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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

to think it's not possible to give up sugar

203 replies

enifing · 10/07/2015 20:36

I have heard people suggest this from time to time. It's not possible with DCs, is it?

We've given up most cereal, but porridge has to have sugar or some sugar substitute.

Stewed fruit can't be fine without sugar.

Home baking, absolute no-no.

How dull would life be? I would probably overdose on salt instead...

OP posts:
Kundry · 11/07/2015 18:12

I've gone low sugar, also after reading the Robert Lustig information on the dangers of sugar. As several people have pointed out, the calories in sugar are more dangerous for your body than other calories.

Sugar - any sugar, processed or in fruit, is made of sucrose. This is 2 molecules, glucose and fructose. Your body can handle pretty much unlimited quantities of glucose but the amount of fructose we eat has risen astronomically and our bodies can't handle it - they turn it to fat and develop diseases like diabetes and fatty liver.

Robert Lustig says it's OK to have sugar as long as you have fibre with it - so fruit OK, fruit juice not, cake definitely not. Only fruit he hates are grapes as too much sugar, not enough fibre.

Can you go sugar free with kids - probably not but you can go low sugar.

No fruit juice, no fizzy pop, porridge plain or with fresh fruit, fresh fruit as snacks not chocolate or sweets, non food rewards and treats, cook from scrath not processed foods, no routine puddings - when you do have puddings like crumble add sugar to taste rather than as per the recipe and you will prob find you can cut down the sugar by at least a third and it will still taste fine.

I've lost a stone in a month doing this and DH is still perfectly happy with the food served, and we still have pudding on Sundays but much smaller portions and less sugar added.

NoStannisNo · 11/07/2015 18:13

Jesus, I couldn't think of anything more dull and unsustainable (on more than one level) than a 'zero carb diet'.

DisappointedOne · 11/07/2015 18:16

Zero carb is near impossible. As I say, it was only early pregnancy nausea that knocked me off it.

NoStannisNo · 11/07/2015 18:16

Disappointed that list sounds so bloody delicious that I have just saved it on my phone for ideas!

bikeandrun · 11/07/2015 18:29

There are very few "bad" foods eggs are good, oats are good, fruit in moderation good. Relax enjoy a balanced diet, the Mediterranean diet seems a good example of this- fish, meat, veg, olive oil and some carbs.

JobblyWelly · 11/07/2015 18:33

Oh well, I find it neither dull nor unsustainable- very easy, in fact. Liberating.

florascotia · 11/07/2015 18:33

Jobbly, I really, really don't want to seem argumentative. I suspect we are on the same side, to a fair degree. It's 100% your choice to decide what you eat, and I totally agree with you that many (most?) modern foods and ways of eating are extremely unhealthy. However, I would just like to make a couple of replies:

Unfortunately, only a few studies examined the independent effect of meat consumption on the risk of colorectal cancer so the associations found here could be confounded by other dietary, lifestyle or genetic factors."

The answer to that is surely not to ignore or dismiss the meta-survey, which did strongly suggest a possible link, but to call for more research to prove or disprove the possibility it revealed - and perhaps to exercise the precautionary principle in the mean time.

Re nutritional research having come a long way since the 50s - it's more like we swerved into a separate set of fundamental assumptions based on the Ancel Keys theory of saturated fat causing heart disease.

The fact that several 20th cent ideas about fat consumption may be wrong does not alter the fact that our scientific understanding of (a) nutrition and (b) various features of the Inuit/other hunter/pre-industrial lifestyles has improved since the 1950s. Nor does it alter the fact that many pre-industrial peoples did not live to the age at which cancer and heart disease most often develop in modern western populations. So we don't know whether or not they might have developed them.

If you have time, you might like to have a look at this article:discovermagazine.com/2004/oct/inuit-paradox. It's really sympathetic to the idea that the modern diet is very unhealthy. It appreciates that, in different places over the centuries, dramatically different ways of eating have evolved to obtain nutrients from all kinds of foods - whatever was available. BUT it also points out that it's almost impossible nowadays to eat a genuine Inuit diet - which involves much more than simple meat and fish. To get all the micronutrients traditionally consumed by the Inuit from fat/meat/fish alone, we'd have to eat things like raw brains, raw whale skins and blubber, fresh blood and the fresh contents of caribou stomachs (= part-digested plants) etc etc. The Inuit also ate berries, roots, shoots and seaweeds and fermented foods. Perhaps most important of all, the Inuit diet was protein-limited and based around fats and oils from wild marine creatures; these are not readily available to most people.

