Anyone tried/trying to quit sugar?

This is nutritional label of a Twix, see if you can spot the actual food things.

No it isn’t. That’s a US label for a start. If the URL is to be believed it says it’s a “Twix Cookie.”

In any case, ZOMG CHEMICALS ARE BAD!!

Are you sure that’s for a Twix?

That’s what I googles, although looking at it, it’s probs a US version? Point still stands really though, if you can’t make it without stuff from a lab – Whey Permeate? Palm Fat? etc etc, then what is it really? Some scientist are suggesting that the fact that these products are almost imperishable and have “hyper-palatable” qualities have moved them from beyond food and into an entirely different category.

Which scientists?

 ZOMG CHEMICALS ARE BAD!!

what d’you think sugar is exactly? Everything essentially is chemicals, Some food scientists are saying, some of the chemicals that are present in our diets in quite large quantiles, are not what humans should be eating, and have trouble digesting and could have unintended consequences. I don’t care whether you eat them or not, I’m not your mum. but at the very least; ultra processed food is full to the brim with the sorts of things (fats, sugars and salts) that we know are bad for us so avoiding them will automatically cut huge amounts of them from your diet.

… and what does any of this have to do with quitting sugar? This would be better as a separate thread IMHO.

The scientists at  the Centre for Epidemiological Studies in Health and Nutrition, School of Public Health, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

… and what does any of this have to do with quitting sugar?

Highly processed foods are full of them.

Everything essentially is chemicals

Correct. Which negates your point entirely.

Some food scientists are saying,

Again, which scientists? Show your working.

at the very least; ultra processed food is full to the brim with the sorts of things (fats, sugars and salts) that we know are bad for us so avoiding them will automatically cut huge amounts of them from your diet.

Too much sugar and salt is bad. That’s nothing to do with “processing,” all food is processed unless you’ve just plucked it off the tree.

Again, which scientists? Show your working.

look up thread.

That’s nothing to do with “processing,” all food is processed unless you’ve just plucked it off the tree.

NOVA-Classification-Reference-Sheet.pdf (educhange.com)

There’s compelling evidence to show that your more you **** about with food (industrialise it’s processes) the worse it is for your health.

Didn’t some experiment recently reveal that most UK honey is so adulterated that is more or less entirely sugar syrup anyway?

All UK honey tested in EU fraud investigation fails authenticity test | Food | The Guardian

@nickc We’re living in Spain now and I can get a kilo of proper good raw honey (with bits of bee et al) for around ten euros direct from the farmer. The taste is mind-blowing – completely different to the supermarket-bought stuff and is as addictive as crack.

Went from white to brown

Apart from a small amount of molasses being added to white sugar to make it appear brown I don’t think there is much difference between the two.

Agree 100% with the posts above about the importance of avoiding ultraprocessed food. If you manage that the added sugar thing sort of fixes itself but you also benefit by removing dozens of chemicals from you diet. Additives in ultraprocesses foods are there to make it cheaper, last longer or make you eat more of it. They’re not there to benefit your health and wellbeing.

I’d also watch with things like raisin wheats and overnight oats. Everybody is differnet but my body blood sugar wise responds to those in the similar way having a twix for breakfast. If I start the day with that sort of food I’ll be craving stuff all day.

It’s not an accident that countries that eat the most UPFs are fat as ****.

I’d also watch with things like raisin wheats and overnight oats

I’m prepared to be a bit relaxed with porridge oats and shredded wheat, assuming you’re talking about the degree of processing both go through? I’m very unscientifically assuming there’s still more fibre and general goodness than more finely processed oats or wheat.

Shreddies can get in the sea though, didn’t realise they had sugar in them (even the plain ones 🙄)

Yep. There’s more and more evidence to show that rather than try to remove individual items from your diet (Fat, Sugar, Carbs etc etc) let how much it’s processed be your guide to how healthy it is. i.e.. prefer minimally processed food (made in your own kitchen with raw ingredients) over foods that have been highly processed regardless of the health benefits they proclaim to have.

Shreddies can get in the sea though, didn’t realise they had sugar in them (even the plain ones 🙄)

A good rule of thumb that I’ve developed is that if it has to be advertised at you, it’s probably best avoided.

I’m prepared to be a bit relaxed with porridge oats and shredded wheat, assuming you’re talking about the degree of processing both go through?

They’re both processed rather than ultraprocessed foods so good in that respect, but a lot of people (me included) get big sugar spikes from oats, wheat and raisins.

Steel cut oats generally get absorbded much slower than rolled oats if you can use those.

Not read any of above as on phone so probably repeating others.

I ditched the majority of sugar in my diet. I don’t obsess about it and will still have the odd sugary thing as a treat – just had a homemade flapjack.

But in general as a day to day way to live, it’s awesome. I get so much less hungry, all the highs and lows are gone. I’m also probably a nicer person to be around. Other food taste amazing (raw broccoli is the food of the gods and, to me now, tastes super sweet). Also, as a rules kind of guy it knocks out foods I’d otherwise cave in and eat “cos I’m not allowed” even if it’s a self imposed rule. And that mindset that if you haven’t got 1000 calories of refined sugar in your back pocket on a ride you are a bonk waiting to happen……if you live mostly sugar free it’s dosn’t seem to happen.

