Eating smarter will help you hit your health and fitness goals faster – but which diet is the ideal one for you? Coach’s sister title Men’s Fitness assesses the evidence and asks the experts so you can make the right nutritional decisions
The Theory
For most people, “sugar-free” means the refined kind – found in bread, pasta and cereal, as well as little paper packets in Costa. True devotees try to ditch even fructose – the sugar found in fruit – but we’re not considering that right now. With the WHO and NHS slashing recommendations every couple of years, the white stuff’s never been more demonised, and for (reasonably) good reasons: the dopamine rush when you eat it makes it addictive, and insulin spikes mean it encourages your body to store calories as fat.
The Evidence
There’s a sugar mountain of evidence that too much is bad. Most recently, a rat study published in Frontiers In Molecular Neuroscience suggests that it could be “as damaging to the brain as extreme stress or abuse”. Another 2015 study (this one on mice) links combined sugar-and-fat intake to cognitive decline, suggesting that it might affect the body’s production of serotonin, a so-called “happy hormone”. There’s hardly been a worse time to be a sugar magnate.
The Good
Cutting back on sugar’s likely to have very positive effects for most people. It’s nutritionally empty, so by replacing it in your diet with more nutrient-dense foods, you’re almost certain to see a favourable impact on health. Get past the early cravings and you’ll probably notice better appetite management. Beware of sweeteners, though: there’s some evidence that they can spike insulin and mess with your body’s fullness sensors.
The Bad
Ditching it entirely could have unforeseen side effects. A 2015 study from Georgia State University, for instance, found links between eating sweet foods and episodic memory-formation, suggesting that it could help you control your eating behaviour.
Eat More Of These
You can cut some sugar out of your diet by replacing it with artificial sweeteners, although the smarter bet is simply to steer clear from as much added sugar as possible and satisfy your cravings with naturally sweet foods like fruit.
Avoid These
Cutting down on sugary treats and fizzy drinks is the first step. Then you need to look out for foods that sneak high amounts of sugar in, like ready-made sauces and condiments. It’s also important to note that you can’t just opt for honey or maple syrup instead of sugar to be healthy. Sugar by any other name is just as sweet… and unhealthy.
The Expert Verdict
No-one is going to argue with the idea that a eating a little less sugar is a good thing, but dietitian Chloe Miles of the British Dietetic Association has some reservations about signing up for a sugar-free diet.
“Sugar is present in many different forms in a wide variety of foods so it is almost impossible to be completely sugar-free, and foods such as fruit that contain sugar are very good for us. Also, a lot of the so-called sugar-free diets include agave, maple syrup or other forms or sugar which are no better for us than standard granulated sugar. It is, however, advisable to reduce the amount of added or ‘free’ sugars in your diet.”
By Joel Snape, additional reporting by Nick Harris-Fry
Sugar Free Diet Plan Put to the Test
This following was first published 30th May 2014
Day 14, 5.45pm. The defining moment of my month without sugar. One of my colleagues leaves a packet of biscuits on his desk. When you give up sugar, as it turns out, afternoons are the hardest part. You’re tired and stressed and you long for a mid-afternoon pick-me-up.
I had decided to give the white stuff up for two reasons: first, a nutritional rap sheet that starts with empty calories and, evidence suggests, proceeds to addictiveness and the promotion of obesity. Second, there’s no such thing as cutting down on sugar as you might cut down on booze or impure thoughts. Sugar is packaged and processed with so many products, many of which give the impression of being healthy, that it’s full-time vigilance or nothing.
So it’s bad for you. Some experts would go so far as to call it a poison. And it has invaded apparently unrelated foods to such an extent that it’s difficult to avoid. I know all this, and I still want a biscuit. So what do I do? We’ll come to that. But first, the science.
I start my experiment by asking, “What’s so bad about sugar?” But the real question is, “What’s so bad about sugars?” The plural is important, because when you start digging it’s clear that the flower-pattern bowl is the least of your worries. “Sugars, plural, include table sugar (sucrose) and its constituent sugars glucose and fructose, as well as high-fructose corn syrup (glucose plus fructose), honey (also glucose plus fructose), and the synonyms for all of these: cane sugar, grape sugar, juice concentrate and so on,” says Marion Nestle, a doctor of molecular biology who writes extensively on nutrition and for foodpolitics.com. “All of them are sugars, plural. All provide four calories per gram.”
