Sugar - Sweet Poison

That's very extreme.

Eating too much sugar - added sugar or inherent in foods - can make it impossible to get adequate nutrition without consuming too many calories, or on the flip side make it impossible to stay within reasonable calories when getting adequate nutrition. It can also make dental cavities more likely.

Moderation is a reasonable strategy. Inherent sugars in fruit, veggies, and no-sugar-added dairy foods are chemically the same as added sugars. Most added sugars are derived from fruits or veggies. As with any refined food, yeah, it's easy to over-consume those.

I eat small amounts of added sugar - very small amounts during weight loss, but now a bit more in long-term weight maintenance. I get very good overall nutrition: Plenty of protein, healthy fats, boatloads of nice, varied, colorful veggies and fruits daily. I have zero of your "red X" items, and I'm already old. I am not unique in this.

Sure, if someone has trouble moderating sweets, they need to solve that problem. Sure, people who are diabetic or insulin resistant will need to manage carbohydrate intake, including sugars. Good overall nutrition is very important, as is a healthy body weight.

By contrast, endurance athletes may benefit from consuming straight sugar during long training sessions, because it provides quick energy while minimizing risks of problematic digestive distress.

With sugar - and many other things - context and dosage matter.

I easily ate a pound or two of candy per day, working my way into obesity. It was an endless loop. Candy? Energy! Bottom out. Need more ……candy! Energy! Crash….. repeat repeat repeat.

I did feel like an addict and I do understand people who say that, even though many here pooh-pooh that idea. Shame, guilt, hiding. Anything that drives you to do things you don’t want to do or can’t control, to me that screams “addiction”.

When I’d had enough, I got rid of all the candy, sweets, cookies, cake, pie and icecream in the house.

it was a hard habit to break but I did eventually gain (I won’t say “re”gain because it had been a problem my whole life) control

Food began to taste better Fruit became off the charts sweet. Delicious!

Even now, several years into maintenance, I have to be cautious about what I bring in the house. Lidl had a tempting sale on their wonderful bakery cookies this week, but you had to buy five. At 385 calories a pop, I had to walk away. That would easily be almost 2,000 calories gobbled at once.

However, sugar still has its place in my life.

I often do several relatively hard workouts back to back. I keep 15 calorie ginger chews in my bag, and you’ll often catch me swimming with one in my mouth for the little sugar boost it gives me til I can get to a nourishing lunch. For huge crashes, I keep a protein bar in the bag, too, for emergencies. I like the bars with natural sugars.

I’ve tried the sugar free route- went all in, in fact. Some tore up my stomach, others aggravated my joint pain. It was my dietician who pointed out to me I was having six or seven servings a day. It just crept up on me in my quest for low! lower!! lowest!!!! calories.

Ad I said, anything can be an addiction

I made a batch of ice cream mix last night and doubled up on the sugar. Two teaspoons instead of one, which was just too tart (basically yogurt, fresh strawberries and vanilla otherwise).

I had a moment of WTF am I doing, but soon got over it. It’s healthy ingredients, very low cal, and two teaspoons of sugar versus one is unlikely to send me spiraling.

You’ve got to find the tipping point and be aware of it, and your propensities. Galadriel and the whole “edge of a knife” thing.

I could easily be the same way with popcorn. I could eat a grocery bag full of the stuff, given the opportunity, but I know myself now and I know my limits, and understand reasonable and wise now versus “woohoo, limits? What’s a limit?!”

TLDR: Don’t vilify foods. That can easily lead you down another path that sucks, as sugar free products did for me. Focus on managing and thoughtful eating.