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Dwight Howard used to eat around 24 chocolate bars' worth of sugar per day

Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports / Reuters

Dwight Howard had a legendary sweet tooth before he kicked the habit in 2013.

As ESPN's Baxter Holmes uncovered in an excellent story on the NBA's curious fetish for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Howard once wolfed down sugar by the fistful before finally getting clean during his 2012-13 season with the Los Angeles Lakers.

To alter Howard's diet, though, (Lakers nutritionist Dr. Cate Shanahan) first had to understand it. After calls with his bodyguard, chef, and a personal assistant, she uncovered a startling fact: Howard had been scarfing down about two dozen chocolate bars' worth of sugar every single day for years, possibly as long as a decade.

"You name it, he ate it," she says. Skittles, Starbursts, Rolos, Snickers, Mars bars, Twizzlers, Almond Joys, Kit Kats, and oh, how he loved Reese's Pieces. He'd eat them before lunch, after lunch, before dinner, after dinner, and like any junkie, he had stashes all over - in his kitchen, his bedroom, his car, a fix always within reach.

She told his assistants to empty his house, and they hauled out his monstrous candy stash in boxes - yes, boxes, plural.

The sugar addiction didn't stop Howard from dominating the league in his early 20s, but symptoms crept up during his difficult campaign with the Lakers.

That year, Howard was noticeably more labored in his movements and experienced tingling in his fingers, which the team nutritionist tied to his sugar intake. The whole ordeal led to a intervention during which Shanahan bet her job that a low-sugar diet would cure Howard's ills.

They settled on a compromise: Howard ditched candy bars but clung to his PB&J. He was better off for it.

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