If you want to live a longer, healthier life, the single most important change to make is to stop eating foods that contain added sugars, one expert says.

Brandon Colby, a practitioner of personalized age management medicine, says the more sugar a person consumes, the more likely he or she is to become inflicted by a wide variety of chronic diseases.

Sugar consumption not only increases the risk of disease, it also raises the amount of advanced glycation end products (aptly known as AGEs) within the body. AGEs are associated with inflammation and promote the buildup of harmful substances within the body such as bad cholesterol.

Colby says there is more similarity between smoking and consuming products with sugar than most people realize. Many food products targeted at children are laden with sugar. The tobacco industry used to target a young demographic in advertising campaigns, but the food industry is actually far worse, Colby said.