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Last year I went a month avoiding any food or drink that contained added sugar. Health benefits aside (I was also exercising a lot more and drinking less, so I

Last year I went a month avoiding any food or drink that contained added sugar. Health benefits aside (I was also exercising a lot more and drinking less, so I can't comment on specific benefits), it was incredibly hard. It wasn't the sugar cravings that were hard. I didn't get them at all, I didn't miss sweet food or sugar one bit. The hard part was actually finding food that didn't contain added sugar. I was basically relegated to preparing all my food from scratch. Practically anything in a packet contained sugar. Even the most innocuous things would contain it. Obviously some things only contain low amounts and that's normal (e.g. cured meats), but I couldn't eat most bread, any sauces, the vast majority of pre-prepared meals (except for "paleo" meals), or any spice mixes. Even bottled mayonnaise contains sugar! It made trying to find a snack incredibly difficult, I basically had to eat carrots and hummus. At least whisky contains no added sugar (caramel colouring wasn't counted as sugar, in this case).

maxerickson 8y ago
Funny that you split the hair on the caramel colouring in the fermented, distilled sugar.
- opencl 8y ago
  The fermenting process gets rid of almost all of the sugar.
  - detaro 8y ago
    By turning it into alcohol, at only about 20 % loss of caloric content (if my math is correct).
  - maxerickson 8y ago
    Yeah, I used the past tense up there. It also wouldn't be added sugar if it was there from the start, it would be remaining sugar. But ethanol probably isn't a whole lot better as excess calories than sugars are.
martinwww 8y ago
there's no reason to consume bottled mayonnaise at all. Don't be extremely strict, food with reasonable % of sugar will not harm you if you will be below daily limit with sugar...
- toomanybeersies 8y ago
  You're right on both counts. I don't really use mayo, I prefer vinaigrette dressings. I was just using mayo as an example though, if you make mayonnaise yourself, it's just oil, egg yolk, and vinegar. There shouldn't be sugar in mayo. On the second count, you're right that you don't need to be extremely strict. I went sugar-free for a month because I made a bet with a friend, rather than for any actual health reason. A small amount of sugar is fine for you. The problem is that practically every shelf stable packaged food contains added sugar. If you have a diet that consists of a lot of packaged food, the sugar starts to add up quickly, especially if you're in a habit of using ketchup, which is astoundingly high in sugar. Granola bars (and granola in general) are also a food that people seem to forget contain a boatload of sugar too.
  - RobertRoberts 8y ago
    Consider replacing anything that has sugar in it, with an organic sugar alternative. Trader Joes, Whole Food, Costco, local organic store/coop have many alternatives, and many of them taste better than the popular brands.
    - mseebach 8y ago
      Organic sugar isn't a panacea, it's still almost completely sucrose and organic sucrose is absolutely chemically identical to non-organic. It often tastes way better, but it's a stretch to assign significant health benefits to it. By all means, steer clear of HFCS (operative word: fructose, not sucrose). It's probably less bad than it's reputation suggests, but its also probably worse than sucrose. More pertinently, it's indicative of cheap, low-quality food that has way too much sweetener because it otherwise has no flavour. But more on point for this thread: Don't replace a food that shouldn't have sugar in it at all (mayonnaise) with a variant that just has a different kind of sugar. Find a variant that is better quality and doesn't have sugar at all. Good mayonnaise requires really good eggs and those are expensive.
sundvor 8y ago
Nice effort! And I will use that as my reason for picking up my next bottle of Single Malt.
- bfuller 8y ago
  A good takeaway. I have similar priorities haha.
EZ-E 8y ago
I'm curious : did this diet changes made any significant difference on your wellbeing?
- NL807 8y ago
  Tried something similar. One thing I noticed is that i became more mentally focused not feel constantly hazy and low energy all the time. Eating lots of carbs and sugar is fucked and affects your mental ability.
- toomanybeersies 8y ago
  I was also exercising a lot more and drinking less, so I can't really say what in particular helped the most, but I felt a lot healthier and fitter in general. It also had a positive effect on my mental health, which was an unintended but nice side effect.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    > It also had a positive effect on my mental health, which was an unintended but nice side effect. Do you think this could be a result of improved sleep? It's one of the benefits I've heard reported by people following a similar diet.
    - toomanybeersies 8y ago
      I guess it could. I was definitely sleeping better as a result of one of the things I was doing, or all of the things.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  I know a few people who've done the "Whole 30" diet which includes cutting out added sugar, among many things (although some of which, like legumes, seem completely arbitrary). One friend's severe eczema completely cleared up, others pretty much universally reported sleeping better and feeling more alert. Some just lost a lot of weight (as was their intention, although as with most diets probably mainly retained water weight). We live in a rural area of the UK where farm shops are common so it's relatively easy around here, but I could see it being much more difficult for city dwellers. I personally wouldn't do it myself and am not a fan of short term "fad" diets but the results are hard to deny.
godzillabrennus 8y ago
I’ve done this myself. It’s amazing how much healthier I was after just 30 days.
peletiah 8y ago
> relegated to preparing all my food from scratch > find a snack incredibly difficult [..] I basically had to eat carrots and hummus You make it sound as if it was not normal to cook your own food from basic ingredients and not regularly eat processed snacks.
- miranda_rights 8y ago
  Keep in mind that there are different levels of 'from scratch.' Making your own sandwich is pretty normal. Making your own bread for your sandwich but with store-bought mayo is probably less common. Making your own bread and making your own mayo is probably even less common, and that was about the level of 'from scratch' that the other user is talking about.
  - peletiah 8y ago
    Ok, I'm not talking about sandwiches or making your own bread, but "proper" meals, like aspargus-risotto, (store-bought-)pasta with homemade-sugo, cooked beef with homemade-gravy, vegetables and dumplings as a side, diverse soups made from fresh vegetables/beans/meat, vegetable casserole, mixed salad, grilled fish, curry with rice etc. (Just a selection of the stuff we had in the past days). Guess as a european I'm still naive about life in the USA :-)
    - wst_ 8y ago
      I think people are overestimating the quality of products they used to call "fresh." Do you know the source of all the products you use? Preparing your own meal doesn't change much, unless you really trust the source.
