Bolstering the case for regulation, Lustig says, is the fact that sugar is addictive. Fructose, Lustig claims, can dampen the suppression of the hormones that signal both hunger and satisfaction to the brain -- which means that the more we eat, the less likely we are to feel satiated. So the more likely we are to want more. (And more, and more, and ...)

Regulation, of course, is always fraught. Regulating something like sugar would be especially tricky. Of the four regulation criteria Lustig listed, the only one that isn't really open to argument is the first: sugar's utter ubiquity. There's also the sugar lobby. There's also the fact that sugar, for consumers, tends to be cheap. There's also the fact that sugar, in many of its forms, tends to be delicious.

Still, "everyone's looking for a nutritional villain," The Atlantic's Cummer noted; we're all looking for what he called "a kind unified field theory" about what causes childhood obesity and so many of the other health problems the U.S. is facing right now. The more we learn, the more it seems that sugar is at least a component of that unified theory. And if Lustig gets his way -- if people do come to see sugar as a substance that can be abused -- public awareness might offer its own kind of regulation. Sugar, Lustig put it, is "great for your wallet, but crappy for your health." The companies that profit from its sales might not, at the moment, have an incentive to change their ways; the more the public learns about sugar's effects, though, the more we might limit our intakes of the stuff. Voluntarily.

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