Gary Taubes, author of  Why We Get Fat, Good Calories, Bad Calories, and several major articles on diets in the New York Times, remarked in replying to questions about his latest Times article on sugar, "I, too, find it easier to not eat any sweets at all than to try to eat them in moderation. My wife can order a dessert after dinner and have two bites and be done with it. I can't."

Taubes, like many of us, apparently puts on weight easily, and he's chosen a low-carbohydrate diet to control his weight.

So I was thinking about why some of us can eat two bites of a dessert and stop and others of us can't. Of course, I can't speak for everyone else, but for me I think there are several reasons.

One is a form of sugar addiction. I can get along fine without sweets. But if I eat one bite, I want more. This is like the proverbial potato chip addiction. Who can eat just one potato chip?

I once tested my "willpower" for avoiding sugar. This was before I was diagnosed with diabetes, but like so many people, I wanted to lose a little weight and had given up desserts. I went into a bakery, but despite the bakery smells, I didn't really want any of the stuff. Out of curiosity, however, I bought a bag of cookies.

Got home and smelled the cookies. Still didn't really want them. Then I ate one cookie. And I immediately finished the bag, even though the last ones didn't taste very good.

So the "sugar addiction" is powerful.

But there's another factor at work for me. That's habit.

I can't stand to waste things, especially food. I've always been bewildered by diet books that tell you to start by going through your kitchen and throwing out everything that isn't on their diet. I think, "How can anyone throw away perfectly good food?"

I don't know where this horror of waste came from. My first memories are from the World War II era, when food was rationed, especially meat and milk. I thought my mother had my brother only so she could get extra milk ration coupons even though she was nursing him. Because meat was rationed, we raised a couple of sheep and some chickens, and my grandfather shot rabbits in the woods, which we were told was chicken so we wouldn't worry that he'd shoot the Easter bunny by mistake.

I don't remember the adults ever talking about running out of food, but maybe they did. Or maybe I was able to sense their worry even if it wasn't verbalized.

 As children we were told to clean our plates. At school we were reminded of the "starving Chinese," although like children everywhere we couldn't understand how finishing some vile green gelatin dessert would help starving people anywhere. One time we tried to box up the stuff and ship it to China, but our plans were thwarted.

I recall my mother eating up the few spoonfuls of potatoes or peas in the serving dishes because "It's not enough to put away and I hate to waste it."

In graduate shool, trying to live on an $1800-a-year fellowship, I never wasted food, and if some social gathering included free food, all the graduate students stuffed themselves, hoping to survive on less food the next day.