theatlantic:

Your Sugar Addiction is Killing You

Substances of abuse used to be the subject of much hand-wringing. It started with opium dens, moved to speakeasies, then to crack houses, then to “smoking permitted” anterooms. Since Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No,” the war on drugs has taken a back seat, but not because it has been won. Rather, because a different war has cluttered the headlines — the war on obesity. And a substance even more insidious, I would argue, has supplanted cocaine and heroin. The object of our current affliction is sugar. Who could have imagined that something so innocent, so delicious, so irresistible — just one glucose molecule (not so sweet) plus one fructose molecule (very sweet) — could propel America toward economic deterioration and medical collapse?

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