A friend
wrote me and said, "Ok. I want to give up sugar. What's the first step?"
I was just going to PM them a reply, but then a little tiny dim light popped on in the back of my brain. At first I just tried to snuff it out so that it could go back to the cool, sedate dark that is usually there. Then the light kicked me in the cerebrum (which didn't hurt, because there are no nerve endings there) and screamed, "Tell Everyone!!!"
So here we go. What's the first step in getting sugar out of your life? I'll tell you, but why stop with just the first step? Here are the 5 first steps to beginning a sugar-free diet and life.
Step 1. Know that the odds are against you.
The odds are against you for two reasons.
As an insulin resistant Robert Palmer might have written -
"You might as well face it, you're addicted to sugar."
The food industry knows that they have to make things that taste good, and last long on shelves. The longer the shelf-life, the more highly processed the "food." And with that extended shelf life, you're going to want more flavor... Yes.. By adding sugar.
Of course, I am not a scientist. So don't listen to me on this issue. Listen to the pocket protector wearing scientists at N.I.H. who wrote - "At the neurobiological level, the neural substrates of sugar and sweet reward appear to be more robust than those of cocaine (i.e., more resistant to functional failures), possibly reflecting past selective evolutionary pressures for seeking and taking foods high in sugar and calories." - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23719144
As an insulin resistant Robert Palmer might have written - "You might as well face it, you're addicted to sugar."
Step 2. Know that SUGAR is just SUGAR no matter what they call it, or where it comes from.
Another friend joined a discussion I was having with someone and proclaimed that in order to get real, natural sugar, one had to grow the sugar cane, and harvest it oneself in order to avoid the horrors of modern processed sugar. To be sure, the process of getting those fine white granules is laden with unsavory chemicals.
"Raw" sugar, processed sugar, whatever the case, sugar is basically made up of two molecules - glucose and fructose. It does not matter if the sugar is from sugar beets farmed by strict vegan, virgins, who water the crops only with their fresh fallen tears. The sugar that is produced is the same two molecules: glucose and fructose.
Glucose occurs in every living cell on this planet and is harmless. Fructose (the actual sweet part of sugar) however, does not and is not. It is that fructose, and how the body processes it, that causes sugar's extensive metabolic damage.
On the By Any Other Name page, I list dozens of the masked names for sugar that have been used by the food industry. Maybe they are being devious, maybe they are being precise, but in either case, sugar = cane syrup = agave nectar = maltodextrin = high fructose corn syrup = honey, etc, etc, etc.
Even being raised by vegan, virgins, who attended Woodstock, and water the sugar cane with nothing other than their tears, doesn't change what sugar is.
Step 3. Eliminate the two top sugar delivery foods.
Fruit juice - yes, even 100% pure fruit juice contains MORE sugar than regular Pepsi.
This is the first real action step you can take. If you want to eliminate sugar from your diet and your life, start with soft drinks, AND fruit juice.
Yes, fruit juice, and all of the semi-fruit juices that are on grocery store shelves. The fact is that once the juice has been extracted from the fruit, it is very little more than flavored sugar water. Sure, some fruit juices contain vitamins. But those vitamins are floating in an ocean of sugar water.
The generally accepted king of fruit juices is orange juice. Every ounce of orange juice contains 3.5 grams of sugar. Every ounce of regular Pepsi contains 3.4 grams of sugar. Fruit juices contain even more sugar per ounce than many soft drinks. Some, like grape juice, contain a lot more at 5 grams per ounce.
By contrast, 8 oz of orange slices contains only 82 calories, and one very vital nutritional element that is missing from orange juice. The whole orange contains about 4.4 grams of dietary fiber. Regular orange juice, contains none. As we'll see in coming posts, dietary fiber makes a huge difference in how sugar is and is NOT processed in the body.
Eat the whole fruit. We were designed to EAT our calories, not DRINK them.
Step 4. Start reading the right parts of the labels on the other foods you eat
When you start this step, ignore the "calories and grams of saturated fat" lines. I know, you've been taught to look at those first because "fat is bad." Very wrong, but that's for another post. These two things are pretty much the least important thing on the label. Dr. Robert Lustig (sources) provides the following guidance when looking at food nutrition labels. Keep in mind, that if it has a nutrition label in the first place, it is by definition "processed" to some degree.
If you're looking at the label on a beverage, there should be fewer than 5 calories. (Excluding unflavored milk, which contains no fructose. Milk sugar is "lactose", which turns into harmless glucose in the liver.)
If you're looking at a solid food label you should look to see that it has 3 grams of fiber or more per serving. If the words, "partially hydrogenated" anything appears anywhere on the label, you are looking at highly processed, nutritional garbage.
While looking at the ingredients, if "sugar" is one of the first three things listed, it is a dessert. And while you're reading, don't forget the multitude of sugar's other names.
Unless you are looking at beverages, skip the "calories" and "saturated fat grams" lines.
Step 5. Begin eliminating ADDED sugar.
If a "food" comes in a jar, can, box or bag, it probably has added sugar. Read the labels and see for yourself. In fact, you'll have a bit of a challenge finding anything that doesn't have one of the many sugars in the ingredients. The reason is a simple one. The more processed the food, the worse the flavor becomes. Sugar is an effective means to make "food" designed to last long on store shelves (not, designed to be nutritious ) taste good.
When food is processed to last longer on store shelves, it also reduces the cost both to the producer, and to you. This is unfortunate in that it makes eating unprocessed food more expensive. Unprocessed food has a definite shelf life and un-bought quantities must be thrown away. To cover this wastage, stores must keep prices on "real" foods higher than products that can sit on shelves for months (or years).
Your goal in the supermarket should be to shift your food buying from a high-fructose, high-trans-fat, low-fiber (i.e., processed) grocery basket to a low-fructose, zero-trans-fat, high-fiber (natural) basket. It is the only rational way is to buy REAL FOOD in the first place. The meat, the dairy, the produce.
While Step 3 can REDUCE your grocery bills, this step will likely increase it. Which is why I titled it "BEGIN eliminating added sugar. " Many will say that good nutrition is biased against the poor. Considering the cost of "real" food vs. processed "food", there is some merit in that argument. So in this step, we seek just to start the elimination of added sugar by simply LOWERING it.
Look for alternatives to items with high sugar content. Canned soup is one example. Chicken soup really calls for only 5 ingredients, not counting salt and pepper: Chicken, Water, Carrots, Celery, and Onions. Why does there need to be sugar in it, much less 3 varieties of sugar? Right here on a Progresso Chicken Soup (above) can, are 3 varieties of sugar - sugar, invert sugar, and Maltodextrin.
Amount of sugar my grandma needed to make the best chicken soup on the planet? Zero.