It does however say that eating wild foods - especially oily marine foods - is a good thing to do today.

Steffanson was not a doctor or a biological scientist. He was an explorer and ethnographer working almost 100 years ago. I wouldn't trust my health to him.

DisappointedOne · 11/07/2015 18:35

NoStannisNo let me know if you want any recipes and I'll pm you some.

JobblyWelly · 11/07/2015 18:51

No probs at all, Flora- I'll definitely check out those links, thank you. This is definitely an N=1 personal experiment, where I'll do six months and assess based on my experience and some blood work. Going on my family's experience, I struggle with the concept of the precautionary principle regarding diet. We've been fed such shit.

enifing · 11/07/2015 19:25

Lustig doesn't like grapes?! Oh crap, I've been buying them every week.

Just as well it's summer berries time, so I can wean them off the sugary fruit.

This is all very interesting and beginning to seem more doable. The DCs do like eggs in the morning, just not every morning. They also looove bagels with cream cheese and smoked salmon, and cinnamon and raisin bagels. Do you think those are ok once or twice a week?

OP posts:
enifing · 11/07/2015 19:28

Thanks for the link to the explanation of the difference between refined and unrefined sugar. Helpfully it says that the stuff you can get in the "grocery store" is the refined stuff. Would that be true here, too, or is that a US thing?

OP posts:
DisappointedOne · 11/07/2015 19:40

80% of the sugar on sale here will be refined.

DisappointedOne · 11/07/2015 19:40

Grapes are the highest sugar fruit. Confused

DisappointedOne · 11/07/2015 19:41

Bagels are pretty much just cake.

msrisotto · 11/07/2015 19:49

How are bagels different to bread? Why are they more like cake?

DisappointedOne · 11/07/2015 19:54

Higher sugar content and raisin ones have even more (thanks to the raisins).

Romeyroo · 11/07/2015 19:58

I went no sugar (no refined or added sugar, no fruit etc, low carb) last October and put DS on a low GI diet, which is not exactly the same as no sugar, because it pays attention how quickly different food turns to blood sugar (non-scientific explanation). I feel much better, have lost three stone, and DS is so much more settled. Things like apples, white rice and bagels would send him hyper, never mind actual sweets.

Fortunately, he is the kind of child who will happily eat cucumber, broccoli and such like. He still has wholemeal bread and pasta - I am working on cutting that down though. DD is more difficult; getting her away from sweets and chocolate is more difficult. But she at least snacks on oatcakes these days.

FarFromAnyRoad · 11/07/2015 20:05

Disappointed - your food list has given me some cracking ideas - thanks for that. The cabbage carbonara sounds to die for - that's for dinner Monday and I know we're going to love it!

SmillasSenseOfSnow · 11/07/2015 20:08

Warburtons half-and-half bread 2.4g sugar per 100g

New York Bakery Co. Plain bagels 4.9g sugar per 100g

Madeira cake (plainest thing I could think of) 30.8g sugar per 100g

But yes, bagels are 'pretty much just cake'. Hmm

DisappointedOne · 11/07/2015 20:16

8.4g in raisin bagels. And plenty of white flour. Not exactly a health food (pretty much like cake then...... Hmm)

SmillasSenseOfSnow · 11/07/2015 20:23

Shall I look up a cake with fruit in it instead then so it's a fair comparison? Hmm

enifing · 11/07/2015 20:24

Bugger, really?

If I smother them in lots of butter, can I up their fat to sugar ratio so that they're nearly low-carb?

OP posts:
SmillasSenseOfSnow · 11/07/2015 20:26

On second thought I'll take 50% of the snark back from my last post. I do now understand that you mean 'like cake' in the sense of empty of any real nutrition. But only in the same way as bread would be, so not really sure why you're calling bagels cake and not clarifying that bread is also 'cake'... and that therefore nothing is 'bread' anymore. Confused

BathshebaDarkstone · 11/07/2015 20:29

My ex-stepmum used to make cakes with wholemeal flour and no sugar. Bleurgh! Sad

tobysmum77 · 11/07/2015 20:38

porridge is really nice with cinnamon Smile