- PeterisP 8y ago
  If we define "normal" as whatever most people do, then yes, currently in USA it's not normal to cook all (or even most) of your food yourself from basic ingredients; most people do not do that anymore, when they cook themselves, a lot of ingredients are highly processed or pre-prepared.
- 8y ago
vfinn 8y ago
Can confirm. Giving up sugar has been one of the best decisions in my life. I did it gradually, but in the end I gave almost any added sugar whatsoever (no ketchup, no canned fish, no juices, no syrupy breads, etc.). Maybe it's not necessary to go that far, but I feel I don't need it nor crave it anymore. My depression has gone away, I've lost weight, and I don't have fogginess in my head anymore nor mood swings. It's an empty addiction, and my feeling is it's doing you very much harm! Let it go, folks.
- stone-monkey 8y ago
  >>no ketchup, no canned fish, no juices, no syrupy breads, etc One of these things don't seem to be like the others. Is there typically added sugar in canned fish? My go to is canned tuna, but the nutritional label checks out to me.
  - vfinn 8y ago
    Yes, I was a bit unclear. In certain kinds of canned herrings there are over 15g/100g of sugar, could be in a form of tomato sauce for example.
  - jacobush 8y ago
    Weird (to foreigners) swedish canned herring. Dozens of pickles, but one thing in common - sugar.
ricardobeat 8y ago
I assume you live in the US? The difference in what's on offer in supermarkets, restaurants or convenience stores, compared to northern Europe or even South America (halfway in between I'd say) is astounding.
- mijamo 8y ago
  Why pointing "Northern" Europe rather than Europe in general ? From my experience, I would say you find more and better vegetables in Southern Europe. And Eastern Europe is quite similar to Northern Europe in terms of accessibility and choice (probably still better in quality though). And South America in my opinion is rather poor in vegetables (but fantastic in fruits!). They can grow perfectly there but people just don't seem to eat them much, apart from a few specific ones. But they do cook at least. One final factor is also the price of restaurants. In South America and Asia many people just eat at restaurants/cafeteria/whatever local street food you find all the time because it is not expensive at all. And not super healthy. Doing that in Sweden or Norway would lead you to ruin very very fast (and also street food is obviously less popular when it's freezing outside so it doesn't help developing a street food culture).
  - adwww 8y ago
    > Why pointing "Northern" Europe rather than Europe in general ? I assumed because it's suprising how much worse the American diet is, even compared to countries with similar Western diets, incomes and lifestyles (UK, IE, DE, NL etc).
    - beaconstudios 8y ago
      all of those countries are in Western Europe though. Northern Europe is primarily Scandinavia.
      - Symbiote 8y ago
        Britain and Ireland are Northern Europe by various definitions, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_geoscheme_for_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_geoscheme_for_E...
DanielBMarkham 8y ago
I've been doing keto for about six weeks and following along in the community. You are correct. It's amazing. Some folks view this as some kind of evil corporate overlord thing, but I think the answer is much closer to home: we like stuff with sugar in it. So other people are going to put sugar in stuff so that we'll like it more. Sadly it looks as simple as that. I had tried low-carb before and couldn't stay on it. What I didn't know back then was that you can fall off your low carb diet without even realizing it. There are so many items with hidden sugars that it's impossible not to -- unless, as you say, you prepare all of your stuff. (My strategy is to curate items that are safe.) Carbs past a certain point are addictive, although probably at the low end of the addiction scale. I believe this is because if you live in an environment where fruit only ripens one month a year, it's important to have a biological drive to fatten up on those easy sugars in preparation for the winter months. Of course we don't live in that environment any more. And you will lie to yourself, making it even worse. I imagine what happens to most folks is that they accidentally eat enough carbs to start triggering perverse insulin responses, then "decide" to go ahead and eat one or two things that they've always loved. After all, those one or two things by themselves are fine, right? And then we've flipped over the tipping point. I am amazed at the obesity crisis in the West, although it seems like a natural outcome to so many plentiful foods. The part that amazes me is how nutrition experts consistently blew it, over and over again recommending public health policies that only worsen the problem.
- jerf 8y ago
  "Some folks view this as some kind of evil corporate overlord thing, but I think the answer is much closer to home: we like stuff with sugar in it. So other people are going to put sugar in stuff so that we'll like it more. Sadly it looks as simple as that." I recommend the book "Good Calories, Bad Calories". It is widely thought by people who have only heard about the book third-hand (criticizing the people who wrote their second-hand assessments of it) that it's a diet book, but the bulk of it is actually a well-researched history book on how the modern conception of "correct diet" came about, you know, the bad one that we're still oh-so-slowly extricating ourselves from. Basically it answers the question "If the late 20th-century diet consensus was so bad, how did it become the consensus?" Since I read it, my assessment of the late 20th-century diet consensus has only gone down, and the history itself doesn't change, since, you know, "not changing" is pretty much what history does. You can blip over the bits where it does try to discuss the science of proper diet; even if you're interested in this branch of scientific thought, there's more up-to-date resources now. But the history is good.
skrebbel 8y ago
> It made trying to find a snack incredibly difficult, I basically had to eat carrots and hummus. And fruits, I hope? :-) Also, you mention carrots, but there's lots of other vegetables that taste nicely when eaten raw that require little to no preparation time. I recognize that this is not mainstream at all but lately I've begun eating all kinds of vegetables as a snack. Eg iceberg salad: if you take the outer 5 or so leaves off, then the rest has not usually been touched by pesticides, so you can just eat that without all the washing cutting prep etc. I've found that just putting an iceberg salad next to my keyboard works exactly the same as just putting a bag of crisps there: when i look up an hour later, it's all gone. Similar tricks: pointed red peppers only need washing, and then you can eat them as if they're a mars bar. The seeds are only at the very end. bags of pre-cut lettuce. Also, way too few people are aware that cauliflower tastes great raw. It's a bit of work to clean (but not too bad) but cauliflowers tend to be huge so you can cut one into pieces, put the pieces into four bags and bring a bag every next day or so. It also stays good super long. I also like cabbage (you can also remove the outer leaves and eat the rest without washing), but it has a pretty strong taste and I recognize that this might not be for everyone :-)
