Nuno Alves, Editorial Director of FITBOOK, eliminated refined sugar from his life in March 2018. What began as a joint project with his father, who was suffering from a brain tumor, has remained part of his everyday life to this day. In part 2 of his column, he reports on initial frustration in the supermarket and how it felt to give up sugar: namely, less bad than initially assumed.
As I write this column, I’m trying to remember what sweet foods were actually on my menu before I gave up sugar. It may sound strange, but the memories seem to have faded, perhaps even been repressed. They haven’t disappeared.
I liked to eat fruit gums throughout the day, in the evening there was whole milk chocolate, occasionally a nut corner in between, maybe a biscuit or cookie, a piece of cake or yoghurt dessert and so on. A variety of supposedly healthy bars joined the heavily sugared stuff I ate with my daughters.
When it comes to sweet food creations, people are almost as inventive as when it comes to weapons – and I deliberately choose this drastic comparison here. Very conscious even.
Obvious sugar and stealth sugar
All of the above was just the obvious sugar I gulped down. Sometimes unconsciously, often spontaneously, mostly thoughtlessly. Add to that all the hidden sugars that aren’t on the radar. I call it the magic candy. In its many names, it flies linguistically camouflaged under the radar – and unnoticed into the body. That ended one evening in March 2018.
As I explained in Part 1 of this column, I made the decision, together with my father, who had a malignant brain tumor, to give up all sugar from one day to the next. What was meant was a boycott of all foods with refined sugar or said stealth sugar. His unmasking drove me to a real research work.
I eliminated anything that contained artificially added forms of sugar and ended in -ose (dextrose, fructose, maltose, etc.), -sirup, -dextrin, or -sweet. Also taboo: everything that mixed “sugar”, “ose” and “sirup” (fructose syrup, invert sugar syrup, etc.). With each new label I discovered, I became more aware of how complex this world of sweetness is.
Also interesting: 6 symptoms that show that you eat too much sugar
The sugar plague on the supermarket shelves
Over night I had dug a few holes in my diet with our project that had to be filled – but with what? It’s not that easy to give up sugar. It is even highly complicated when you start. Sugar is in everything: in smoked salmon, mustard (even spicy ones!), canned tomatoes, bread, salami, pickles, peanut butter, pesto, broths, in supposedly healthy vegan organic spreads… The list could go on and on, unfortunately. Although by now many people – and also the food industry – should be aware that sugar is harmful to health, consumption in Germany has been fairly constant at around 35 kilograms per capita per year for years. This is also shown by a Statista graphic based on data from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food.
Per capita consumption of sugar in Germany from 1950/51 to 2018/19Photo: Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture / Statista
The sweet plague does not follow any nutritional philosophy either. Sugar consistently trickles through vegan, vegetarian, animal and Ayurvedic foods, whether conventional or organic. Therefore, for me, looking at the list of ingredients was part of shopping from then on – as was the frustration.
Also interesting: This happened when I wanted to give up sugar for 8 weeks
The lack of sugar changed my sense of taste
Apart from looking for (hidden) sugar in the food, I decided to give it up – or should I say: withdrawal? – amazingly light. The fact that I was able to convey the feeling to my seriously ill father that he was not alone in giving up made up for the lack of sweetness anyway. I started eating plain Greek yogurt with him for dessert. Instead of sweets, there was a piece of fruit that had sugar in it, but it was more natural, not artificially added.
Instead of whole milk, I used 100 percent dark chocolate. Years earlier I had rejected these in disgust as too salty. However, the elimination of sweets from my diet changed my sense of taste – and the previously frowned upon chocolate became a highlight. Just as simple nut butter, oat flakes and many other things that still tasted bland in a permanent over-sweetened state without an extra sugar kick.
In a few days, the feeling of renunciation gave way to an urge to rediscover supposedly boring foods. And I was now able to understand the sugar boycott kitsch that like-minded people are constantly reporting: that many things are beginning to taste more intense and varied, and that new flavors are noticeable in the food. It seemed like a sugar-induced taste numbness that I had had since childhood was wearing off; as if nuances had now been added to a very limited spectrum of colors.
I was able to answer honestly to questions like «Is nothing missing without the sugar?»: No, on the contrary.
Read Part 3 of the Sugar Free Column:
Are you also trying to give up sugar? Write to Nuno Alves zuckerfrei@.