The cycle has become so predictable, and disheartening, as our collective motivation to change our ways dissolves by February like a sugar cube in a glass of champagne. I’ve certainly done my fair share of January food-restriction experiments that fizzled at the first sign of a Valentine’s Day candy heart.
For me, it’s refined sugar, pure and simple, that, over time, I’ve identified as the food I would most love to be able to resist.
This year, I vowed to seek out new ways to stay out of the drawer my colleague keeps stocked with chocolate bars of all brands and sizes — an alluring stash stored right next to my desk.
I’m not alone in singling out sugar and the undue power it wields over me, according to researchers.
Over the last few years, scientists who study the way food influences our brains and bodies have been moving toward a consensus that sugar is addictive. Not everyone agrees or is willing to come out and say it yet. But as anti-sugar crusader Robert Lustig of the University of California-San Francisco noted in a recent piece for TheAtlantic.com, the research is suggesting that we want sugar even more than we want fat.
Nicole Avena, a neuroscientist at Columbia University, has shown in lab experiments with rats how overeating of palatable foods (like sugar) can produce changes in the brain and behavior that resemble addiction.
About 11 percent of the population meets the criteria for food addiction, Avena says — and most say they’re hooked on carbohydrates. To make the case to the general public, Avena has just published a book, Why Diets Fail, which she wrote with John Talbott, an author who recently went from borderline obese to fit by cutting sugar and most starches from his diet.