Caning it
We’re used to hearing that these four calories are empty – energy poured into the body with no additional nutritional value. But this message has been drowned out by government warnings about fat. We’ve been told for 30 years that fat is what makes us obese and gives us heart disease. “In 1982 the US Department of Agriculture, the American Heart Association and the American Medical Association all told us we had to reduce our consumption of fat,” says Dr Robert Lustig, a specialist in child obesity. So we succeeded in reducing our fat intake, from 40% to 30% of our overall diet. Obesity more than doubled. “It ain’t the fat, people,” says Lustig. “It’s the carbohydrates.” One carbohydrate in particular.
Sugar consumption is at an all-time high. In fact, while everyone was busy demonising fat, carbs – including sugar – took its place in many foods advertised as healthy low-fat options. Steps taken to defeat obesity drove millions of us to increase our sugar intake, which in the Western world has tripled in the last 50 years. In the UK our consumption is around 567g per person per week, an increase of 30% in 30 years. Meanwhile, according to NHS statistics, the prevalence of obesity in the UK rose from around 6% in 1978 to 26% in 2010.
Grain of truth
I start planning my escape from sugar by degrees. The first things to go, in week one, are the hits that make up my most obvious sugar consumption – the sprinkle over my cereal, the two I take in tea, the afternoon flapjack, the occasional chocolate bar.
I soon discover that I find tea without sugar disgusting. Luckily I also find that I like black coffee, which is important because I get energy slumps. I’m fine in the morning, because I’m replacing sugar with dried fruit or a sliced banana. But without the sugar bump at around four o’clock, I get irritable. Still, I last the week, and add up all the grams of sugar I’m no longer consuming, arriving at a figure of 304g. Which is a start, but barely half of that 567g that we’re all eating on average. So where’s the rest of it?
The childish but true answer is that it’s hiding, according to Aubrey Sheiham, professor of dental public health at University College London. “The proportions of what we call visible sugar to invisible sugar have changed dramatically,” he says, explaining that while sales of bags of sugar have fallen since 1975, consumption has increased as people eat more processed foods. “They have no idea how much sugar they are consuming in canned drinks and pizzas.”
Week two is a week of discovery – specifically, discovering how much sugar is in things I like to eat and banning them. Cereal is first to go – without exception, every box I look at contains added sugars, even ‘healthy’ options such as bran flakes and muesli. Fruit juice is next: while fruit is high in fibre and healthy, juice is refined. Flavoured yoghurt is the same, especially low-fat variants which – like so many snacks boasting of lower fat levels – add sugars to improve the taste.
It’s within this fraught context that my biscuit battle occurs, at the end of week two when I’m feeling confused and hopeless. This becomes a pivotal moment because I eat the damned thing and don’t feel bad about it. (On the contrary, it’s very tasty.) It doesn’t lead to a relapse. I don’t end up on the sofa at midnight, trousers open, surrounded by chocolate wrappers. It tastes good, but I don’t get the moreishness that normally comes with junk food. I start to believe that giving up sugar isn’t impossible.
Cookie monster
While we’d all agree it takes a mental effort to resist sweet foods, research suggests there’s a physical basis to our sugar urges too. The National Institute for Physiological Sciences in Japan ran a study with mice, which showed that when they expected to eat something sweet their bodies released orexin, a chemical which encourages the muscles to take up sugar from the bloodstream. If the food arrives as expected, this keeps the level of sugar in the blood steady. But if the food doesn’t arrive, the mice are left with an urge to eat and less energy with which to resist.
Following BiscuitGate, with nothing to tempt me cravings disappear. My energy levels are less prone to spikes and dips. For the first time in my life it feels like I’ve reduced the sugary noise in my diet to the point where I can feel the effect of certain things, such as the increased alertness caffeine brings, or the extra energy a carb-heavy pasta lunch gives me before evening football.
After this my experiment becomes easier. I don’t lust after sugary foods at all – in fact, I become unbearably pious, exclaiming airily how easy it’s been. This is desperately annoying for those around me – but it’s also true. Looking at cakes, fizzy drinks and chocolate doesn’t trigger any kind of response at all. In fact the way I view food as a whole changes. Stomping up and down supermarket aisles inspecting labels for sugar has led me to the realisation that, as our food has become more processed, refined, stripped of fat and fibre and built for a long shelf life, sugar has seeped into just about everything as the easy way to keep the stuff palatable.
