This post feels like one of those "full disclosure" statements. I blog incessantly (but, of course, oh so interestingly!) about the attributes of processed sugar, especially lately. And the question could certainly be asked, "so what do you do for sweetness?"

It's more than an idle question: Science shows quite conclusively that we are hard-wired to seek out sweetness (**see below for my favorite "proof."), and I'm as hard-wired as the next guy.

My first answer is, I satisfy a lot of my need for sweetness from whole foods: Carrots, green beans, turnips, sweet potatoes, parsnips, etc., that are roasted in just a little oil, maybe some garlic, is very sweet, to me, and completely delish. Also, I'm a slave to tart/sweet apples especially, amid a panoply of berries, bananas, and other fruits.

If this does not mirror your experience, I aver that that is because your diet has a steady drip of processed sugar in it, unless you specifically, diligently try to avoid it. This is wholly apart from any ice cream you eat, or whether you take processed sugar in your coffee, or have other obvious processed-sugar sources. This is incontrovertible, and if you didn't know that, you're particularly clueless. Sorry.

You've probably experienced the sensation of something being too sweet — when you tasted someone else's coffee, for example — and the difference was what you're used to, compared to what they are used to. Same principle here: The steady drip raises the bar for sensing sweetness, in effect dropping your ability to sense the natural sweetness of whole foods.

However — and this is the disclosure part — I do use artificial sweeteners. I don't feel I'm dependent on them, but yes, I would miss them enough that, so far, I'm unwilling to give them up. If I felt unable to, that would raise the question of being addicted to them, and that gap, between "unwilling" and "unable," is where denial lives. Don't think I am, could be, make your own call.

I use the pink packets in (decaf) coffee when I drink it over ice. I use one blue packet in my plain low-fat yogurt in the morning; if I eat oatmeal or rice, I use another one. And then, I drink diet soda, not every day but on many of them. I don't keep it in the house, expressly 'cause I'd just drink it.

Note that I'm disclosing, not defending. My practice, especially around the diet soda, makes no sense at all. I think it is absurd, on several levels, to pay, say, $1.40 for a bottle of water, but add some bubbles and a raft of chemicals and I'm there! Crazy, but within the range of human craziness, or so I say.

If I felt there was enough evidence to give it up, I would (or, again, so I say); I think I have a pretty good record on that. Re. refined sugar, I got enough evidence, from experience, to see I was better off without — healthier, happier — and I did give it up. Does it strain credulity that something derived from nature (processed sugar) is worse than something derived in a lab? I'll leave that to you to work out.

**So here's that proof I was referring to; I liked it enough to want not to leave it out, but I didn't want to interrupt the point of the post...

Serge Ahmed, a researcher at the University of Bordeaux in France, did a study in which lab rats were habituated to cocaine that was delivered directly into the brain when the rats hit a lever in their cages. Then researchers introduced saccharin water into their world, dispensed by a similar lever but available orally rather than via implant.

The rats showed a preference for the sweetness, so the researchers made the rats work twice as hard for it: Two taps for sweet, one for a shot of coke to the brain. And still, sweet won. Four taps to one, still. Eight taps to one, and still! Only at having to tap 16 times for a sip of sweetness did the rats settle for the coke.

That, ladies and gents, is preference, illustrated!