The Online Photographer

I've been soldiering through some technical problems with the blog lately—it happens rarely but recurringly. This morning, illustrations won't load, and everything having to do with comments returns a 404 Error. I'm currently working on a "parallel blog" on a different service, but it's a long way from ready for prime time. I need help but can't find anyone to help. I probably couldn't afford them if I did. Wish I was more gooder at computering. I started using computers during freshman year in college. By the end of that short year I already knew I do not have the gene.

In the meantime, here's a short, text-only message about sugar. Those of you who hate these diet posts will have to admit there hasn't been one in a long time. (And don't forget you can skip this one.) This is just because I need to work on something today which, if it's lost or won't load, won't matter. I'm working on "Big Honkin' Normals Part II," which will be long, and illustrated, with lots of links, and if that one gets lost it's going to cost a lot in terms of lost work.

Anyhoo....

I've been trying to get off sugar. As an alcoholic in recovery and a former smoker who quit, I have a bit of firsthand knowledge about addiction. Does sugar fit under that heading? I think so. For me it does. Here's how I sometimes put it:

On a 100 scale of addictive substances, if crack and meth are 100, heroin is 90, alcohol for those who are addicted to it is 80, and nicotine is, let's say, 65; then sugar is like 10 or 15. It's not much, but it's not nothing, either.

That's if you have the innocently named "sweet tooth," meaning a food addiction to sugar. Some (many?) people don't. But you might: sugar is the perfect industrial food, and it's all over the place in the U.S. Hard to escape. It keeps forever; it's cheap but has high perceived value among consumers, so the people who sell it can charge a lot for it; it robustly resists efforts to paint it as unhealthy; and it can be added to almost anything, often invisibly. And it's mildly addicting. Great! The foodlike-substance industry loves it.

Overt and covert
There are two categories sugar in foodstuffs: overt and covert. Overt sugar is any obvious "sugar delivery system," meaning something everybody knows has sugar in it: cakes, candy, doughnuts, breakfast cereal and pastries, sodas. This category also includes sugars you add yourself: maple syrup on pancakes, honey, or granulated sugar sprinkled on stuff or scooped into your morning coffee. Et cetera ad infinitum.

The sneaky sort of sugar is covert, meaning hidden or partially hidden: sugar going by different names on labels, or quietly added to things you wouldn't normally think of as a dessert or a sweet. For example, in 1989 a McDonald's hamburger had 2.6 grams of sugar in it, but now that's risen to 10 grams. Ten! That's equivalent to two and a half teaspoons of table sugar. In a hamburger. You've got to be careful out there.

Here are a few of the covert sugars I watch out for when I'm trying to kick sugar:

• Jellies and jams
• Yogurt
• Sushi
• Ketchup
• Pan loaf (i.e.,"bread")
• Barbeque sauce
• Fruit juice
• Peanut butter

Jellies and jams are made with copious amounts of sugar. Contrary to received wisdom, yogurt is not healthy—it's pudding. Most of it is loaded with sugar. It's not food; it's dessert. There might be a few yogurt types that you can purchase that are plain and real, with no added sugar, but good luck finding them in an American supermarket. Sushi is the rice, not the fish. Sushi rice is made with vinegar and sugar; it's eaten as a dessert or a sweet treat in Japan [CORRECTION: The clause with the strikeout is wrong; see Christian's Featured Comment below]. It's deeply beloved of sugar addicts who are certain it's the one "healthy" food they really like. I love it—it's my favorite food—but it's sugar. How do I know? See below under "Cravings." Sushi triggers my cravings when I'm trying to avoid sugar. Ketchup, a.k.a. catsup, surprises a lot of people. Homemade ketchup is made of tomato paste, vinegar, maybe a spice or two such as mustard powder, and sugar. A lot of sugar. Ketchup should be thought of as sugar sauce. A tablespoon of ketchup has a teaspoon of sugar in it. By weight, ketchup has more sugar in it than Coca-Cola. Pan loaf is supermarket bread, the kind that's in loaf shape (or as hot dog and hamburger buns) sold in plastic bags in the "bread" section of the supermarket rather than the bakery section. It has all sorts of additives in it, including, usually, lots of sugar—up to a whole teaspoon per slice. Pepperidge Farm Farmhouse brand Honey White bread has six grams of sugar per slice, five of which are added—that's one and a half teaspoons of sugar in each slice! A clue as to what you're eating is how long it lasts. Pan loaf will last a week or even two with no problem. Real bread goes stale in one day or two and gets moldy within 4–6 days. Pan loaf is not real bread. It's engineered fake bread. But it's pushed all the daily bakeries that used to be all over everywhere in America out of business. And if you do find a bakery, the last thing it will sell is un-sugared bread.

