Every November, Sugar Awareness Week asks the public, health professionals and policymakers to take a harder look at what’s in our food. Led by Action on Sugar, this year’s campaign runs from 2 to 8 November 2026. The message is familiar: we eat too much sugar, much of it hidden and it’s costing us our health.

For clinicians, that message raises a harder question. What do you do for the patient who already knows all of this and still can’t stop?

The sugar you can’t see

The WHO recommends keeping free sugars below 10% of total energy intake, and ideally below 5%, which is roughly 25 g or six teaspoons a day. One can of sugar-sweetened soda can hold up to 40 g on its own.

The bigger problem is where the rest hides. A single tablespoon of ketchup carries around a teaspoon of sugar. Flavoured yogurts, breakfast cereals, granola and cereal bars, sauces, dressings, sliced bread and “low-fat” products all add to the total, often behind a health halo on the label. Last year’s Sugar Awareness Week focused squarely on this kind of misleading marketing.

Label literacy matters. But for a significant group of patients, information was never the missing piece.

When it stops being a choice

A 2023 analysis in The BMJ, drawing on 281 studies across 36 countries, estimated that ultra-processed food addiction affects 14% of adults and 12% of children and the numbers are constantly rising. Those figures sit close to addiction rates for alcohol (14%) and tobacco (18%). Among people undergoing bariatric surgery, prevalence rose to 32% and in binge eating disorder it passed 50%.  Chronic diseases related to metabolic dysfunction (Cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic respiratory conditions) further account for roughly 74% of all deaths globally and can be directly attributed to increased intakes of sugar and ultra-processed food and stressful and sedentary living.

The authors from the BMJ analysis found that foods high in refined carbohydrates and added unhealthy fats from vegetable oils are highly rewarding and consumed compulsively, and that behaviour around them can meet the diagnostic criteria for substance use disorder.

You’ve likely seen it in practice:

• The patient who knows exactly what to eat, and still ends up in the pantry at 10pm
• The cycle of a few good weeks, a slip, shame, and giving up
• Cravings triggered by stress, poor sleep, or a single bite of something sweet

This isn’t a failure of discipline. It’s what addiction looks like. And it’s rarely covered in clinical or coaching training, which leaves practitioners treating the downstream effects: weight, glucose, mood.

If abstinence works for other addictions, why not this one?

In substance use disorders, we don’t tell patients to moderate. We screen, assess, diagnose, and build a recovery plan that anticipates relapse. Sugar and carbohydrate addiction deserves the same clinical rigour.

That means being able to:

1. Screen for sugar and processed food addiction using ICD-11 and DSM-5 criteria
2. Distinguish harmful use from dependency
3. Understand how sugar acts on the brain’s reward system and stress pathways
4. Build treatment and relapse prevention plans that hold up in real life
5. Support families, who are often part of both the problem and the solution

Turn awareness into clinical skill

Nutrition Network’s Professional Training in Sugar & Carbohydrate Addiction gives you that framework. It’s a CPD/CME accredited, self-paced course built for doctors, nurses, dietitians, nutritionists, allied health professionals and coaches.

• 17 expert lectures covering the neuroscience of addiction, screening and diagnosis, relapse and recovery, and family dynamics
• 12 specialist faculty, including Bitten Jonsson RN, Dr Paul Earley, Dr Robert Cywes & Dr Vera Tarman
• 12+ hours of video, around 30 hours of learning with slides and references
• Lifetime access, a private expert-moderated community, and a Certificate of Completion
• Counts towards certification as a Nutrition Network Practitioner

Sugar Awareness Week is a reminder of the scale of the problem. This training is how you start solving it, one patient at a time.

Enrol in Professional Training in Sugar & Carbohydrate Addiction

$765 or 3 payments of $260. Backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee.

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References

• WHO: Guideline on sugars intake for adults and children (2015)
• Gearhardt AN et al. Social, clinical, and policy implications of ultra-processed food addiction. BMJ 2023;383:e075354
• Action on Sugar: Sugar Awareness Week