Sugar is addictive

I glibly described sugar as addictive in my last post. Is this true?

Well, anyone who has read Mark Johnson's book Wasted will realise that a 20g sucrose load in a Thornton's chocolate bar is not quite in the same league as mixed heroin and crack cocaine injected as an iv bolus in a public lavatory on the Tottenham Court Road.

But the neuropharmacology of glucose addiction is interesting and the prospect of giving up sugar is sufficiently daunting for most people that I think it is perfectly reasonable to describe sugar as addictive. The full text of the rat paper is free and has some interesting opinion as to the hows and whys, but the bottom line is that giving up sugar should not be expected to be easy!

Is it addictive? Yes.

Peter