On todays Food Junkies podcast Molly and I interview Dr. Nicole Avena about her new book being released December 19th “Sugarless: A 7-Step Plan to Uncover Hidden Sugars, Curb Your Cravings, and Conquer Your Addiction.” This book covers the latest science on sugar addiction and how to overcome it.
Dr. Nicole Avena-Blanchard was one of our first guests on the podcast 3 years ago, and you can check out her in episode 15. She is an Associate Professor of Neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City and a Visiting Professor of Health Psychology at Princeton University.
She is a research neuroscientist and expert in the fields of nutrition, diet, and addiction, with a special focus on nutrition during early life and pregnancy and women’s health. She has done groundbreaking work developing models to characterize food addiction and the dangers of excess sugar intake. Her research achievements have been honored by awards from several groups, including the New York Academy of Sciences, the American Psychological Association, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
In addition to over 100 peer-reviewed scholarly publications, Dr. Avena has written several popular books, including Why Diets Fail: Because You’re Addicted to Sugar, What to Eat When You’re Pregnant, What to Feed Your Baby and Toddler and What to Eat When You Want to Get Pregnant. She frequently appears as a science expert in the media, including regular appearances on Good Day NY, The Doctors, the former Dr. Oz Show, and many news programs. Her work has been featured in Time Magazine, Bloomberg Business Week, The New York Times, and many other periodicals.
She has the #2 most watched TED-ED Health talk, How Sugar Affects Your Brain, with over 17 million views and counting. Every time I do a presentation for the public on food addiction I include this incredible 5 minute video. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth watching and sharing.
In this episode:
- What Nicole has been working on
- How does dependence on sugar happen
- Withdrawal
- Craving Management
- Stress Eating
- The marketing of value meals
- How to deal with Social Pressures
- Harm Reduction
- Self Compassion
- It’s about HEALTH not WEIGHT
- Homeostatic versus Hedonic hunger
- Slip Ups
- There’s NO restart there is just keep going
- What she thinks it will take for our society to change our dependence on sugar