- Filligree 8y ago
  Fruits contain a lot of fruit sugar. If you're trying to avoid sugar entirely, they may not be the best choice.
  - akerro 8y ago
    >Fruits contain a lot of fruit sugar Vegetable contain a lot of sugar too, like the mention he ate a lot of carrots, he ate a lot of sugar, but that's naturally occurring sugar human body can process well, unlike tablespoon of sugar in a sausage made of processed meat.
    - gameswithgo 8y ago
      the sugar is the same in any case, but fiber may reduce how harmful it is, or at least slow down how fast you shove it in your face.
jernfrost 8y ago
That is one of the reasons I decided to leave the US after I moved there. I found it WAY to hard to live healthy there. Sugar is added to so much stuff in America. Not only that but it is usually added in much larger quantities than I am used to at home. I also think there is too much exposure to sweet foods in the US. You are offered sweets things so often. It is just part of the culture it seems. It is 15 years now since I lived in the US and I steel struggle with a sugar addiction from just living one year in the US. I never had any particular desire to eat sweet things before I moved to the US.
- com2kid 8y ago
  > That is one of the reasons I decided to leave the US after I moved there. I found it WAY to hard to live healthy there. Sugar is added to so much stuff in America. Not only that but it is usually added in much larger quantities than I am used to at home. It is a lot better now. In just the last 2 years the low carb movement has really kicked off, it is super easy to get no sugar or low sugar options. Restaurants now swap out buns (which have added sugar in them of course) without question, no sugar BBQ sauce is finally a thing, no sugar ketchup is a thing now, and there are even a lot of sugar free snack food options. As someone who has been doing Keto for ~5 years, this last year has been the easiest yet.
Fnoord 8y ago
> I basically had to eat carrots Carrots are mostly carbs (sugar) [1]. The problem isn't sugar; its an abundance of calories in the form of sugar. [1] https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2383/2 https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetabl...
danlugo92 8y ago
>Even bottled mayonnaise contains sugar! As someone with sugar problems who loves mayo, I hate this.
- loco5niner 8y ago
  Mayo is easy to make at home using a stick blender and a jar: https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/10/two-minute-mayonnaise.html https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/10/two-minute-mayon...
JacobJans 8y ago
Nuts, cheese, boiled eggs, and fruit are all widely available, pre-made, snacks. It should be noted that The Longevity Diet, promoted by Valter Longo, recommends nuts as the "go-to" snack. Super easy, and healthy too.
- jschwartzi 8y ago
  Nuts are extremely calorie dense. A small handful of nuts is like 1/6 of my BMR.
cup-of-tea 8y ago
> I was basically relegated to preparing all my food from scratch. I don't see a problem with this. It's not hard and doesn't have to be too time consuming if you prepare things in bulk. You can listen to music or the radio while doing it. I find it quite relaxing. > It made trying to find a snack incredibly difficult Don't snack. That would solve so many problems that people have with diets. I eat two meals every day. Between meals I do not eat. By eating I mean opening my mouth and inserting things into it. I honestly think some people just don't realise how much they eat by snacking. I get hungry every day but that's fine. I look forward to my next meal. Don't snack when you're hungry. Just look foward to your next meal.
- voxl 8y ago
  >I don't see a problem with this. It's not hard ... What's not hard is being able to see a problem with preparing all your meals from scratch. I don't know a kinder way to say that you're just wrong.
- mrlala 8y ago
  >I don't see a problem with this. It's not hard and doesn't have to be too time consuming if you prepare things in bulk. You can listen to music or the radio while doing it. I find it quite relaxing. If you have young kids I highly doubt this would be your attitude.
- neutronicus 8y ago
  I'm the same as you (one or two meals a day) but I don't think we can generalize our experiences to a recommendation (especially across gender lines). My partner gets impossible really quickly if she doesn't eat about four times daily, and I've met enough hangry-type people to believe that some people really do have to snack. Although I guess I'd encourage everyone to try not-snacking given how much more convenient and healthy it is if your metabolism can manage it.
- krageon 8y ago
  No matter which way you cut it, making a proper meal from scratch will take you a while. Especially if you're not used to that kind of cooking, as the people you're speaking to no doubt are. All it takes is a little empathy to see that for some people, what you find easy is indeed hard.
jschwartzi 8y ago
Bread has sugar in it to feed the yeast. You should avoid HFCS in bread but as long as sugar isn't the first thing in the ingredients list it's probably just feeding the leavening.
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  Bread doesn't need added sugar to feed the yeast, though. There's plenty of food for the yeast in the flour itself. Bread may benefit from added sugar if your primary goal is trying to increase your yield from an industrial process. Sucrose is also really easily digestible for yeast, so I wouldn't be surprised if a dough with added sugar rises faster than a bread that's made with regular ingredients. I think that this sort of thing is part of the general problem with added sugar: There are all sorts of practical reasons why you might want to add a little bit of sugar to products. (As another example, a lot of commercial hummus contains it as a preservative.) But a bunch of individual products using a little bit of it for their own individual purposes adds up to a whole lot of excess sugar consumption for the people who are eating all that food.
  - mrob 8y ago
    >a lot of commercial hummus contains it as a preservative How does this work? I thought sugar works as a preservative by reducing the water activity, and for it to be effective requires a high concentration (like jam or honey) that would be inappropriately sweet in hummus.
  - eezurr 8y ago
    Saying bread doesn't need sugar is disingenuous. It depends on the type of bread you are baking. Sourdough doesn't need sugar because the fermentation process is what makes it a sourdough. Italian bread on the other hand, does need sugar due to its effects on the crumb/crust.
    - bunderbunder 8y ago
      Well, I said it doesn't need it to feed the yeast. I hope I wasn't implying any controversy over whether adding sugar to a product can alter its flavor or texture. But even if you include sugar-for-flavor on top of any practical uses, my point still stands: Spread across all the different kinds of foods you can get at the grocery store, a little sugar here and a little sugar there adds up to a whole lot of sugar overall. Maybe it's worth accepting a somewhat less carmelized crust on your paninis in the interest of having a healthier diet.
cimmanom 8y ago
