A good piece in yesterday’s New York Times about sugar in the American diet:

How sweet it is! The American diet, that is. While the current rec­om­men­da­tion is a maximum intake of eight teaspoons of sugars a day, one 12-ounce can of regular soda (or a 20-ounce bottle of Vi­t­a­m­in­Wa­ter) delivers eight or nine teaspoons. That means you are at or over the limit before you’ve eaten a single cookie or container of fruit-flavored yogurt, or even some commercial tomato soups or salad dressings with added sugars. The result is an average daily intake of more than 20 teaspoons of sweet calories.

Marshall Brain demon­strat­ed the amount of sugar in soda. Eight teaspoons of sugar is a startling amount when it’s placed in one pile.

In the early to mid-90s, I drank about a liter of Coke a day. It caught up with me. I long ago kicked that particular habit, to the betterment of my waistline.