Outside looking in my vegan, (mostly) sugar free diet must look like self flagellation gone mad – but inside looking out it feels like a win win.

Just finished a tin of condensed milk. 200grams of sugar. 1300Kcal

Yummy 😀

A good rule of thumb that I’ve developed is that if it has to be advertised at you, it’s probably best avoided.

My rule of thumb is that the better it tastes the more it should be avoided.

Always check the ingredients if something tastes great!

Did keto, lost 3 stone. Now mostly eat a ketogenic (or rather very low carb) diet but allow myself to eat what I like if I’m being social.

Cholesterol went from 6 to 4. Feel loads better. Generally only eat home-cooked food, from fresh, with ingredients you can either pull out of the ground, pluck off plants or cut off animals.

If we eat badly, we try to make sure it’s in the middle of the day, with some exercise happening afterwards. But we’re not self-harming zealots about it.

Zero ultra processed food. Zero added sugar. Zero sweeteners (that comes in the ultra processed bit) – so none of that low-fat ultra-processed yoghurt crap.

Don’t miss sugar at all. In every measurable way I’m fitter, slimmer, happier, less hungry, more healthy.

Most Honey probably is adulterated, but local raw honey is a world apart from the shit you buy at Tesco..

Definitely. We bought a jar from a farm with beehives near my mother-in-law’s place in Devon and it was like liquid fudge, absolutely amazing.

A squeezy bottle of runny amber stuff for £1 from Sainsbury’s is obviously mostly sugar syrup.

Just finished a tin of condensed milk. 200grams of sugar. 1300Kcal

Yummy 😀

Report back when the sugar low hits at about 4pm. 🙂

Just finished a tin of condensed milk. 200grams of sugar. 1300Kcal

Yummy

What a waste. That tin of condensed milk (along with another kilo of sugar and some butter) could have been part of a delicious slab of tablet by now.

Yep – given it up completely day to day, including fruit juice and most fruit – mainly to support my wife who has a medical condition- so can’t have sugar. I occasionally fall off the wagon, but it’s infrequent.

My experience fwiw, is that if you stop eating rubbish like cake, biscuits and other sugary snacks, you stop craving them pretty quickly. I found all that stuff properly affected me when I had long covid. I stopped eating them, I don’t miss any of it.

On the ultra-processed food front, there was an interesting podcast by a pair (obiviously) of twin doctors focussing on just that. One of them went through a process of eating lots of the stuff, eventually he found it revolting. Their rule of thumb was that if you read the ingredients list and found a shedload of stuff you wouldn’t find in your own kitchen, it was a good bet that it was ‘ultra-processed’.

I always find it a little bewildering the way otherwise quite sane people seem infantilised by the lure of cake or biscuits – beer too, but that’s another topic – as if it’s some sort of irresistable crack cocaine derivative. There are, apparenlty, hard-wired genetic reasons why we crave sugary stuff – as hunter gatherers, finding a bees’ nest full of honey for example, was a great way of stocking up on valuable calories when there was no telling when your next opportunity might be.

Unfortunately evolution didn’t reckon with a world where sugary stuff is effectively available on tap. All the time. Anyway, I would just stop eating sugary stuff, you may be surprised at how little you crave it after a day or two of abstinence.

Yes, definitely harder than cigarettes, but also like cigarettes the cravings died down after a month or so. Also best to go as cold turkey as possible, otherwise you’re just torturing yourself

My wife challenged me to reduce sugar in my diet.

I managed about half a week, despite claiming it would be easy.

Good luck, give clearly got more will power/ reason to go for it than me :⁠-⁠)

Yeah it’s hard. I think what worked for me was focusing on adding in better quality non-ultraprocessed foods. It was kind of fun trying to find new stuff to eat and even learning to make stuff were I couldn’t find a non-UPF version.

There’s a huge mindset difference between “I’m not going eat cakes / chocolate etc this week” and “I’m going to find as many cool non UP foods to eat this week”.  It doesn’t need to be about denial and restriction.

Yes, the podcast, “A Thorough Examination” by Chris and Xand Van Tulleken is an excellent listen. Very enlightening about UPF, and tackled in an interesting way. We’ve been trying to be more aware of highly processed food since… and realising it’s everywhere!

The podcast series is on the BBC website, episode one at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0017tcx

Too much sugar and salt is bad. That’s nothing to do with “processing,” all food is processed unless you’ve just plucked it off the tree

@cougar the issue is „Ultra Processed Foods“ as defined by Prof Monteiro at University of Sao Paulo around 2009.