What I get particularly cross about is that it can be difficult to spot, thanks to inconsistent labelling. The UK has no single, mandatory system. There’s the government-backed traffic light system, which colour codes key nutritional values (fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt) for an at-a-glance guide; and, sitting somewhat awkwardly alongside, the What’s Inside Guide alternative, which lists selected guideline daily amounts (GDA) as percentages.
“We were all jealous of the traffic light labelling system over here,” says Michele Simon, an American public health lawyer and author of the book Appetite For Profit: How The Food Industry Undermines Our Health And How To Fight Back. “Of course industry hates it, because they don’t want anything to indicate why you shouldn’t buy a product.”
On message
The response of the food industry, Simon explains, is to argue aggressively for self-regulation. That’s how the What's Inside Guide was created. It is organised by a group called the Food and Drink Federation, whose members include Coca-Cola, Mars, Nestlé and Tate & Lyle. “The industry isn’t going to tell the whole truth about what's in their products,” Simon says. “They only want to give positive information. So the labels might have calories and vitamins, but they don’t want to tell you about anything you should avoid.”
More worryingly, the food industry is also involved in government-sanctioned nutrition studies and in the bodies which decide the daily guidelines themselves. In Britain, these guidelines were first drawn up in 1979 by a committee chaired by Professor Philip James of the Medical Research Council’s clinical nutrition department. They recommended reductions in our intake of fat, salt and sugar. But the British Nutrition Foundation, which accepts financial donations from the food industry (including Tate & Lyle and British Sugar plc) and was involved in the committee, objected. “The sugar industry has learned the tricks of tobacco,” says James. “Confuse the public, produce experts who disagree, try to dilute the message.”
The link to tobacco might seem extreme. Tobacco is addiction-forming and has widely documented harmful effects. Surely calling sugar a poison is a little far-fetched? Not according to Lustig. This is exactly how he describes sugar: “I said it – poison.”
RECOMMENDED: Is Sugar Really so Bad for My Health?
It’s the fructose that’s the problem. Glucose is the fuel of life, the energy supply that our body’s cells use, while fructose is the evil twin, which is metabolised primarily in the liver. Thanks to complex chemical effects, fructose can suppress the body’s natural hunger feedback loop, says Lustig. “It’s not about the calories,” he says. “Fructose is a poison itself.”
Sugar-free future
This forces me to think carefully about what I’m consuming. The “Is it sugar?” that pops up every time I go to snack makes me conscious of just how much I snack. As soon as I realise nearly everything has added sugar, I resent it and want something naturally good and enjoyable. “It’s not about fat or sugar or salt,” Simons tells me. “It's about eating real food. If we were to design a food system from scratch that was to be health-promoting, it wouldn’t look anything like the one we have now.
“What the food industry does is take the natural ingredients of food and grind them up and strip them of their nutrients, and add a lot of artificial flavours and colours, and call it food. But it's really not.”
When my month without sugar ends, not only do I not go back to cereals and flapjacks, I’m not tempted to. My energy levels are more consistent, I’ve lost weight easily (5kg in under two months, while exercising less than normal) and, most importantly, I’m looking carefully and critically at the food I eat. That probably deserves a biscuit.
RECOMMENDED: Sugar Addiction and How to Stop Eating Sugar
Reduce your sugar intake with these simple swaps
Fruit juice: A typical glass can deliver a sugar load of around 25g – Coke has 35g. Try fruit instead, the fructose hit comes with a hefty dose of fibre.
Sauces: Some stir-in varieties contain 25g, while ketchup and salad dressing can deliver 5g even in tiny doses. Make it at home instead – tinned tomatoes, onion, and a bit of basil. Easy.
Granola bars: Often advertised as healthy snacks, but an average bar contains around 14g of sugar. Try jerky instead, it’s a similarly ready-to-go snack, with no sugar and a solid hit of protein.
RECOMMENDED: Low-Calorie Snacks
Cereals: Even healthy alternatives like bran flakes or muesli can come in at 25% sugar. Try porridge instead, it’s low in sugar, but high in vitamins B and E, and iron.
RECOMMENDED: Healthy Breakfasts Worth Getting Up For
Yoghurt: Not as healthy as you'd think – the flavoured and low-fat varieties typically contain around 20g of sugar. Try Greek yoghurt instead, it’s 30% protein, and will fill you up effectively to reduce snacking urges.
RECOMMENDED: High-Protein Foods
Bread: White is worst, but even a slice of wholemeal typically contains around 1.6g of sugar. Try sourdough instead, it has minimal sugar and still excellent toasted with a poached egg.
By Nathan Ditum
