sweet things. If you are addicted to them, they are your enemies.

It’s not easy, I know, even dry spices; even processed meats have sugar added. I am still fighting my addiction to sugar. When I am tired I crave sweet things, but if I do not consume them – I feel better. Sugar addiction means big profits for sweet industry. I do not expect them to ban it all in my life time. But on my personal level I will fight against them and you can do it too. You can at least minimize the consumption of the worst offenders, like sweet drinks, cookies, ice-creams and candies. Do it, it might be not too late for your health.

I hope it’s not too late. For the sake of all of us I want our doctors to become poor and unemployed one day. Most of us, we do not need them. We are born healthy and we should stay that way for the rest of our long and productive lives. We deserve that.