I've done something similar lately (not eliminating sugar but setting a hard daily limit). Some tips, if you don't have a lot of time to prepare food from scratch: - if you need bread, there are some pitas that are low on sugar. You can also find tortillas with minimal sugar and make wraps instead of sandwiches. - if you need a prepared meal, some canned soups are very low on sugar. - a homemade salad dressing made of lemon juice, olive oil, and pressed garlic is delicious, and takes only as long to make as it does to press the garlic - a week's worth takes about 5 min - no-sugar-added peanut butter can be delicious, especially if it's made with salt, and is easy to find at the grocery store these days. It goes well with carrots, celery, pretty much everything - cheese generally does not contain sugar. Other dairy, such as milk and plain yogurt has sugar but its natural rather than added sugar. - eggs are great for quick prep, and you can scramble them up with vegetables and cheese in minutes. Or hard boil a week's worth at a time - nuts are spectacular for snacking
Taylor_OD 8y ago
My diet is mostly bananas, oranges, apples, almonds, cashews, carrots for snacks. Onion, mushrooms, garlic, spinach, with baked chicken or a steak for dinner. Protein shake with a banana and almond/coconut milk (with no sugar added) for breakfast. I don't think it's that hard to avoid added sugar you just have to keep things a little more basic.
- jschwartzi 8y ago
  I've found Muscle Milk to be great if I'm in a hurry. It's basically whey isolate, vegetable fiber and aspartame. The fiber and protein make it really filling. I wish I knew where they got their fiber because I want to add it to my own whey.
  - Taylor_OD 8y ago
    I throw a soup spoon full of Benefiber in my shake every morning. It's been very helpful. Smile/amazon link below: https://smile.amazon.com/Benefiber-Prebiotic-Supplement-Digestive-Taste-Free/dp/B00CX3ASFE/ref=sr_1_7_s_it?s=hpc&ie=UTF8&qid=1528817439&sr=1-7&keywords=fiber+supplement&dpID=51elr0xqZ7L&preST=_SY300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch https://smile.amazon.com/Benefiber-Prebiotic-Supplement-Dige...
seandougall 8y ago
Re bread, this is one of many great reasons to make your own! It isn’t particularly hard — it takes time, but most of that time is just waiting. The sugar in bread is rarely there for flavor. It’s a way to cut corners by feeding the yeast and causing the dough to rise faster. Leave it out and you just have to wait a bit longer, but you get a better developed flavor as a result.
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
I didn’t cut out sugar completely, but choose as low sugar as possible. For example, most bagels contain around 6 grams of sugar at the supermarkets I go to, but one brand only has 3 grams. So I go with 3 grams, even if zero would be better. My daily sugar in take is still under 30g. Also, many sports nutrition bars will rely on sugar alcohol, which has its own problems but isn’t (probably) as bad as sugar.
jinfiesto 8y ago
I prepare close to 100% of my food from scratch, though not for health reasons, I just enjoy cooking. If you're cooking for taste, I find myself adding sugar/honey to compensate for produce not being up to snuff (hard with supermarket produce sometimes) with some frequency (maybe a couple times a week.) Most often I'm adding sugar to fix sauces made from fresh produce that turn out bitter or sour just because of the produce. I can't imagine most packaged food companies are using amazing produce. I would bet that most packaged meals would taste terrible without some added sugar.
Spoom 8y ago
The hardest part of Whole30[1] is avoiding food and drinks with added sugar or sweeteners, but I strongly suspect it's also the most effective part for a variety of health benefits, including losing weight. I found that after a month, though, the cravings essentially went away and it was easy to follow (more or less, I don't do it strictly nowadays). I've lost over 20% of my body weight since January. Drinks were maybe the most difficult for me; I drink coffee with Nutpods[2] and Coffee Booster[3], unsweetened tea, and water now. For snacking, I like salted cashews, although again, strict Whole30 doesn't really want you to snack. It does involve a lot of cooking, and (especially when you're following it strictly) makes restaurants difficult. But I think it's worthwhile. I could talk more about it if people wanted but I don't want to divert the conversation. 1. https://whole30.com/new/ https://whole30.com/new/ 2. https://www.nutpods.com/ https://www.nutpods.com/ 3. https://coffeebooster.net/ https://coffeebooster.net/
loco5niner 8y ago
Learn some knife skills! It's fun and easy. Make sure you have a sharp knife and practice safe cutting skills I love having random fruit and veggies in my kitchen and just being able to grab one and cut it up in 1 minute or so. Call me weird, but it's fun. sharp knives are safer than dull knives
rexgallorum2 8y ago
(Sorry for long quote, but this is good...) "The story begins in 1971. Richard Nixon was facing re-election. The Vietnam war was threatening his popularity at home, but just as big an issue with voters was the soaring cost of food. If Nixon was to survive, he needed food prices to go down, and that required getting a very powerful lobby on board – the farmers. Nixon appointed Earl Butz, an academic from the farming heartland of Indiana, to broker a compromise. Butz, an agriculture expert, had a radical plan that would transform the food we eat, and in doing so, the shape of the human race. Butz pushed farmers into a new, industrial scale of production, and into farming one crop in particular: corn. US cattle were fattened by the immense increases in corn production. Burgers became bigger. Fries, fried in corn oil, became fattier. Corn became the engine for the massive surge in the quantities of cheaper food being supplied to American supermarkets: everything from cereals, to biscuits and flour found new uses for corn. As a result of Butz's free-market reforms, American farmers, almost overnight, went from parochial small-holders to multimillionaire businessmen with a global market. One Indiana farmer believes that America could have won the cold war by simply starving the Russians of corn. But instead they chose to make money. By the mid-70s, there was a surplus of corn. Butz flew to Japan to look into a scientific innovation that would change everything: the mass development of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), or glucose-fructose syrup as it's often referred to in the UK, a highly sweet, gloppy syrup, produced from surplus corn, that was also incredibly cheap. HFCS had been discovered in the 50s, but it was only in the 70s that a process had been found to harness it for mass production. HFCS was soon pumped into every conceivable food: pizzas, coleslaw, meat. It provided that "just baked" sheen on bread and cakes, made everything sweeter, and extended shelf life from days to years. A silent revolution of the amount of sugar that was going into our bodies was taking place. In Britain, the food on our plates became pure science – each processed milligram tweaked and sweetened for maximum palatability. And the general public were clueless that these changes were taking place." https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/jun/11/why-our-food-is-making-us-fat https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/jun/11/why-our-foo...

