Is sugar addictive?

I never realized how much sugar was in my life, until I gave up sweets for Lent. I go on a walk and outside the grocery store I see the Girl Scouts pushing their product. I go to a friend’s birthday party and the cake stares at me from across the room. I head to the coffee shop, but that matcha latte just doesn’t hit the same without a little simple syrup. 

Sugar is the nutritional boogeyman ready to leap out from behind every corner, a ubiquitous presence at our kitchen tables: per person on average Americans eat about 120 pounds of the sweet stuff each year. 

Maya Feller, a Brooklyn-based registered dietician nutritionist, said she’s seen a shift in how we talk about sugar over the years. “I would say the difference is the demonization,” she told Vox. “Currently we are in a battle of wits and morality around sugar. Back in the 1980s when I was young, people were going sugar-free. But it wasn’t like, ‘Oh, you’re a bad person if you’re having sugar.’ We fully entered into the morality that’s associated with sugar.”

So how do you make the best food choices for yourself without spiraling? And if you want to reframe your relationship with sugar, how do you do that in a healthy way? We discuss that and more on the latest episode of Explain It to Me, Vox’s weekly call-in podcast.

Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. If you’d like to submit a question, send an email to askvox@vox.com or call 1-800-618-8545.

What do you think has caused the shift in how we view sugar?

Some of that is coming from what we refer to as wellness culture and this overall desire to be slender and able-bodied. So when you have these foods that have been demonized and then a person eats that food, then it’s like, “Oh, well, you’re not going after the gold standard. You don’t want to be slender and able-bodied. And if you’re ill, that’s your fault.”

When someone comes to you and they say they want to cut back on sugar, what are the questions you ask them?

My first question is “Why?” 

Is it because you’re concerned about your cardio metabolic health? Are we talking about diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease? Or perhaps you are aware that you’ve been eating three pounds of sugar every week. 

Once I know what the why is, then we can start to get to the meat of really figuring out where it’s showing up in your day and then how to address pulling it back while not getting lost in “you’ve done good/you’ve done bad.”

What are some of the biggest challenges your patients face with sugar? 

It’s everywhere. When I say everywhere, it is everywhere. There’s sugar in ketchup. There’s sugar in tomato sauce. If you’re buying boxed, jarred, canned or frozen food, sometimes it’s added in. It’s not just pastries. 

So that’s the biggest challenge. You really have to become that informed consumer and read the nutrition facts label. You’ve got to read the ingredient list and then understand how that food fits in the context of your day.

Do you recommend going cold turkey?

Oh no, absolutely not. Any change that you make in your overall eating pattern, you want to make sure that it’s something that’s sustainable and that you can replicate it over time. For most of us, it’s not realistic to say that we’re not going to eat any added sugar. Last night I was at dinner and dessert was brought out, and if I wasn’t eating added sugar, then I couldn’t have taken part in dessert. 

I do say slowly reduce to a place that you feel like you can sustain the majority of the time. Think of it in a way where it’s not all or nothing, because sugar really is everywhere.

Some of us love sweets more than others. What’s your advice for those of us with a sweet tooth?

Here’s the thing: One of the challenges when we’re shopping is we rarely purchase one single cookie. Perhaps it’s a bag of cookies. Is there a way to change how the cookie comes into your home? Instead, is there a bakery close by? Could you bake a cookie? 

Then maybe it’s just having the cookie after lunch or after dinner. I prefer to have it up against a meal just because you’ve had some protein and fiber in the meal to help slow down the absorption of the sugar into the bloodstream.

Is there a way to retrain our taste buds? A way to make the sweet tooth stop?

You absolutely can. It takes time. When I’m working with folks, I like to figure out how much sugar you have on a regular basis, and in what form you’re getting it. Is it a liquid sugar or is it a solid sugar? 

The reason I ask about the liquid is because if someone’s sitting down and they’re having a two-liter bottle of a soda, we can cut it down by half a glass per day over X amount of days. But if it’s like a sleeve of cookies or a cake, then we’re going to have to know what your sugar interactions are over the course of the day. Is it possible that we could reduce it to two sugar interactions from three? Can we cut the portion size? Can we change when you’re having it? Can we change some of your behaviors around what you do after you have it? We go through that level of detail because we eat multiple times per day. 

I want to make it applicable to work, relaxation, all of the things, so that when you’re doing that stepdown, it’s not like, “Oh, I’m on my sugar reduction journey now, but it doesn’t apply to other parts of my life or other scenarios.”

We’re living in really stressful times, and I think for a lot of people, a sweet treat at the end of the day is a reward for making it through. But is that a crutch? Are we ultimately doing ourselves more harm than good when we do that?

I don’t actually think so. I understand foods being comforting, and I’m not going to be the person to say, “No, you can’t have that thing after you’ve lived a whole life.” I won’t do it. 

But what I will say is, what’s your current health? How can we create a space where you can really enjoy that sweet treat? Let it be a moment, and then move on from it so that it doesn’t become a four-hour activity.

I gave up sugar for Lent this year, and in a few weeks, Lent will be over and I’ll once again be staring down those cookies at my favorite bakery, trying to decide how this is going to fit into my life. What should I do when that happens?

This is forethought: Okay, I know that this is coming and I’m going to have to figure out how this fits in. 

I am a huge believer that if you want to have a cookie, it can be a once in a while activity. Once it becomes a staple, then it’s a different story. You can go to the bakery, get that cookie that you love, and savor it when you have it. So don’t eat it walking down the street, but find a special place. If it’s a park bench, if it’s your home, if it’s with a friend or whatever, savor that cookie and then it becomes special. 

There was a time when we used to go out for ice cream, and that was a special thing. We’ve lost the specialness of special moments. A treat is supposed to be special.