I quit eating sugar 4 years ago. No specific health problems, but having seen a couple of similar articles I thought it would be a good idea. When I got my first checkup about a year after stopping, my numbers had all improved drastically with essentially no other big changes in lifestyle. Positive reinforcement!
You do have to be careful about your grocery selections. One of my favorite boogeymen is the product called peanut spread which comes in a jar just like peanut butter and looks just like it, but it's loaded with added sugar. Of course, some brands of peanut butter are, too, but this is a thing with the high end products that you'd think wouldn't do that.
But, my advice is just stop adding sugar to recipes and stop eating stuff that is obviously sugar laden (muffins, cookies, etc). Over time, you become somewhat sensitized to foods that have it where you don't expect it. Check labels when in doubt, but basically, don't sweat the small stuff and absolutely don't refuse a small piece of your niece's birthday cake - it won't kill you.
Ketchup is one of those products that are mostly sugar for no reason. Same with those processed juices. Ironically, tomato juice is usually not that sugary and I love it a lot.
I believe sugar is added to tomato-based products (sauces, condiments, etc) because tomatoes are pretty acidic by themselves and sugar is a common way to balance out acidic foods.
I've found that making tomato sauces from raw ingredients is a really simple and much better than most store bought which, as you say, usually have a lot of sugar added.
That's true. You can cut the acidity with some cinnamon, further cooking and / or some butter, but that's more expensive and less addictive than adding sugar.
I've tried this but I don't think it really works, it forms sodium citrate which tastes sour. Maybe not as pronounced as the citric acid in tomato sauce, but you still need sugar to balance it out. It's also an emulsifier so it can change the texture of the sauce.
A lot of tomato based sauces are just very sweet. If you're worried about the sugar intake eat less of it.
Presumably ketchup has sugar because tomatoes are acidic and it balances it out? I have never seen a sugar free ketchup, whereas there are plenty of “just nuts” peanut butters that taste fantastic with no sugar.
I switched to eating cacao nibs instead of chocolate bars. Other people ask how I can stand the bitterness, but I like the bitterness. Just like black coffee's bitterness. Why blunt the bitter, it tastes good.
I don’t mind the bitterness, but find the acidity unbearable. I’ll eat unsweetened chocolate (which is still bitter) gladly, but it has to be dutch-processed, which removes the acidity. Cacao nibs… just nope.
I tried going full no sugar for a year. Improvement to cholesterol levels for sure. But I had extra stress. I switched to intermittent fasting+no sugar drinks/snacks. Blood levels are pretty much the same, except I do desserts almost daily (sometimes I skip a day) with no bad effects, and have better mood overall.
This video is…weirdly researched. Like, they researched the effect of cutting added dietary sugars for various lengths of times, and picked seemingly random bits to talk about from the research.
Please don't give it much weight.
Also, they indicate that a water fast is when you have no water. It's when you have only water. Which also isn't a good indication of what happens if you just cut added dietary sugars.
I'm surprised this video links lack of sugar intake with ketone excretion. I did keto for about a year a long time ago and just cutting sugar was definitely not enough - I had to cut carbs in general to get keto readings or keto breath.
I dropped keto after some time, but my sugar consumption never went back up to pre-keto levels. Checking nutrition labels for sugar content is just second nature at this point. If craving dessert, I usually make something like Greek yogurt with blueberries. If baking, most recipes end up tasting way too sweet now so I generally cut the sugar by at least half the amount listed.
I do sometimes have a larger "dose": For example, if I'm at a new restaurant and want to try a unique dessert. Or my boyfriend's mom drops off some delicious pastry she made.
But that leads me to the skin part of the video, which really resonated. Every time I do have a day or two of eating more sugar than usual, it shows up very quickly in my skin - I break out like crazy within days.
True! But this video from what I saw did not mention it (or maybe I missed it?). It came off as something that was intended to be approachable for the general population, and I don't think the general population sees illustrations of traditional granulated sugar and sugary drinks and thinks "Oh they're actually talking about carbs in general".
For those wondering where to start, I just began going through the meal plan in Danielle Walker’s Against All Grain. It isn’t strictly about no sugar but it definitely cuts out any processed garbage, including added sugars or course. When I did my grocery shopping for a week of meals, I spent more time in the produce section than ever and ended up with at least one vegetable I’d never heard of.
I think this is one of those things where you get the most benefit with the least cost to your lifestyle by focusing on the ~80% primary contributors - whatever those are for you. For example, sugary drinks. No need to avoid ketchup or peanut butter with sugar and such, as those probably small contributors overall, and working around them is tough.
I'd suggest simply observing the sugar in various foods that you eat without judgement, and without a specific plan to cut them out. Just observe. Then if you think you're consuming too much overall, get rid of the easiest, highest-sugar ones first and see how it goes.