maxerickson 8y ago

Funny that you split the hair on the caramel colouring in the fermented, distilled sugar.

opencl 8y ago
The fermenting process gets rid of almost all of the sugar.
- detaro 8y ago
  By turning it into alcohol, at only about 20 % loss of caloric content (if my math is correct).
- maxerickson 8y ago
  Yeah, I used the past tense up there. It also wouldn't be added sugar if it was there from the start, it would be remaining sugar. But ethanol probably isn't a whole lot better as excess calories than sugars are.

martinwww 8y ago

there's no reason to consume bottled mayonnaise at all. Don't be extremely strict, food with reasonable % of sugar will not harm you if you will be below daily limit with sugar...

toomanybeersies 8y ago
You're right on both counts. I don't really use mayo, I prefer vinaigrette dressings. I was just using mayo as an example though, if you make mayonnaise yourself, it's just oil, egg yolk, and vinegar. There shouldn't be sugar in mayo. On the second count, you're right that you don't need to be extremely strict. I went sugar-free for a month because I made a bet with a friend, rather than for any actual health reason. A small amount of sugar is fine for you. The problem is that practically every shelf stable packaged food contains added sugar. If you have a diet that consists of a lot of packaged food, the sugar starts to add up quickly, especially if you're in a habit of using ketchup, which is astoundingly high in sugar. Granola bars (and granola in general) are also a food that people seem to forget contain a boatload of sugar too.
- RobertRoberts 8y ago
  Consider replacing anything that has sugar in it, with an organic sugar alternative. Trader Joes, Whole Food, Costco, local organic store/coop have many alternatives, and many of them taste better than the popular brands.
  - mseebach 8y ago
    Organic sugar isn't a panacea, it's still almost completely sucrose and organic sucrose is absolutely chemically identical to non-organic. It often tastes way better, but it's a stretch to assign significant health benefits to it. By all means, steer clear of HFCS (operative word: fructose, not sucrose). It's probably less bad than it's reputation suggests, but its also probably worse than sucrose. More pertinently, it's indicative of cheap, low-quality food that has way too much sweetener because it otherwise has no flavour. But more on point for this thread: Don't replace a food that shouldn't have sugar in it at all (mayonnaise) with a variant that just has a different kind of sugar. Find a variant that is better quality and doesn't have sugar at all. Good mayonnaise requires really good eggs and those are expensive.

sundvor 8y ago

Nice effort! And I will use that as my reason for picking up my next bottle of Single Malt.

bfuller 8y ago
A good takeaway. I have similar priorities haha.

EZ-E 8y ago

I'm curious : did this diet changes made any significant difference on your wellbeing?

NL807 8y ago
Tried something similar. One thing I noticed is that i became more mentally focused not feel constantly hazy and low energy all the time. Eating lots of carbs and sugar is fucked and affects your mental ability.
toomanybeersies 8y ago
I was also exercising a lot more and drinking less, so I can't really say what in particular helped the most, but I felt a lot healthier and fitter in general. It also had a positive effect on my mental health, which was an unintended but nice side effect.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  > It also had a positive effect on my mental health, which was an unintended but nice side effect. Do you think this could be a result of improved sleep? It's one of the benefits I've heard reported by people following a similar diet.
  - toomanybeersies 8y ago
    I guess it could. I was definitely sleeping better as a result of one of the things I was doing, or all of the things.
SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
I know a few people who've done the "Whole 30" diet which includes cutting out added sugar, among many things (although some of which, like legumes, seem completely arbitrary). One friend's severe eczema completely cleared up, others pretty much universally reported sleeping better and feeling more alert. Some just lost a lot of weight (as was their intention, although as with most diets probably mainly retained water weight). We live in a rural area of the UK where farm shops are common so it's relatively easy around here, but I could see it being much more difficult for city dwellers. I personally wouldn't do it myself and am not a fan of short term "fad" diets but the results are hard to deny.

godzillabrennus 8y ago

I’ve done this myself. It’s amazing how much healthier I was after just 30 days.

peletiah 8y ago

> relegated to preparing all my food from scratch > find a snack incredibly difficult [..] I basically had to eat carrots and hummus You make it sound as if it was not normal to cook your own food from basic ingredients and not regularly eat processed snacks.

miranda_rights 8y ago
Keep in mind that there are different levels of 'from scratch.' Making your own sandwich is pretty normal. Making your own bread for your sandwich but with store-bought mayo is probably less common. Making your own bread and making your own mayo is probably even less common, and that was about the level of 'from scratch' that the other user is talking about.
- peletiah 8y ago
  Ok, I'm not talking about sandwiches or making your own bread, but "proper" meals, like aspargus-risotto, (store-bought-)pasta with homemade-sugo, cooked beef with homemade-gravy, vegetables and dumplings as a side, diverse soups made from fresh vegetables/beans/meat, vegetable casserole, mixed salad, grilled fish, curry with rice etc. (Just a selection of the stuff we had in the past days). Guess as a european I'm still naive about life in the USA :-)
  - wst_ 8y ago
    I think people are overestimating the quality of products they used to call "fresh." Do you know the source of all the products you use? Preparing your own meal doesn't change much, unless you really trust the source.
PeterisP 8y ago
If we define "normal" as whatever most people do, then yes, currently in USA it's not normal to cook all (or even most) of your food yourself from basic ingredients; most people do not do that anymore, when they cook themselves, a lot of ingredients are highly processed or pre-prepared.
8y ago

vfinn 8y ago

Can confirm. Giving up sugar has been one of the best decisions in my life. I did it gradually, but in the end I gave almost any added sugar whatsoever (no ketchup, no canned fish, no juices, no syrupy breads, etc.). Maybe it's not necessary to go that far, but I feel I don't need it nor crave it anymore. My depression has gone away, I've lost weight, and I don't have fogginess in my head anymore nor mood swings. It's an empty addiction, and my feeling is it's doing you very much harm! Let it go, folks.

