I've expressed this idea before; sorry if it's a repeat for you: I'm moved to say it again while reading Anne Katherine's "How To Make Almost Any Diet Work."

Many people scoff when I suggest that flour or processed sugar is akin to heroin or cocaine, because the latter pair are "really addictive," not to mention illegal. "Everybody knows" they have no similarity.

But they do. Did you ever consider, for example, that they all begin as plants (multiple grains, beet/cane, poppy, coca respectively), have the plant fiber and other parts removed, and what remains is concentrated into a whitish powder that has a different effect from the original?

I'm not saying they are the same; I'm saying they have important similarities. The scoffers might say that no one gets high from sugar and flour, and I would agree that certainly, undeniably, the latter two have more powerful, obvious effect. But that's not to say the legal ones don't also have an effect.

To those who would say they don't, I would say, how do you know? When's the last time you went without flour or processed sugar for at least a month, say — long enough to "dry out" in the same way that an alcoholic or drug abuser has to?

Don't forget: The "bad" refinements don't affect everyone the same. Some can drink or drug occasionally and be fine; others end up in the gutter. The only way for you to know how little or how much you're affected is to compare.

For at least my first 30 years, I would have scoffed, too. Then I became convinced just to experiment. Nothing said I had to stop using these substances forever; I should just take a look. And now, I've been free of refined sugar, save for just a very few lapses that didn't turn out well, for more than 20 years, and I've been flour-free for at least half that. (I really objected to that suggestion, which had the effect of delaying what I now consider to be a very valuable advance in my health.)

If you've never compared how it feels with and without these things in your system, you just don't know. And perhaps, you don't know what benefit you're missing.