I see this sort of clickbait a lot and don't actually click and don't want to again, but what does this person claim? I've been keeping detailed daily food logs and preparing my own food largely from scratch for a few years now and the net result is I don't eat a lot of sugar. Most of the time, no sugar at all, unless you count all the berries I eat.
What happens is nothing. I've never had a cavity, but that was true when I was a kid and still ate sugar. Seems to be genetics. Out of myself and three sisters, only one of us has ever had a cavity and it was only once. I'm not fat, but again, neither are any of my sisters. I'm very lean but that still required lifting to build muscle and intentional calorie restriction to lose fat. It didn't happen magically based on food choices. I suppose I'm less likely than most to get diabetes, but again, no one in my my family has diabetes, and as far as I'm aware, they all eat sugar. I'm the only one who has been religious about making my own food from scratch and never adding any kind of sweeteners.
If anything has actually happened, it's not outwardly noticeable. I still get sick. Still get injured. Even still get some occasional minor acne.
From looking over this video's transcripts, it appears they're fixating on cravings and ketosis. That seems to be something that happens if you eat no carbohydrates at all. Simply dropping sugar will not put you into ketosis. Whether it leads to any kind of more specific cravings will depend on how much you were eating before and what you replace it with, if anything.
YouTube science. They’re describing what happens when you stop eating carbohydrates, of which refined sugar is one. That would include rice, for example. But they keep saying “sugar” because YT and views.
There's a world of difference between eating food that's had some sugar added to it and consuming explicitly sugary things in large quantities. Really if you just do three things there's an enormous health benefit:
1. Replace all sugary drinks (soda, starbucks drinks, etc.) with non-sugar alternative (water, plain coffee, etc.)
2. Make whole fruit your dessert and/or snacks, replacing ice cream and candy and stuff
3. Cook several times per week with recipes that don't call for adding sugar
There's a rather surprising result in nutrition science that ice cream consumption seems to be associated with better cardiovascular health. No other dessert has the same pattern and it's unclear why this is seen.
What you can do is "shop the perimeter" at the store. Supermarkets in the US are usually laid out where the meat, dairy, and produce sections are along the edges of the store, and the middle aisles have the prepared foods (comes in boxes, cans, etc.) The prepared foods are the ones typically loaded down with sugar and are highly processed, so only go down an aisle when there's something you really need there, like maybe a spice.
Focus on recipes that reheat in a microwave without destroying the texture so you can meal prep a week in advance.
Soups and braises are the most optimal in that regard.
I recommend short ribs braised in red wine (I like Barollo but you can just as easily use a three buck chuck). Works great on mashed potatoes and by changing up the wine you can change up the flavors. Thai curries are also great and easy to make.
Eating well is really, really simple - Only buy and eat things with one ingredient. Cook your own meals, then you know what is in there.
Hint: stay away from the interior of the grocery store where all the shiny bags are. You want the stuff around the edges - fruit, vegetables, meat, eggs, rice, beans
I do. Bread is easy and not lot of active work: make the dough the night before, bake in the morning. About 15 minutes labor. Stock: make a batch once a month and if necessary supplement with store bought (you can find stock with almost no salt and no sugar). Pasta I make only for special occasions due to the labor involved and it's trivial to find pasta that has 2 ingredients.
Do you mind posting some recipes or ideas for types of bread that do not need sugar? Most of the simple recipes I have found that are not sourdough or flatbread require a bit of sugar for the yeast, though not sure how much sugar the yeast consumes.
Combine 400g flour (bread flour is better but AP works) with 300g of tap water, 4g of salt, a 2g of yeast (I use instant but I don't think it matters). Mix until a shaggy mass forms. Cover and let it rest overnight (no more than 12 hours). The next morning, preheat a Dutch oven at 450F for 60 minutes. While the oven heats up, stretch and fold the dough a few times, let it rest 15 minutes, shape into a boule, let it rest (I use a banaton) for 45 minutes. Score, bake in the Dutch over with the lid on for 30 min. Remove the lid and bake another 20 min until the color of your choice. Careful the Dutch over is rip-roaring hot.
What I like about this is it takes 5 minutes to make the dough the night before and then 2 hours after I wake up I can have fresh hot bread with just about 10 minutes of active time (fold dough, rest, make boule, rest, put in oven, wait, remove lid, wait, done).
Thanks, this worked well for me, too at about sea level and about 60 degrees in my home. I was wary because of the cook time - I usually only need 18 minutes for a French loaf at that temperature. I did get more rise than expected during baking so my shallow Dutch oven cover smooshed it a bit but I have a deeper Dutch oven I can try next time.
I use a pretty deep dutch over, and it's really the key to getting a nice crumb. Since home ovens aren't steam ovens, it helps to use a small (but big enough) chamber to let the loaf steam for the first half of the bake. I've also seen people use an "inverted" dutch oven or buy a bespoke cloche for the purpose.
