📖 Book Review ~ Sugar Less by Nicole M. Avena

 

Union Square & Co
8 February 2024

My thanks to Midas PR for my copy of this book

Too many of us blame our lack of willpower for our sugar cravings rather than acknowledge that sugar is everywhere around us—and is highly addictive. It’s unsurprising that even the best-intentioned people struggle with kicking the habit, since approximately 80% of products in a supermarket contain sugar, and much of it is hidden.

In Sugarless, Dr. Avena—a leading expert on food addiction—spells out the substance's detrimental effects on the brain and body by providing cutting-edge research on its addictive qualities, which are comparable to that of cocaine, nicotine, and alcohol. Then she provides a simple-to-follow 7-step program (along with 30 sugar-free recipes) that will help readers gradually wean themselves off sugar and other sweeteners and break the vicious diet cycle. Ultimately, readers will be able to break free of the sugar shackles, without self-blame.

Dr. Avena was the first to study sugar addiction in the laboratory, and she has authored more than 100 scholarly journal articles on the topic. Today, she’s the world’s leading expert on sugar addiction, and her findings have informed our overall understanding of nutrition and health.

Sugarless has a foreword by the 12th-time New York Times bestselling author and integrative psychiatrist Daniel Amen, MD who has a huge following in the health and wellness space.

📖 My Review..

Like everyone, I know that I have far too much refined sugar in my diet and even though I start off with good intentions of giving up I can never truly eradicate sugar from my diet completely but I really would like to cut down on my intake  however that's easier said than done. That's why this book has been  a timely reminder of just what damage sugar does to our metabolism and gives us an idea of how much better we would feel if we made the effort , not just to cut down, but to go completely sugar free.

Sugar Less is an easy book to read, although I would have liked larger print, and it is nicely informative without being preachy. I enjoyed reading the different chapters and found much to think about in the seven steps of the plan which covers diverse topics such as how sugar is harming your health at step one, through to being  sugar less for life in the book's conclusion.

It's not an easy task to break a dependence on food and this book doesn't aim to fix things overnight nor does it pretend to be the definitive guide but I found it a good stepping stone and fully intend to give becoming sugar less a try. The 30 sugar free recipes at the end of the book are  a nice little bonus and an incentive to give them a try.

About the Author

Nicole Avena, PhD, is a pioneering research neuroscientist and expert in the fields of nutrition, diet, and addiction. She’s the author of several books on nutrition and early development, including What to Eat When You’re Pregnant (2015), which has sold over 40,000 copies. Dr. Avena is assistant professor of neuroscience at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City and a visiting professor in health psychology at Princeton University. She received a PhD in psychology and neuroscience from Princeton University in 2006, and then completed her postdoctoral fellowship in 2010 at the prestigious Rockefeller University in New York City.

Dr. Avena has published over 100 scholarly journal articles on topics related to diet, nutrition, and overeating, and she frequently presents her research findings at major scientific conferences and university symposia. She has also served as a consultant to Nestle, the parent company for Enfamil, and others. Dr. Avena is a go-to expert on diet and nutrition in national media and often appears on The Dr. Oz Show, The Doctors, and CNN. She writes regularly for PyschologyToday.com, MindBodyGreen, and ShareCare.

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