I’ve got a big raspberry for the Polar beverages vendor at my local market. He lost focus in what I’m sure is a mind-numbing part of his job, and the result for me was a headache, dry mouth, and not a little bit of consternation.

It is a weakness of mine that no matter what I’m in that market for, I stop by the soda aisle and pop open a liter of whatever, and yesterday it was Polar's diet raspberry lime. I’m a fairly careful shopper, especially when it comes to sugar or sugar-free, and I was definitely in the sugar-free area.

But the vendor had put in one row of sugar-full soda among all the diets, right next to a row of the same flavor, diet variety. If I'd chosen left, everything would have been fine. But choose right and bingo: Headache, dry mouth, and concern.

As many readers have heard, ad infinitum, I gave up processed sugar more than 20 years ago (and added flour to the no-buy list about 15 years ago). One of the very practical reasons is that when I got clean from that stuff and then, as experimentation, added it back to see if it had any effect on me. And boy, did it. In addition to the two effects I got yesterday, I’ve also experienced clammy skin, quickened respiration, and in the worst cases, strong urges to have even more.

Because it’s been so long, I’ve sometimes wondered if those effects were really true, or if I’d ginned them up to bolster my contention. But it was physiology, not opinion, that alerted me yesterday to shelf-stocker’s error. The symptoms were upon me by the end of the aisle, which prompted me to reexamine the bottle, and then return to the shelf to see how I could have made so grave (for me) an error.

In the end (at least so far; one never knows what comes next), it was transient bother rather than anything worse. But it was an opportunity to reaffirm that I experience unwanted physiological changes when I ingest strong shots of refined sugar, and I remain convinced that many others do too, even if they think the notion is heresy.

Postscript: Yes, there is another discussion in my use of diet sodas. I've had it on my mind, and agenda, for a while, and I'm sure my reluctance to confront the issues is what has kept it from rising to the top. But it has to come, and will.