stone-monkey 8y ago
>>no ketchup, no canned fish, no juices, no syrupy breads, etc One of these things don't seem to be like the others. Is there typically added sugar in canned fish? My go to is canned tuna, but the nutritional label checks out to me.
- vfinn 8y ago
  Yes, I was a bit unclear. In certain kinds of canned herrings there are over 15g/100g of sugar, could be in a form of tomato sauce for example.
- jacobush 8y ago
  Weird (to foreigners) swedish canned herring. Dozens of pickles, but one thing in common - sugar.

ricardobeat 8y ago

I assume you live in the US? The difference in what's on offer in supermarkets, restaurants or convenience stores, compared to northern Europe or even South America (halfway in between I'd say) is astounding.

mijamo 8y ago
Why pointing "Northern" Europe rather than Europe in general ? From my experience, I would say you find more and better vegetables in Southern Europe. And Eastern Europe is quite similar to Northern Europe in terms of accessibility and choice (probably still better in quality though). And South America in my opinion is rather poor in vegetables (but fantastic in fruits!). They can grow perfectly there but people just don't seem to eat them much, apart from a few specific ones. But they do cook at least. One final factor is also the price of restaurants. In South America and Asia many people just eat at restaurants/cafeteria/whatever local street food you find all the time because it is not expensive at all. And not super healthy. Doing that in Sweden or Norway would lead you to ruin very very fast (and also street food is obviously less popular when it's freezing outside so it doesn't help developing a street food culture).
- adwww 8y ago
  > Why pointing "Northern" Europe rather than Europe in general ? I assumed because it's suprising how much worse the American diet is, even compared to countries with similar Western diets, incomes and lifestyles (UK, IE, DE, NL etc).
  - beaconstudios 8y ago
    all of those countries are in Western Europe though. Northern Europe is primarily Scandinavia.
    - Symbiote 8y ago
      Britain and Ireland are Northern Europe by various definitions, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_geoscheme_for_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_geoscheme_for_E...

DanielBMarkham 8y ago

I've been doing keto for about six weeks and following along in the community. You are correct. It's amazing. Some folks view this as some kind of evil corporate overlord thing, but I think the answer is much closer to home: we like stuff with sugar in it. So other people are going to put sugar in stuff so that we'll like it more. Sadly it looks as simple as that. I had tried low-carb before and couldn't stay on it. What I didn't know back then was that you can fall off your low carb diet without even realizing it. There are so many items with hidden sugars that it's impossible not to -- unless, as you say, you prepare all of your stuff. (My strategy is to curate items that are safe.) Carbs past a certain point are addictive, although probably at the low end of the addiction scale. I believe this is because if you live in an environment where fruit only ripens one month a year, it's important to have a biological drive to fatten up on those easy sugars in preparation for the winter months. Of course we don't live in that environment any more. And you will lie to yourself, making it even worse. I imagine what happens to most folks is that they accidentally eat enough carbs to start triggering perverse insulin responses, then "decide" to go ahead and eat one or two things that they've always loved. After all, those one or two things by themselves are fine, right? And then we've flipped over the tipping point. I am amazed at the obesity crisis in the West, although it seems like a natural outcome to so many plentiful foods. The part that amazes me is how nutrition experts consistently blew it, over and over again recommending public health policies that only worsen the problem.

jerf 8y ago
"Some folks view this as some kind of evil corporate overlord thing, but I think the answer is much closer to home: we like stuff with sugar in it. So other people are going to put sugar in stuff so that we'll like it more. Sadly it looks as simple as that." I recommend the book "Good Calories, Bad Calories". It is widely thought by people who have only heard about the book third-hand (criticizing the people who wrote their second-hand assessments of it) that it's a diet book, but the bulk of it is actually a well-researched history book on how the modern conception of "correct diet" came about, you know, the bad one that we're still oh-so-slowly extricating ourselves from. Basically it answers the question "If the late 20th-century diet consensus was so bad, how did it become the consensus?" Since I read it, my assessment of the late 20th-century diet consensus has only gone down, and the history itself doesn't change, since, you know, "not changing" is pretty much what history does. You can blip over the bits where it does try to discuss the science of proper diet; even if you're interested in this branch of scientific thought, there's more up-to-date resources now. But the history is good.

skrebbel 8y ago

> It made trying to find a snack incredibly difficult, I basically had to eat carrots and hummus. And fruits, I hope? :-) Also, you mention carrots, but there's lots of other vegetables that taste nicely when eaten raw that require little to no preparation time. I recognize that this is not mainstream at all but lately I've begun eating all kinds of vegetables as a snack. Eg iceberg salad: if you take the outer 5 or so leaves off, then the rest has not usually been touched by pesticides, so you can just eat that without all the washing cutting prep etc. I've found that just putting an iceberg salad next to my keyboard works exactly the same as just putting a bag of crisps there: when i look up an hour later, it's all gone. Similar tricks: pointed red peppers only need washing, and then you can eat them as if they're a mars bar. The seeds are only at the very end. bags of pre-cut lettuce. Also, way too few people are aware that cauliflower tastes great raw. It's a bit of work to clean (but not too bad) but cauliflowers tend to be huge so you can cut one into pieces, put the pieces into four bags and bring a bag every next day or so. It also stays good super long. I also like cabbage (you can also remove the outer leaves and eat the rest without washing), but it has a pretty strong taste and I recognize that this might not be for everyone :-)

Filligree 8y ago
Fruits contain a lot of fruit sugar. If you're trying to avoid sugar entirely, they may not be the best choice.
- akerro 8y ago
  >Fruits contain a lot of fruit sugar Vegetable contain a lot of sugar too, like the mention he ate a lot of carrots, he ate a lot of sugar, but that's naturally occurring sugar human body can process well, unlike tablespoon of sugar in a sausage made of processed meat.
  - gameswithgo 8y ago
    the sugar is the same in any case, but fiber may reduce how harmful it is, or at least slow down how fast you shove it in your face.

