Hello sugar free-ers! How is everyone feeling today?
It's day 3 today, and I figure there's one subject we really should mention this week: snacks.
You'll find all kinds of schools of thought on snacks. I swear I've seen them all, from "snacking was invented by the food companies" to "3 snacks a day boosts the metabolism". I'm not here to tell you who is right, however Fran mentioned an interesting word yesterday: "habit".
A lot of our sugar consumption can be a habit, from feeling like you must have popcorn at the cinema to feeling like you need a biscuit with your cup of tea. I'm curious whether people care making lateral swaps (e.g. to nuts) or if you're going cold turkey?
I'm also curious whether you've worked in snacks this week, and what you've opted for?
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Cooper27
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Hi Cooper27 foir sugar free snacks I either eat fresh or dried fruit. I love having g a bag of grapes for a car journey as they stop you feeling thirsty and are packed with nutrients.
I also like savoury snacks and want to make something cheesy during the challenge as cheese and pickles are a really nice snack.
I'll be interested to see what other choices others make as thats usually inspirational. 😊
I like dried fruits too. I snack on organic, partially rehydrated dates, figs and apricots. But on the back of the pack I see that the sugar content is between 12% and 17%. I also like carrot sticks to snack on. My weakness is digestive biscuits, although I do try to buy the ‘lighter’ ones they still contain 2.9g of sugar per biscuit. 🙂
Um, "light" digestive biscuits are lighter in fat, not sugar. Attached is the nutrition for McVitties, which boast the light version has 30% less fat. They don't mention it has 30% more sugar. And this to save a whopping 4 cal/biscuit.
Never eat anything labelled "light". It's almost certainly worse for you than the original.
Hey good point I just like dried sultanas and apricots sometimes. So we’ll forget them for the next 2 weeks. LOL I eat very little sugar and don’t have to think about GI index or my weight so see things differently. 👍
In terms of the sugar free challenge, I would tend to suggest limiting dried fruit - it can be quite sugar dense.
I do understand why it's useful for you as a coeliac long term though - we always have things like Nakd bars (date and nut bars) in the house, because they're non-perishable and very packable, in case we can't get food when we're out. Something like 14g of sugar per bar though 🤯
I used to keep nakd and trek bars for emergency snack use, but found them incredibly sweet and found I would have a headache after eating one. Then one day I compared a trek bar to a kind bar (nuts dark chocolate and sea salt) despite the Kind bar having “added”sugar and the Trek bar having no added sugar, there was more than twice the amount of sugar in the trek bar - purely from the dried fruit. The Kind bar is now my portable snack.
That's interesting. Are the kind bars gluten free, do you know? Our main reason for having them is because they're easy to pick up and meet our coeliac needs.
I'm not doing the challenge (cos I did it years ago) but for me going cold turkey worked astoundingly well.
At first I found black coffee with cream (instead of white coffee with three sugars in it) unbearably bitter, so I used artificial sweeteners. Funnily enough, though, I was able to cut those down so quickly that I ended up throwing most of them away. I was down to zero sugar (and zero sweeteners) in about two weeks.
However, when I say, "cold turkey", that included all carbs. I've noticed from previous "challenges" that people who attempt to remove only sugar, without addressing the carb content of their meals, often find it very difficult. Their bodies are too dependent on carbs for fuel and reducing sugar intake just causes cravings.
It can be helpful, but at the same time, I'm not wanting this process to be so intense that it puts people off altogether. Like you and your sweetened coffee, it's about taking the first step, and people can aim for perfection later if they feel comfortable with it.
Just pointing out that (counterintuitively) cutting down can be more brutal than going cold turkey. Just my observation from previous threads on the subject.
If people find it hard one way, they can try t'other.
