Book Nook: 'A Sugar Savvy Solution' review

A SUGAR SAVVY SOLUTION: Kick Your Sugar Addiction for Life and Get Healthy, by High Voltage. Reader's Digest, 267 pp., $24.99.

"It's the sugar, stupid," writes High Voltage (aka Kathie Dolgin), founder of Energy Up!, a childhood obesity-fighting program that's been used in some New York City schools. Voltage, in the health and fitness field since the '70s, was recently featured on Katie Couric's show about sugar (Couric also wrote the book's foreword). "For 50 years our sugar intake has been going up, up, up, and it's killing us -- literally!" Voltage writes.

Voltage, who came to Huntington in 2001 to work with residents on quitting sugar, writes that sugar is in bread, salad dressings, soups, cereals and more -- "and it's addictive."

THE SCOOP Her rules? Drink water, eat no more than 24 grams of added sugar -- 6 teaspoons -- in 24 hours, move your body, practice affirmations, "be kind and assume an attitude of gratitude and forgiveness" -- especially toward yourself. She includes interesting recipes and meal plans.

THE BOTTOM LINE "Is your food dead or alive?" Voltage writes. Does a bag of Doritos "resemble anything that occurs naturally on this planet?"