jernfrost 8y ago

That is one of the reasons I decided to leave the US after I moved there. I found it WAY to hard to live healthy there. Sugar is added to so much stuff in America. Not only that but it is usually added in much larger quantities than I am used to at home. I also think there is too much exposure to sweet foods in the US. You are offered sweets things so often. It is just part of the culture it seems. It is 15 years now since I lived in the US and I steel struggle with a sugar addiction from just living one year in the US. I never had any particular desire to eat sweet things before I moved to the US.

com2kid 8y ago
> That is one of the reasons I decided to leave the US after I moved there. I found it WAY to hard to live healthy there. Sugar is added to so much stuff in America. Not only that but it is usually added in much larger quantities than I am used to at home. It is a lot better now. In just the last 2 years the low carb movement has really kicked off, it is super easy to get no sugar or low sugar options. Restaurants now swap out buns (which have added sugar in them of course) without question, no sugar BBQ sauce is finally a thing, no sugar ketchup is a thing now, and there are even a lot of sugar free snack food options. As someone who has been doing Keto for ~5 years, this last year has been the easiest yet.

Fnoord 8y ago

> I basically had to eat carrots Carrots are mostly carbs (sugar) [1]. The problem isn't sugar; its an abundance of calories in the form of sugar. [1] https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2383/2 https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetabl...

danlugo92 8y ago

>Even bottled mayonnaise contains sugar! As someone with sugar problems who loves mayo, I hate this.

loco5niner 8y ago
Mayo is easy to make at home using a stick blender and a jar: https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/10/two-minute-mayonnaise.html https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/10/two-minute-mayon...

JacobJans 8y ago

Nuts, cheese, boiled eggs, and fruit are all widely available, pre-made, snacks. It should be noted that The Longevity Diet, promoted by Valter Longo, recommends nuts as the "go-to" snack. Super easy, and healthy too.

jschwartzi 8y ago
Nuts are extremely calorie dense. A small handful of nuts is like 1/6 of my BMR.

cup-of-tea 8y ago

> I was basically relegated to preparing all my food from scratch. I don't see a problem with this. It's not hard and doesn't have to be too time consuming if you prepare things in bulk. You can listen to music or the radio while doing it. I find it quite relaxing. > It made trying to find a snack incredibly difficult Don't snack. That would solve so many problems that people have with diets. I eat two meals every day. Between meals I do not eat. By eating I mean opening my mouth and inserting things into it. I honestly think some people just don't realise how much they eat by snacking. I get hungry every day but that's fine. I look forward to my next meal. Don't snack when you're hungry. Just look foward to your next meal.

voxl 8y ago
>I don't see a problem with this. It's not hard ... What's not hard is being able to see a problem with preparing all your meals from scratch. I don't know a kinder way to say that you're just wrong.
mrlala 8y ago
>I don't see a problem with this. It's not hard and doesn't have to be too time consuming if you prepare things in bulk. You can listen to music or the radio while doing it. I find it quite relaxing. If you have young kids I highly doubt this would be your attitude.
neutronicus 8y ago
I'm the same as you (one or two meals a day) but I don't think we can generalize our experiences to a recommendation (especially across gender lines). My partner gets impossible really quickly if she doesn't eat about four times daily, and I've met enough hangry-type people to believe that some people really do have to snack. Although I guess I'd encourage everyone to try not-snacking given how much more convenient and healthy it is if your metabolism can manage it.
krageon 8y ago
No matter which way you cut it, making a proper meal from scratch will take you a while. Especially if you're not used to that kind of cooking, as the people you're speaking to no doubt are. All it takes is a little empathy to see that for some people, what you find easy is indeed hard.

jschwartzi 8y ago

Bread has sugar in it to feed the yeast. You should avoid HFCS in bread but as long as sugar isn't the first thing in the ingredients list it's probably just feeding the leavening.

bunderbunder 8y ago
Bread doesn't need added sugar to feed the yeast, though. There's plenty of food for the yeast in the flour itself. Bread may benefit from added sugar if your primary goal is trying to increase your yield from an industrial process. Sucrose is also really easily digestible for yeast, so I wouldn't be surprised if a dough with added sugar rises faster than a bread that's made with regular ingredients. I think that this sort of thing is part of the general problem with added sugar: There are all sorts of practical reasons why you might want to add a little bit of sugar to products. (As another example, a lot of commercial hummus contains it as a preservative.) But a bunch of individual products using a little bit of it for their own individual purposes adds up to a whole lot of excess sugar consumption for the people who are eating all that food.
- mrob 8y ago
  >a lot of commercial hummus contains it as a preservative How does this work? I thought sugar works as a preservative by reducing the water activity, and for it to be effective requires a high concentration (like jam or honey) that would be inappropriately sweet in hummus.
- eezurr 8y ago
  Saying bread doesn't need sugar is disingenuous. It depends on the type of bread you are baking. Sourdough doesn't need sugar because the fermentation process is what makes it a sourdough. Italian bread on the other hand, does need sugar due to its effects on the crumb/crust.
  - bunderbunder 8y ago
    Well, I said it doesn't need it to feed the yeast. I hope I wasn't implying any controversy over whether adding sugar to a product can alter its flavor or texture. But even if you include sugar-for-flavor on top of any practical uses, my point still stands: Spread across all the different kinds of foods you can get at the grocery store, a little sugar here and a little sugar there adds up to a whole lot of sugar overall. Maybe it's worth accepting a somewhat less carmelized crust on your paninis in the interest of having a healthier diet.

