Calley Means on Added and Refined Sugar: warns against

Calley Means says in Good Energy (2024, co-authored with Casey Means) that “refined added sugar causes astronomically more deaths and disability per year than COVID-19 and fentanyl overdoses combined,” calling it “an addictive, dangerous drug” present in 74% of U.S. foods — and that the body needs “zero grams” of it. The sugar warning is one of the book’s signature claims.

His stated reasoning: sugar is addictive, ubiquitous in the processed food supply, and a primary driver of the metabolic dysfunction behind obesity, diabetes, and related conditions. The position connects directly to his SNAP-soda fight — he treats soda as the purest delivery vehicle for the substance he warns about.

The specific death-toll comparison (“more deaths and disability than COVID-19 and fentanyl overdoses combined”) is Means’s attributed claim, not an established epidemiological figure — the dossier flags it as his language, and it is recorded here as such under the site’s attribution rules. That added sugar is harmful in excess is mainstream; the scale and framing of the claim are Means’s.

What Means says

• Means says refined added sugar causes “astronomically more deaths and disability per year than COVID-19 and fentanyl overdoses combined” (Good Energy).
• He calls sugar “an addictive, dangerous drug” present in 74% of U.S. foods.
• He says the body needs “zero grams” of refined added sugar.

(The mortality comparison is Means’s attributed claim, not an established figure.)

This page chronicles a stated position of the person above. It is not medical advice and not the site's own conclusion.