Many carbohydrates are a little more 'complex'than refined sugar which was aptly described by John Yudkin in his book as 'Pure , White and Deadly. Many carbohydrates are starches which take longer to break down into glucose than sucrose (the common sugar we are talking about reducing this week) Sucrose breaks down within seconds of digestion, entering the blood stream as glucose, which spikes insulin and fructose, which can block leptin receptors in the brain and is transported to the liver, where it follows a similar metabolic pathway to alcohol and is converted into fat. This does not compare in the same way as eating a slice of sugar free wholemeal bread, which contains no fructose. I think this idea of sugar ' reduction' week is inspirational and is definitely the way forward. Just as all calories are not equal all carbs are not equal. Sugar 'sucrose 'is a processed chemical and hasn't any nutritional benefits. This is most definitely not true for all carbohydrates. Sugar freeis the way to go !
As with most things, it's a bit more complicated than that. And I think your biochemistry is slightly off
Carbs are hydrolysed in a multi-step process, starting in your mouth - that is, amylase-catalyzed hydrolysis to polysaccharides and ultimately to maltose. Maltose is glucose+glucose, and sucrose is glucose+fructose. In fact this is reason starchy food is highly palatable; it becomes slightly sweet as you chew it.
Salivary amylase activity will halt when the food hits your stomach (acid hydrolysis doesn't contribute anything useful) but then resumes in the duodenum. So by the time your food has made some modest headway into your small intestine, carbs and 'free sugars' are essentially indistinguishable. It's true that transit time will be different for different kinds of meal, but it's not related to the "complexity" of the carbs as such. It's more to do with the food that accompanies them (fat, protein and fibre will all increase transit time). Sweet snacks are harmful because they are snacks - a biscuit is an isolated sugar hit, without anything to slow it down. A slice of wholemeal bread with butter and a fried egg is a completely different proposition.
The bottom line is that people who are heading for prediabetes - that is, people whose taste for sugar and carbs is all messed up - generally find it difficult to give up sugar because their bodies are tuned to heavy dependence on glucose as a fuel source. Making a concerted effort to recalibrate that problem makes life a whole lot easier.
I agree with you that, in terms of health outcomes, there's nothing wrong with a slice of proper wholemeal bread. But in the context of metabolic dysfunction it's going to make life more difficult than it needs to be. I'm following this thread with interest to see what path people take and how successful they are.
And there’s going to be individual differences on what’s difficult or not. When I got my prediabetic diagnosis I checked my blood sugars after eating the main starches (didn’t bother testing pasta as I don’t like it) rice sent it high, so did mashed potatoes, white bread, bananas. A small portion of new potatoes raised it less. My homemade Wholemeal soda bread and a packaged bread made by Vogels (Wholemeal seeded) didn’t raise it much more than a low starch meal. Maybe because I have lower saliva production and don’t like the sprays, so my bread is always accompanied by substantial buttering !
Hi everyone,I would like to try going sugar free which I think I am mostly as I make all meals from scratch etc but of course sugar is hidden everywhere so what is a sugar free diet🤷♀️
Can anyone recommend a good book or site that explains it in simple terms and gives good meal examples including snacks please 😁
I was given Sarah Wilson's book "I quit sugar", which is quite good. Her website used to have a lot of good info, but it's all disappeared behind a pay wall now, but you might get her book for a reasonable second hand price. It has lots of recipes, but some use date syrup.
I've also been recommended Diane Sanfilippo's 21 day sugar fix, but I haven't tried that one personally. It's much more of a paleo fix, from my understanding of it, if you wanted to go down the path of removing refined carbs as well.
I've been cautioned against Davina McCall's book, because it has a lot of cake recipes that straight up use maple syrup as a direct replacement for sugar.
Thank you this is really helpful! I will look up the books you suggest and yes will be stearing clear of any that are just replace sugar with something else 🙄 I just want to cut down 😉
When I’m eating “properly “ a snack isn’t something I plan to eat. It’s something I have as a back up plan in case a meal gets badly delayed by work or something else - so I don’t start feeling light headed and distracted by gnawing stomach.
This last year I have fallen into bad habits especially in the evenings of grazing instead of proper meals, I know this is really bad for me, but it’s the pattern of stress/anxiety behaviour that I fall into when I lose the mental energy to plan and prepare healthier meals.
I’ve been trying to get back into healthier patterns, and this week with the sugar free challenge is feeling very positive.
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