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How to beat the sugar rush.

I never realized how much sugar was in my life, until I gave up sweets for Lent. I go on a walk and outside the grocery store I see the Girl Scouts pushing their product. I go to a friend’s birthday party and the cake stares at me from across the room. I head to the coffee shop, but that matcha latte just doesn’t hit the same without a little simple syrup.

Sugar is the nutritional boogeyman ready to leap out from behind every corner, a ubiquitous presence at our kitchen tables: per person on average Americans eat about 120 pounds of the sweet stuff each year.

Maya Feller, a Brooklyn-based registered dietician nutritionist, said she’s seen a shift in how we talk about sugar over the years. “I would say the difference is the demonization,” she told Vox. “Currently we are in a battle of wits and morality around sugar. Back in the 1980s when I was young, people were going sugar-free. But it wasn’t like, ‘Oh, you’re a bad person if you’re having sugar.’ We fully entered into the morality that’s associated with sugar.”

So how do you make the best food choices for yourself without spiraling? And if you want to reframe your relationship with sugar, how do you do that in a healthy way? We discuss that and more on the latest episode of Explain It to Me, Vox’s weekly call-in podcast.

Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. If you’d like to submit a question, send an email to askvox@vox.com or call 1-800-618-8545.

What do you think has caused the shift in how we view sugar?

Some of that is coming from what we refer to as wellness culture and this........

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