I fear no contradiction when I say that if you don’t act insanely around food, then you know someone who does. That shouldn’t even stir contention in a nation where 2 of every 3 adults — 145 million of us — are considered overweight (defined as a body/mass index of between 25 and 30) or obese (a BMI over 30).

Here’s a window on that insanity, cited by Diane Rohrbach of Seattle, program director of Food Addiction Recovery Education, during her presentation at the Promising Practices in Food Addiction conference last weekend in Houston: The Cookie Diet. This is an actual product.

If you’re a label reader at all, you probably know that the law requires that ingredients be listed in order of magnitude, and in this case, the first ingredient listed is enriched white flour. I would say that flour is trouble all by itself. Flour is a “refinement” of a plant — most often wheat but could be rye, or barley, or whatever — in which part of it is removed, and what remains is intensified. That description also fits for heroin.

Don’t worry; I know I’m an outlier on this topic, and besides, it’s not the insanity to which I refer.

If you look at the other ingredients, forms of sugar keep coming up — sugar, chocolate liquor, crystalline fructose (good one!), maltitol syrup, polydextrose, and sucrolose. And, I swear, that’s not all of them.

I suppose it’s possible that the Cookie Diet’s persnickety chef was inspired to add a touch of this and a dash of that. Or maybe, the company realized that if it used just one sweetener, it would have to be listed first.

And what "diet" product is going prosper when it admits that sugar is its key ingredient? (Actually, that's supposed to be rhetorical, but I bet I wouldn't want to know the answer.)