Holy crap no. Take a look at the amount of sodium in Better than Bouillon. Way more than any other type of stock like product. You can get the rip-off box stock with no sodium added in all three flavors.
I think you misunderstand how I use stock. I use a teaspoon or two of BtB for an entire dish to help build a sauce or otherwise season. So I am using it for its salt content entirely - as in, I salt the dish less because I account for that.
It's 30% the recommended salt in a single teaspoon. That's like a big pinch of kosher salt. So really, it's like 3-5% per serving because I get 6-8 servings out of my dishes. right.
I suspect this depends somewhat on where you live. Eg in parts of the United States it may be harder to get bread without added sugar. Bread is an example of something lots of people want but which they probably won’t be willing to make themselves in sufficient quantities. For other foods one can often switch to more basic ingredients but this could be a lot of work or a bit annoying (eg making a ketchup alternative, pasta sauces, muesli, bread rolls/buns, pre-made soup). This can be easier if you live somewhere more rich/urban where you’ll be better able to find eg a bakery or store selling non-sugary foods.
Some things are easy, eg you can not buy soda if you live in New York or if you only have a dollar general to shop for food.
I gave up on added sugar and started reading the label for everything I bought.
I was surprised to find out my Costco milk has 11grams of sugar(non added).
It's not unique to the Swedes. My mother threatened to get me my own cow as a child because I drank so much of it.
I just didn't realise how much sugar it had. I swear the non refrigerated box milk I drank as a kid didn't taste as sweet.
We started our teenage son on Fairlife 2% milk. Half the sugar, lots more protein than regular milk. So far so good, tastes the same and he’s getting the protein he needs (along with other sources) to build muscle for football.
You only have a lot of trouble if you're adamant about looking for all the same kinds of food you did before.
It's actually pretty easy if you accept that the total number of items at the grocery store / restaurants has dramatically shrunk, and you stick to mostly whole foods (food category, not the corporation). Your staples start to become less processed crap and more animal products, vegetables, dairy, nuts/legumes, and more cooking at home.
It's a big transition that most people are unprepared for, but not actually terribly difficult as a single person with no SO/kids.
Sugar alone? No, not really. A lot of stuff that doesn't need any added sugar has it (tomato sauce, baby formula, jams/jellies, gravy, salad dressing, etc), but overall, a plurality of the items for sale in my local grocery store don't have sugar. I can buy prepared pizzas, burgers, frozen dinners (just don't eat the dessert, be careful of gravies), lunch meats/cold cuts (almost all animal products really), many types of wheat-derived products like bread, pasta, cereal. Lots of veggies are super easy too.
Sugar is pretty easy to avoid. Stop doing your shopping in the twinky aisle.
Simple carbohydrates in general? That's more difficult.
For reference, I say this as someome who's cooking skills consist of knowing how to use a microwave, knowing how to boil water, and knowing how to cook a frozen pizza, I'm not some kind of culinary wizard.
Gradually cut out sugar and eat basically only whole foods, mainly meat and vegetables. Also try to time restrict eating to avoid morning and evening consumption.
Lost over 75 pounds over a few years (no lose skin) and feel much better although colder without all the fat insulation!
I’m am not overly active and generally spend most of my day sitting, so it’s mainly just diet control for weight loss.
The beginning was better than what I expected (mentioning the 'in mice' effect) so I thought I would look at it, but... It's mostly wrong? What? I mean, it shows they've done research, but isn't it really incomplete? I'm clearly not an expert, but I was obese and did some surface level research on the subject to loose weight (sadly sugar is not the only thing that triggers food cravings for me, all food do), I think they are mixing up a lot of different research but don't really understand? I mean, it's - mostly - okay as an entry level video, and if people reduce their sugar consumption thanks to that, it's a win. But really it's surface deep and you shouldn't take anything as facts (unless you have an almost obese nephew/niece who could profit from eating less sugar, in that case, anything goes).
:-(( All this stuff - What happens when... is really nice. I know it.
The problem is:
I've been trying to cut sugar (forget eliminate) out of my diet for YEARS. 2 days into not having sugar and I go into such severe cravings that I knock off a sweetened glass of milk (with all its consequences - I'm lactose intolerant).
HELP!!!
Please can people here tell me HOW do I handle the cravings (and don't tell me "grin and bear it" - at its height, I'm just about ready to kill someone :-( and from there on, it's just a matter of time before I lapse).
Any/all inputs that will help me get through the craving are very welcome.
Obviously, you will have to try things out for yourself, but have you tried getting rid of sugar with absolutely no attempt to limit caloric intake? I can't say it will be a perfect solution, but it did work for me when I first started eating very low carb, which was over a decade ago. Once you're used to not eating sugar, it does become easier to start cutting calories. I didn't worry about it for at least a few months.
