Book: Sugar Less
Author: Nicole M. Avena, PhD
Publisher: Union Square & Co., Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.
Years ago, I’d heard about an experiment where they took rats and got them addicted to sugar and cocaine. Then they made the rats choose: sugar or cocaine? The rats overwhelmingly chose sugar.
I always suspected that it was an urban legend or an allegory to make the point that sugar is hard to stop eating. But, turns out it was true! Nicole M. Avena, PhD, created and conducted that experiment about 20 years ago as part of earning her PhD. At the time, people and the media would talk casually about craving sugar, or how people have a sweet tooth. But, doctors and scientists never considered sugar an addictive product, a drug. Avena proved it, and got her PhD doing so.
I heard her speak at a breakfast to a small room of health writers the other day. She spoke about how we are surrounded by sweetness in such intensities nature could never have offered. Candy and soda are just the beginning. Sugar is now commonly added to bread and pizza dough, even salad dressings! It’s in bacon, sausages, and yogurt. It’s harder to find foods without added sugars.
But, I don’t personally have a weight problem, so why should I care about the sugar in my life? Avena says it all in her book.
“Sugar has not only been shown to have destructive effects on metabolic health, but new research shows that it can negatively impact learning, memory, impulse control, and metabolism as well, just to name a few things.
”Sugar is a silent killer. The damage that sugar causes isn’t obvious at first, and there aren’t always outward signs,” she writes. Avena reminds us that addictions grow, and even if I’m managing my sugar intake now, I’m playing with fire. And really, do I need this much added sugar to be happy?
Before this gets depressingly overwhelming, let me hasten to say Avena doesn’t suggest we treat sugar like most addictive drugs. How can we move through society and refuse every office birthday cake, all those Thanksgiving pies, or never eat pizza from chain restaurants ever again?
Sugar, Avena claims, is the main reason diets fail so consistently. She writes that “…sugar messes with your brain. By changing the way your neurons communicate, sugar traps you further into a spiral of addiction: binging, withdrawal, and craving…sugar addiction is real, and it is screwing up your brain.”
All Avena asks is that we all take it down a little. OK, she says to take it down a lot. But you don’t have to cut it out entirely. So Avena has written a book to guide you in slowly lowering the added sweetness levels in our life, but keeping the natural sugars. In the book, Avena outlines her program for controlling sugars:
- Understanding how sugar affects your brain and your health.
- Identifying your sweetness “triggers,” such as a pastry with coffee? Ice cream after dinner? A candy bowl in the office kitchen? Giant iced lattes with two shots of caramel?
- Managing stress, setbacks, and social pressure
- And her book offers recipes, too
For the record, the foods offered at the breakfast I attended were platters of avocado toast (I eyed the bread suspiciously), delicious mini quiches (ditto on the quiche crust), unsweetened yogurt with fruit, fresh fruit, croissants and pain au chocolat (I rolled my eyes). What a demonstration of how sugar can be found in (mostly) healthy breakfast offerings, not to mention the packet of sugar I put into each cup of coffee.
In the recipe section, I skipped through the main courses because I don’t have any problems keeping sugar out of my meal cooking. But, for snacks and desserts, I NEED sugar. I spotted a frozen yogurt with nuts and fruit recipe. Who doesn’t love frozen yogurt? (It’s not quite as good as ice cream, but it’s pretty good!). So I tried it and, yes, it’s good! Here’s the recipe, reprinted with permission.
Frozen Yogurt Bark with Nuts and Berries
Ingredients
1 cup of unsweetened vanilla yogurt*
¼ cup chopped nuts of your choice**
¼ cup of whole raspberries, chopped strawberries, halved blackberries, or whole blueberries
1 T. of cacao nibs
Directions
- Line a 9-inch square baking pan with parchment paper
- Spoon the yogurt into the lined pan, and spread it out with an even layer about ¼ inch thick (it will not cover the whole surface of the pan)
- Sprinkle the nuts evenly over the layer, followed by the berries and cacao nibs
- Freeze for one hour before serving
- To serve, break up the bark into smaller pieces
- Store, covered, in the freezer, for one to two weeks
*Any type of yogurt will work. I recommend coconut yogurt, Greek yogurt, oat milk yogurt, or soy yogurt.
** For the nuts, I recommend almonds, pistachios, or cashews.