cimmanom 8y ago

I've done something similar lately (not eliminating sugar but setting a hard daily limit). Some tips, if you don't have a lot of time to prepare food from scratch: - if you need bread, there are some pitas that are low on sugar. You can also find tortillas with minimal sugar and make wraps instead of sandwiches. - if you need a prepared meal, some canned soups are very low on sugar. - a homemade salad dressing made of lemon juice, olive oil, and pressed garlic is delicious, and takes only as long to make as it does to press the garlic - a week's worth takes about 5 min - no-sugar-added peanut butter can be delicious, especially if it's made with salt, and is easy to find at the grocery store these days. It goes well with carrots, celery, pretty much everything - cheese generally does not contain sugar. Other dairy, such as milk and plain yogurt has sugar but its natural rather than added sugar. - eggs are great for quick prep, and you can scramble them up with vegetables and cheese in minutes. Or hard boil a week's worth at a time - nuts are spectacular for snacking

Taylor_OD 8y ago

My diet is mostly bananas, oranges, apples, almonds, cashews, carrots for snacks. Onion, mushrooms, garlic, spinach, with baked chicken or a steak for dinner. Protein shake with a banana and almond/coconut milk (with no sugar added) for breakfast. I don't think it's that hard to avoid added sugar you just have to keep things a little more basic.

jschwartzi 8y ago
I've found Muscle Milk to be great if I'm in a hurry. It's basically whey isolate, vegetable fiber and aspartame. The fiber and protein make it really filling. I wish I knew where they got their fiber because I want to add it to my own whey.
- Taylor_OD 8y ago
  I throw a soup spoon full of Benefiber in my shake every morning. It's been very helpful. Smile/amazon link below: https://smile.amazon.com/Benefiber-Prebiotic-Supplement-Digestive-Taste-Free/dp/B00CX3ASFE/ref=sr_1_7_s_it?s=hpc&ie=UTF8&qid=1528817439&sr=1-7&keywords=fiber+supplement&dpID=51elr0xqZ7L&preST=_SY300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch https://smile.amazon.com/Benefiber-Prebiotic-Supplement-Dige...

seandougall 8y ago

Re bread, this is one of many great reasons to make your own! It isn’t particularly hard — it takes time, but most of that time is just waiting. The sugar in bread is rarely there for flavor. It’s a way to cut corners by feeding the yeast and causing the dough to rise faster. Leave it out and you just have to wait a bit longer, but you get a better developed flavor as a result.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago

I didn’t cut out sugar completely, but choose as low sugar as possible. For example, most bagels contain around 6 grams of sugar at the supermarkets I go to, but one brand only has 3 grams. So I go with 3 grams, even if zero would be better. My daily sugar in take is still under 30g. Also, many sports nutrition bars will rely on sugar alcohol, which has its own problems but isn’t (probably) as bad as sugar.

jinfiesto 8y ago

I prepare close to 100% of my food from scratch, though not for health reasons, I just enjoy cooking. If you're cooking for taste, I find myself adding sugar/honey to compensate for produce not being up to snuff (hard with supermarket produce sometimes) with some frequency (maybe a couple times a week.) Most often I'm adding sugar to fix sauces made from fresh produce that turn out bitter or sour just because of the produce. I can't imagine most packaged food companies are using amazing produce. I would bet that most packaged meals would taste terrible without some added sugar.

Spoom 8y ago

The hardest part of Whole30[1] is avoiding food and drinks with added sugar or sweeteners, but I strongly suspect it's also the most effective part for a variety of health benefits, including losing weight. I found that after a month, though, the cravings essentially went away and it was easy to follow (more or less, I don't do it strictly nowadays). I've lost over 20% of my body weight since January. Drinks were maybe the most difficult for me; I drink coffee with Nutpods[2] and Coffee Booster[3], unsweetened tea, and water now. For snacking, I like salted cashews, although again, strict Whole30 doesn't really want you to snack. It does involve a lot of cooking, and (especially when you're following it strictly) makes restaurants difficult. But I think it's worthwhile. I could talk more about it if people wanted but I don't want to divert the conversation. 1. https://whole30.com/new/ https://whole30.com/new/ 2. https://www.nutpods.com/ https://www.nutpods.com/ 3. https://coffeebooster.net/ https://coffeebooster.net/

loco5niner 8y ago

Learn some knife skills! It's fun and easy. Make sure you have a sharp knife and practice safe cutting skills I love having random fruit and veggies in my kitchen and just being able to grab one and cut it up in 1 minute or so. Call me weird, but it's fun. sharp knives are safer than dull knives

rexgallorum2 8y ago

(Sorry for long quote, but this is good...) "The story begins in 1971. Richard Nixon was facing re-election. The Vietnam war was threatening his popularity at home, but just as big an issue with voters was the soaring cost of food. If Nixon was to survive, he needed food prices to go down, and that required getting a very powerful lobby on board – the farmers. Nixon appointed Earl Butz, an academic from the farming heartland of Indiana, to broker a compromise. Butz, an agriculture expert, had a radical plan that would transform the food we eat, and in doing so, the shape of the human race. Butz pushed farmers into a new, industrial scale of production, and into farming one crop in particular: corn. US cattle were fattened by the immense increases in corn production. Burgers became bigger. Fries, fried in corn oil, became fattier. Corn became the engine for the massive surge in the quantities of cheaper food being supplied to American supermarkets: everything from cereals, to biscuits and flour found new uses for corn. As a result of Butz's free-market reforms, American farmers, almost overnight, went from parochial small-holders to multimillionaire businessmen with a global market. One Indiana farmer believes that America could have won the cold war by simply starving the Russians of corn. But instead they chose to make money. By the mid-70s, there was a surplus of corn. Butz flew to Japan to look into a scientific innovation that would change everything: the mass development of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), or glucose-fructose syrup as it's often referred to in the UK, a highly sweet, gloppy syrup, produced from surplus corn, that was also incredibly cheap. HFCS had been discovered in the 50s, but it was only in the 70s that a process had been found to harness it for mass production. HFCS was soon pumped into every conceivable food: pizzas, coleslaw, meat. It provided that "just baked" sheen on bread and cakes, made everything sweeter, and extended shelf life from days to years. A silent revolution of the amount of sugar that was going into our bodies was taking place. In Britain, the food on our plates became pure science – each processed milligram tweaked and sweetened for maximum palatability. And the general public were clueless that these changes were taking place." https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/jun/11/why-our-food-is-making-us-fat https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/jun/11/why-our-foo...