By Chloe Davis
Staff Writer

Sugar: it cures a sweet tooth, a bad day, craving, and is an all-around delicious thing, but is what we are consuming actually addictive?

Researchers at Princeton University say that foods, especially those with sugars, may be. In studies with rats and sugar water, the rats preferred the sugary drink to the unflavored water each time.

When the sugar water was taken away the rats exhibited signs of withdrawal. “They exhibited withdrawal signs nearly identical to those seen in chemical dependencies, the animals binge when sugar water is restored.”

For humans, beverages lead the race in where we ingest a majority of our sugar, not desserts, breads, or other foods as many  think.

So what is it exactly when we look on the labels of our foods and don’t see sugar as an ingredient? Does that mean it doesn’t exist? Quite the contrary, it likes to use one of many aliases.

There are a multitude of alternatives to natural sugar. The key is decoding them and finding one that is healthy or best suits your lifestyle.

Be sure to check recipes if you are substituting sweeteners because many of them act different chemically in foods.

Agave nectar is processed juice from the agave plant, made into a thick syrup nectar. Its sweetness scale is 1.5x that of sugar.

Stevia is a calorie-free extract from leaves of the stevia plant and has a sweetness scale of 250x that of sugar.

Table sugar, also known as white sugar, typically used in coffee and sometimes baking is highly refined. One teaspoon contains 16 calories. Table sugar is ordinarily made from sugar cane or sugar beets.

Turbinado, more generally referred to as “raw sugar,” is light brown and is formed from leftover juice after sugar cane has been processed.

Crystalline fructose is derived from corn and has a sweetness scale of 1.2x sweeter than sugar.

Corn syrup, not the same as high fructose corn syrup, is a solution of dextrose and other sugars made from corn starch.

Honey: Flavor varies depending on nectar of the flower visited by the bee, the lighter the color of honey, the more mild the flavor.