By Dana Kennedy

Without even realizing it, I became a slave to sugar as a little girl in Marblehead, Massachusetts in the late 1960s and early ’70s. As soon as I could ride my blue Schwinn around the neighborhood, I made a daily beeline for two little stores, Mullen’s and Mandy’s, where I bought penny candies such as Chocolate Babies, Pixy Stix, Mary Janes, Bit-O-Honeys, Atomic Fireballs, Hot Tamales and red licorice. T: Ban on Food Stamp Purchases: No More Sugary Drinks

If I wanted regular candy bars, I could buy three for 25 cents. A Charleston Chew, Sugar Daddy or a Sky Bar cost 10 cents apiece. A nickel bought me a Reese’s peanut butter cup or a chocolate Peppermint Patty. By age 6 or 7, I was a nascent sweet freak, the least sexy, least respected addiction on the planet – but probably also the most insidious. After all, the Federal Food and Drug Administration, in effect, openly protects sugar addiction by allowing so much of it to be added to our food.

A DAILY DOSE
Unlike some people who graduate to cooler substance abuse problems like smoking or drinking, I never outgrew my sugar jones. I still get excited when drugstores roll out their chemical dye and additive-riddled Halloween, Valentine’s Day and Easter candies. Until February 28, 2010, when I decided to give up candy and desserts for at least one year, I ate something sweet almost every day of my life.

I was what they’d call a “high bottom” in Alcoholics Anonymous. I was never a binger or closet sweets eater nor did I have a weight problem. I craved something sugary every day, just not necessarily in huge amounts.

But I was growing older and worried about sugar’s impact on my health. As a kid, I’d become enslaved to a substance that had its roots in truly brutal servitude: The massive African slave trade that began in the 16th century came about because cheap labor was needed to work the profitable new sugar plantations in the Caribbean.

What’s happened since may be history’s most bittersweet case of blowback. I’m a sugar addict, yes, and I’m not alone. Because I’m a journalist by trade I did a lot of research, read a lot of books (1975’s “Sugar Blues” by Gloria Swanson’s husband William Dufty is still the gold standard) and articles about sugar addiction, and spoke to experts.

Former sugar addict Connie Bennett of New York City, the author of a book called “Sugar Shock,” took me under her wing when I began my blog and even invited me to participate in some of her group coaching teleseminars. But to really understand why Americans have such a collective sugar monkey on their back, you just need to look at the numbers.

170 POUNDS OF SUGAR PER PERSON!
To put it in perspective, the anatomically modern human has been in existence for roughly 200,000 years. Until the beginning of the 18th century, the number of people who had even tasted sugar around the world was miniscule. By the 19th century, Americans were eating about four pounds of sugar a year. By 1915, the figure had jumped to about 15 pounds a year.

Today, the typical American consumes on the average a frightening 170 pounds of sugar per year – which is a major reason why the country has an obesity and diabetes epidemic. Contrary to popular opinion, doctors say eating sugar by itself doesn’t lead to diabetes, but being fat does – and the quickest way to get fat is to eat a lot of sugar.

Even if you don’t think you have a sweet tooth, you may be a sugar addict without realizing it. It’s hard to live in the U.S. and escape our sugar-soaked diet, courtesy of the $28 billion American sugar industry. Sugar, in the form of high-fructose corn syrup, dextrose, fructose or honey, is added to thousands of processed products – ketchup, baby formula, soup, peanut butter, canned vegetables, breakfast cereals and barbecue sauce, to name just a few.

If you want to simply reduce your intake of sugar, all it takes is a decision to read food labels and the discipline to switch to healthier, natural products. But if you’re a true sugar addict, the kind of person who, like me, ate most of their Halloween candy the same night they got it and could never understand their friends who kept their bags under their bed, then good luck. I’ve been trying to give it up for decades.

Sugar addiction just isn’t taken seriously. There’s no 12-step group specifically for us, although Overeaters Anonymous can be helpful. As I write this, I’m on my seventh month of no sweets. I’d like to credit a Higher Power, but in my case what worked for me was creating a blog, “A Year Without Candy,” and writing an article for The Huffington Post about my plan on the very day I started. Challenging myself in public and not wanting to fail has kept me on track after years of aborted attempts; hundreds of vows I made to myself Sunday nights to stop eating candy – only to weaken after a few days and buy chocolate.

FREEDOM AS REWARD
Mine hasn’t been a story ready-made for Oprah or a typical women’s magazine. It’s not about the physical or an overnight miracle. I haven’t lost tons of weight, nor do I spring out of bed every morning with whiter eyes and a brand-new lease on life. The impact on me of giving up sweets has been more subtle and surprising. It reminds me, in fact, of what friends in AA have told me about what life was like after they got sober.

About two to three months into my Year Without Candy, I felt as if the scales were dropping from my eyes. Jacking myself up with sugar every day, it turns out, kept me on a somewhat artificial high and in a Neptunian fog I never knew was there. Candy did sweeten my life because since I’ve been no longer eating it, I’ve had to face some sometimes-sour realities dating back, probably, to the years even before the blue Schwinn.

I didn’t have it much better or worse than anyone else as a kid. As far as I can see now, no longer under the influence of candy, I was a lot like an alcoholic as a young child. I stumbled onto a substance early on that helped me cope, as opposed to accepting life on life’s terms. Frankly, I might have preferred to keep my naiveté and lose ten pounds instead. But what’s kept me going (besides not wanting to lose face and admit on my blog that I failed) is a new sense of freedom.

A friend of mine with decades of sobriety in AA once told me, “Never give an alcoholic a choice.” And I don’t give myself a choice now when it comes to sweets. I just say “no.” If I say “maybe,” I’ll be back on candy every day.

Giving up sweets helped me see my own life more clearly; staying off sweets on a consistent basis has freed me from slavery. For today, at least, I prefer emancipation.

MORE:

BOOKS:
Sugar Blues by William Dufty
Suicide by Sugar by Nancy Appleton (www.nancyappleton.com)
Sugar Shock by Connie Bennett (www.sugarshock.com)

ON YOUTUBE:
“Sugar: The Bitter Truth” – 90-minute lecture by UCSF obesity expert and endocrinologist Robert Lustig

Dana Kennedy is a journalist based in France. Her writing appears in AOL News, The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Time Magazine and People, among others.  She was a television reporter for ten years in the U.S. Her blog is A Year Without Candy.

*ED’s note: This article has been revised since it appeared in print. It now refers to Gloria Swanson’s husband William Dufty.