Yesterday, I walked through the aisles of H-E-B with my children. If you’ve ever taken kids grocery shopping, you know the rhythm: “Mom, can I get this?” “Mom, can I get that?”
Then, from my 11-year-old, a different voice: “No, it’s not organic. You can’t get it.” Even in that small moment, I could see it clearly—the pull of sugar. Not just in the brightly colored packaging or the cartoon mascots, but in my own children. The wanting, the negotiating, the way their attention narrows and their desire sharpens around something they don’t need.
We have all heard of the study in which rats chose sugar over cocaine, almost exclusively. When I went back to research it, the internet was quick to correct the narrative, insisting that this does not mean that sugar is more addictive than cocaine. Fine. But then what does it mean? Does it mean that sugar is more desirable than cocaine? That the reward pathways for sweetness are so powerful that they override even hard drugs in certain conditions? Or that something about sugar speaks directly to our biology in a way we don’t fully understand—or don’t want to admit? Because when I look around, I don’t see people lining up to buy cocaine. I see carts full of soda, candy, and ultra-processed food.
What makes this even more complex is the fact that our desire for sugar is not accidental. It is built into us. For most of human history, sugar was rare. When our ancestors found something sweet, it meant energy and calories. It meant survival. So the brain adapted accordingly, learning to say “more of that”—not because it was indulgent, but because it was intelligent. The problem is that this same survival mechanism has been dropped into a world of constant abundance.
I am currently deep into Lent. For weeks now, I have been living on raw milk, bone broth, and tea. My body is nourished. I am not starving. And yet I can feel it—the pull toward carbohydrates, the quiet but persistent voice in my mind asking for something sweet, something quick, something unnecessary. It’s not hunger; it’s desire. That raises a deeper question: If we had to grow everything we ate, would we be producing sugar at today’s levels? Would we plant acres of sugarcane or sugar beets, harvest them, process them, refine them, and then add them to nearly everything we eat? Of course we wouldn’t.
When we extract sugar from its natural context—strip away the fiber, isolate it, and refine it—we are no longer consuming food. We are consuming a fragment of a system, concentrated beyond anything our bodies were designed to handle. There is a parallel here that is hard to ignore. Indigenous cultures have long chewed coca leaves—known in different regions as mambe, ipadu, and other traditional names—using them in their whole form for energy, ritual, or in tea. That is very different from isolating and refining cocaine. The outcome is not the same, because the context is not the same. We understand this distinction with drugs, but with sugar, we pretend that it doesn’t apply.
Walking through that grocery store, I saw people who were clearly struggling with obesity, diabetes, and fatigue, with carts filled with soda and processed snacks. It raises an uncomfortable question: Are we dealing with something that looks a lot like addiction? Is sugar a drug we have simply normalized?
And the consequences are not theoretical. We are watching them play out in real time. Rates of obesity, Type 2 diabetes, and metabolic dysfunction have risen dramatically over the past several decades, tracking almost perfectly with the increase in added sugar and ultra-processed food in the American diet. Sugar-sweetened beverages alone are one of the largest sources of added sugar, and they are strongly associated with weight gain, insulin resistance, fatty liver disease, and even kidney stones. This is not a fringe theory. It is well-documented, widely studied, and visible in the people around us every day.
I grew up in a household where sugar was tightly regulated. My mother was intentional about what we ate. Desserts were not absent, but they looked different. She would core apples, fill them with oats, peanut butter, maple syrup, and cinnamon, and bake them whole. That was dessert. It came with fiber, fat, and structure. It satisfied without overwhelming. What we call dessert today barely resembles food.
And yet, even knowing this, even seeing the consequences, we continue. We order the soda with dinner. We justify the slice of cake before bed. We tell ourselves that one bowl of ice cream doesn’t matter. But those moments add up. Over time, they shape our health in ways that are hard to reverse. I see the pull of sugar in my children. It is strong, immediate, and not entirely voluntary.
This week, I spoke with a man at the restaurant who had passed multiple kidney stones. He told me that he had cleaned up his diet “mostly,” but still drank a lot of Dr Pepper, and he said it without irony. Kidney stones are among the most painful experiences a person can have, and yet even after the suffering, he continued the habit that likely contributed to it. That is not just preference; it looks a lot like compulsion, and we see it everywhere.
It would be easy to blame the system, and the system certainly plays a role. Food companies engineer products to hit precise points of pleasure. They hire scientists to make foods more craveable, more repeatable, and harder to resist. We are surrounded by options designed not for nourishment, but for consumption. But that is only half the story. There is also personal responsibility. There has to be, because at some point, the choice is still ours. I know this not because it is easy, but because I am living it. I have gone weeks without eating in the way I once did. I feel the pull, and I choose differently—not perfectly, but intentionally.
So maybe the question isn’t whether sugar is more addictive than cocaine. That comparison, while provocative, is ultimately a distraction. Most people rarely encounter cocaine, but nearly all of us encounter sugar every single day. The real question is simpler and more personal: Is sugar addictive, and am I in control? When I reach for something sweet, am I making a decision that serves my body, my long-term health, and my ability to thrive, or am I responding to a momentary desire that has been amplified by a system designed to keep me wanting more?
If I’m honest, I already see the answer. I see it in the grocery store, I see it in myself, and most clearly, I see it in my children—standing in the aisle, asking for something sweet, negotiating for something their bodies don’t need, pulled by something they don’t yet understand. And the question is no longer abstract. It’s right there in front of me.