I read a news item (decades ago) reporting on excessive amounts of sugar and salt used in commercially produced foods. Decided I would no longer add those items to my diet and became careful of purchasing such foods. Consider it to be one of my best health related decisions of my life!
I dramatically cut down my consumption of added sugars several years ago (added sugars are, as the term suggests, those "added" where they wouldn't be on their own -- eg a bowl of blueberries on its own clearly has sugars. Package those blueberries in a preserve and the preserve will have "added" sugar, not just the sugar from the blueberries themselves).
On the one hand, I'm afraid to say that I can't report any dramatic night and day difference. I do have in general more energy, better dental health, etc, but subjectively that all felt _slightly_ better, not click-baity better. On the other hand, I can report it hasn't been all that dramatic -- I didn't upend my life, made what really felt more like slight changes. Probably the biggest change for me was breakfast -- instead of carbs it's generally Greek yogurt, frozen fruit, nuts, and raisins (for sweetness), and coffee. I also check labels more -- who knew, for instance, that tomato soup had so much added sugar!
I take that as a win since, objectively, it _is_ much healthier to have less added sugars in my diet, and I got this gain without anything overly dramatic or disruptive. And it kicked off a gradual changing of other habits -- I got back to going to the gym regularly a few years after that, and have gotten better at keeping a regular bed time.
The tl;dr I'm trying to make here -- smaller, gradual changes do make a difference, are worth doing, and don't have to be dramatic (and are easier to stick to).
You don't. The liver can make glucose from fat, and the body can run on ketones as its primary energy source. That's the basis of the now famous "keto diet".
Now, I don't advocate for the keto diet, and if you indent to do that you should probably talk to a doctor, like for all restrictive diets.
EDIT: I misread your statement. Of course you would die of starvation if you couldn't make glucose. But why couldn't you make glucose, assuming you don't have a specific disease preventing it.
2. Sugar is 50/50 fructose and glucose, the fructose half is arguably poison to humans. It's important to distinguish glucose from sugar when it comes to human health/nutrition.
Sucrose is 50/50 fructose and glucose. As in each molecule of sucrose is one of fructose and one of glucose stuck together. All three of those things are sugars.
Fructose is usually considered healthier than sucrose or glucose - the whole "natural fruit sugars are OK" premise - though that seems likely to be nonsense given it's immediately and easily converted to glucose after you eat it. I don't know of any argument that says it's poisonous, or in any sense worse than glucose. That also seems unlikely to be true for the same reason - it's immediately converted to glucose.
(replies suggest my recollection of fructose being metabolised by trivial conversion to glucose followed by the usual glucose pathway is incorrect, interesting)
> Fructose is usually considered healthier than sucrose or glucose - the whole "natural fruit sugars are OK" premise - though that seems likely to be nonsense given it's immediately and easily converted to glucose after you eat it. I don't know of any argument that says it's poisonous, or in any sense worse than glucose. That also seems unlikely to be true for the same reason - it's immediately converted to glucose.
Fructose is metabolized by the liver[0] ~identically to ethanol. This is why Robert Lustig (the Sugar: The Bitter Truth[1] dude) argues fructose is a poison, and taxing it like alcohol.
AIUI it's arguably the cause of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease:
Your comment strikes me as confusing several factors... fructose does not turn into glucose upon eating it. But something like that is applicable to Sucrose vs. HFCS, rendering them ~identical in consumption (a split of glucose and fructose). That's orthogonal to what the body does with the fructose though.
Furthermore it's intact fruit that is seen as healthier because of the dietary fiber, not because of the fructose. The fructose is always a problem for the liver to deal with when absorbed. Fiber helps by slowing/preventing its absorption, in the best case letting it reach the large intestine to turn into flatulence via guttural flora before the body can absorb it.
That conversion of fructose to energy in the liver appears to create metabolic byproducts that (at sufficient quantities) lead to fat accumulation in the liver, and consequently to insulin resistance.
The “just-so” evolutionary story behind this goes: when fructose calories are available in excess, you want to make sure you’re storing all you can, because a fruit bonanza is often associated with an upcoming lean period. So, creatures whose bodies treated large amounts of fructose as a metabolic trigger to fatten up and reduce energy expenditure were more likely to make it through the winter.
You do have to be careful about your grocery selections. One of my favorite boogeymen is the product called peanut spread which comes in a jar just like peanut butter and looks just like it, but it's loaded with added sugar. Of course, some brands of peanut butter are, too, but this is a thing with the high end products that you'd think wouldn't do that.
But, my advice is just stop adding sugar to recipes and stop eating stuff that is obviously sugar laden (muffins, cookies, etc). Over time, you become somewhat sensitized to foods that have it where you don't expect it. Check labels when in doubt, but basically, don't sweat the small stuff and absolutely don't refuse a small piece of your niece's birthday cake - it won't kill you.