Addicted to sugar?

“Sugar is addictive,” wrote James J. DiNicolantonio and Sean C. Lucan in the December 22, 2014, issue of The New York Times.

“And we don’t mean addictive in that way that people talk about delicious foods. We mean addictive, literally, in the same way as drugs….Cravings induced by sugar are comparable to those induced by addictive drugs like cocaine and nicotine.”

Today, the average American consumes between a quarter and a half a pound of sugar a day. Consider that, just a few hundred years ago, most people would have consumed less than the sugar in a single can of soda in an entire year.

What can you do to beat this addiction? These two experts suggest eating more “whole, natural foods.”

DiNicolanonio is a cardiovascular research scientist at Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute, and Lucan is an assistant professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.