While most of us are regularly reminded of the importance of diet for healthy aging, it’s the mighty few who can resist the tempting sugary dessert or the candy bar at the movies. Even if you try to avoid added sugar, it becomes a Herculean task when you realize that 75% of foods and beverages sold in the United States have added sugars in them. And while you may try to veer towards artificial sweeteners instead, those, too, can have the negative side effect of tricking us to want more sweets and can also have deleterious effects on our bodies.

Sooner or later we all have to face the fact that, as recently headlined in Healthline, “Added sugar is the single worst ingredient in the modern diet.” Why is that? As outlined here and here, there is incontrovertible evidence that added sugars, including sucrose, high fructose corn syrup, glucose, cane sugar and even such “natural” sweeteners as honey or agave are all linked to weight gain, obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. They are simply empty additional calories in your diet with no nutritional benefit. But such “added sugars” are to be distinguished from the naturally occurring sugars that are found in fruits and vegetables, which can provide plenty of nutrients and minerals along with the relatively small amounts of sugar in them. Most dieticians suggest you not stress over the naturally occurring sugars and only work to cut out added sugars. For more advice about the place and peril of added sugars in our typical diets, set aside that soda and take a look at the information from the Tufts University Health and Nutrition letter here.

What about giving up added sugars altogether? A couple of recent posts reflect how challenging and yet rewarding this can be. Over at Medium, writer Alisha McDarris describes her efforts to go on a 30-day sugar fast in order to reset her sugar cravings. Detailing the path from denial and cravings to resignation and acceptance, she found that once the 30 days had ended, her body just had less interest in consuming sugar going forward. At the Washington Post, writer Steven Petrow tells the tale of being ordered by his doctor to begin a sugar detox so as to lessen the visceral fat in his body. To his surprise, by day 5 his cravings subsided and the weight started to drop off. Read about his experience and the expert recommendations that guided his sugarless journey, by clicking here.