I used to pick one of the last available low-sugar barbeque sauces. Then it suddenly had a "NEW AND IMPROVED" blaze on the label, and sure enough, they had sextupled the sugar content. Try to buy a pre-made sugar-free or low sugar barbeque sauce from an American supermarket now; bet you can't. Fruit juice is one of the great swindles of the entire supermarket, hiding in plain sight. So many advertise "100% Real Juice." That's true, but it's mostly apple juice, which is very close to plain sugar water. Add chemical flavoring and coloring, and sometimes a small amount of real juice from whatever fruit it's supposed to be the juice of, as if the purveyor were honest, and voilà, 100% Real Juice. It's actually worse than soda because it masquerades in plain sight as something that's supposedly healthy. Peanut butter is low in sugar only if it's one of those additive-free "natural" peanut butters, which are either made with only peanuts, or peanuts with a little salt. But bear in mind that some peanut butters with "Natural" in the title, such as JIF Natural, are not natural, lower-case n. The most heavily sugared peanut butters have a teaspoon of sugar in every two tablespoons, so only half as much as ketchup. But still a lot.

Sugar is relatively easy to kick compared to most addictive drugs. It takes four days of abstaining to get over the worst of the cravings, and a mere two weeks to get off it entirely. [UPDATE: See Bear.'s comment in the Comments Section.] But, and it's a big but, avoiding relapse is especially difficult, not only because temptation is everywhere, but because people persistently feel that "it's not that bad" or that it's okay in moderation.

Cravings
Ah, but there's the rub. Eating sugar, for sugarholics—sorry, those who have a sweet tooth—is a trigger. Sorry for using the language of political correctness, but it's apropos here. Eating sugar triggers cravings: cravings for more sugar, sure; but there's also plenty of evidence that eating sugar to excess also increases appetite, and cravings, for all foods. You eat more if you feed on sugar. That's also great for the processed food industry, whose mission is to get you to buy as much product as possible.

Add it all up and it's not easy to reduce your sugar dependency. I'm working on it. Wish me luck. And with TypePad, too.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Terry Letton: "You think sugar is insidious, try avoiding salt. Whatever you eat if you don’t make it completely from scratch it’s got salt in it, and probably a lot of it."

Peter Conway: "Last weekend my wife and I were picking up some dog treats to bring to a friend, and we had a surprisingly hard time finding ones without added sugar. Who’s the sugar for??? Can’t be the dog! Maybe it’s in case the humans decide to taste the treats?"

Christian Cael: "As a decades-long reader I say with utmost respect that as a decades-long resident of Japan I can assure you that while sushi vinegar does contain sugar people here do not consider it a sweet and do not eat it as dessert."

Mike replies: Thanks Christian. I added a correction to the text.

ugo: "Yes, but the profiterole...I've eaten one when I was a kid and, oh my, it did taste good. Yum. We're going towards a healthy future with no sugar, no salt, no coffee, no reckless driving, no toying with firearms, no swimming in shark-infested waters, no tickling the alligator's tail."

Mike replies: My stance in the post doesn't have anything to do with crushing joy or being averse to risk and adventure. I did make a foundational decision years ago to be honest with my readers, but, in this case, exact honesty with specific examples would be embarrassing. What I didn't describe to you was the extent of my sugar addiction. It ain't pretty. I display distinctly addictive behaviors around sugar. I'm not a normal mature adult in this respect. Okay, one example: I once drove the 15-mile round trip to town to get a Baby Ruth. Okay, now I am ashamed.  :-O

Quitting or at least cutting down is a logical, explicable, and desirable goal in my particular individual case. You'll have to take my word for that. If you'll also please accept my word that I am not telling you or anybody else what to do! You may have your profiterole.