You may be interested in The Maryland experiment in 2018 that gives good evidence that UPFs make people put on weight through a mechanism that is unclear, exerting an effect independent of their sugar/salt/carb/fat content.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31105044/

You may also find Prof Tim Spector’s (of Covid App, Twin Study and Microbiome fame) interview on the subject interesting:

You keep linking to a classification system. I’ve found an actual article, but it’s a long read.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/public-health-nutrition/article/un-decade-of-nutrition-the-nova-food-classification-and-the-trouble-with-ultraprocessing/2A9776922A28F8F757BDA32C3266AC2A

I was diagnosed as T2 diabetic about 5yr ago/. It was only after cutting it out that I realised how much shite I was eating, mostly at work (big shared office where there was always chocolate/sweets for sharing – turned out it was really only me eating them !)

That was all I changed and I lost about 7-8 kilos (90 to 82) in a summer, fast enough to frighten my colleagues

Thought I was pretty sorted diet-wise as a result of that, though not mega-strict, but my A1c is still quite raised so I bought a month’s worth of freestyle libre monitors early this year to see what was doing what. Turns out it’s very easy for me to get glucose level up to 12-15 (and 20 doesn’t take any “effort”) but from that it takes several hours to normalise, which is the bit that I don’t like. I can pretty much keep glucose below 7-8 all day if I effectively do an Atkins diet but **** me, it’s boring.

I’ve also tried to work on my microbiota a bit – kefir, fermented stuff and increased my fresh fruit/veg

What I like LEAST about all this is that I feel pretty much NO different bewtween a careful day (or week) and a carefree one

… and completely coincidentally (because a friend commented on it), this just popped up on LinkedIn. Though it’s an opinion piece and what the validity of the author is, I don’t know.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ultra-processed-foods-whats-all-aaron-loveman-1f%3F/

The first 2 weeks was hard, as I really craved biscuits and sweet tea, but after that I wasn’t interested in them and now they taste too sweet so I have ruined biscuits for ever 🤦‍♀️

I quit most sugar back in October. We were about 18 months into child number 1 and I was dying on my arse at work every day. Interrupted sleep every night left me craving chocolate and fizzy drinks all day to try and power through. I was going through mulitpacks of chocolate bars and bottles of Coke and Lucozade every day. I was up and down on an energy rollercoaster with no end in sight.

So I just quit.

Cravings for the first week were bad but then they vanished. My energy levels stabilised. I was still tired but normal tired without the unbearable afternoon crash. My double chin and love handles were gone in a month.

I’m not on an obsessive diet or anything I just quit chocolate, croissants, all fizzy pop, donuts, ice cream, crisps. That alone was enough to make a huge difference to how I feel.

I’ve had the occasional chocolate or ice cream recently and there’s no joy in it at all.

Oh, and pigs. I don’t eat pigs anymore. Bacon and pork is dead to me. I was on the fence until I saw the videos of the piglets being herded into the gas chambers. I don’t need that shit on my conscience.

I’ve had the occasional chocolate or ice cream recently and there’s no joy in it at all.

Conversely I’ve never really had a sweet tooth, only have chocolate or ice cream occasionally, but enjoy both when I do.

I’m prone to a bit of cakeage on a ride or after a cold swim but never buy any for home consumption. .

What a waste. That tin of condensed milk (along with another kilo of sugar and some butter) could have been part of a delicious slab of tablet by now.

Utter pain in the bum to make and it usually means sacrificing a pot.
My own recipe is condensed milk, sugar, butter, vanilla pod and gold top milk. Its the full fat milk gives it its special taste.

The original recipe for tablet is simply double cream and sugar, but apparently its really difficult to make without the cream splitting and it has to be tested for consistency using the iced water technique*.

*The ice water technique involves putting one hand into a bowl of iced water, then plunging that hand into the boiling sugar mix, rubbing the mix between your fingers to judge if it is ready, then into the iced water again before the heat burns your hand off.

A nutritional therapist helped me with a low sugar diet years ago now.
Boy was it hard. Even fructose was ‘banned’, but giving up fruit was a step too far.

We no longer have sweets, biscuits or shop bought cake in the house, but I do bake. Home baked goods are a weekend treat now. No fizzy drinks or even cordials such as ribena.
I gave up sweets in my 20’s but cannot give up chocolate (it has to be good quality), Cadbury’s tastes like a bar of fat and sugar.
In America every food item seems to be encased in some form of sweetness.

As others have said, it’s easier to avoid most sugar by making all meals and snacks yourself.

Echoing some of Bunnhop’s comments. Years ago I gave up chocolate, after a while I started eating some decent chocolate. Think it was hotel Chocolat stuff (before they went massive) single origin tastes nowt like most chocolate. One square was enough. I tried a dairy milk and it was horrid, sickly, sticky fatty. Then I slipped and went back to the crap stuff.
The funny bit is I don’t get much enjoyment from it but I must get a hot from it somehow.

I gave it and processed foods up during the end of COVID restrictions. Was relatively easy and made me learn new recipes, ideas for meals etc. However, I’ve fallen off that routine and I’m back shovelling anything I can into my mouth during the day, telling myself I’ll start again next week. 20kg put on in weight since.

Finding it hard to start again. I had a good few weeks at the start of the year with STW Chub Club but the wife’s birthday cake set off the sugar rush again end of Jan. Need to crack it again and not go back.