7
SEE YA, SWEETENERS AND ADDED SUGAR
Aristotle said, “Change in all things is sweet.” He was a pretty bright guy. Just wait ’til you see how sweet this change is about to be for you! Ditching the high-Sugar Impact (SI) sweeteners can feel like the final frontier in kicking your sugar cravings to the curb. They’ve got their hooks in you deep because they’re actually causing you to crave more and more sweet, while your brain has you convinced that they’re the perfect, no- or low-calorie antidote to the evils of bright, white sugar.
If you can’t let go of the sweeteners that are fueling your sugar addiction and you’re feeling defeated, hardly able to recognize yourself with those extra pounds and flagging energy, do not give up! You’ve found support. This fight isn’t over, and you’re about to be the comeback kid!
Let’s start with a point of weakness: cravings. It’s possible you’re looking at them all wrong. Cravings are just information. They’re your body’s way of telling you that something may be off, that you’re not reacting to something well or that you’re out of balance. The next time you get cravings, rather than rush to self-soothe, try a few Sugar-Attack Survival Strategies in Chapter 8 (see here). They’re designed to come to the rescue at just those moments.
Getting your cravings under control is a key piece of the puzzle in regaining control of your appetite and finding a new you in the mirror. When you slide down the ladder of high-to medium-to low-SI sweeteners (and sweet treats with added sugar), you’ll make huge strides in breaking free of your sugar cravings because sweeteners have just been stoking the fire of your sugar addiction all along.
This new way forward, free of cravings for sweet, will be cleared for you when you reclaim your sugar sensitivity and reset your taste buds to appreciate the natural sweetness of things like vanilla and cinnamon. Believe it or not, you’ll notice that some things are actually too sweet (yes, it’s possible!).
Even if you’re not a sugar adder, it will help you familiarize yourself with natural and artificial sugars, to learn which are safe, and to know how they’re identified on a label. But if you have a genetic sweet tooth, you need to work with it, not against it. That’s what this chapter is designed to help you do. As always, this transition involves swaps to hold your hand along the way. You’re going to be trading natural and artificial sweeteners for sweet herbs and sugar alcohols. Agave and Splenda are out; stevia and erythritol are in. And you’re going to love them.
This is a lifestyle change for life, and it will give back in spades. Weight will go. Energy and focus will come. Stick with me—you’ll see.
ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS: THE WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING
Research has shown that the artificial sweetener acesulfame potassium (very common in many “diet” foods and drinks) can trigger an insulin release much like sugar can, leading to cravings and stalling fat loss. In fact, your insulin shoots up as soon as you taste the artificial sweetener saccharin… it thinks food is coming.
In another study, 100 women ate a diet heavy in sugar, dairy products, and artificial sweeteners. From urine samples, researchers determined that eating those foods elevated their glucose, arabinose, and ribose—all of which feed Candida Albicans. When the women eliminated sugar, dairy, and artificial sweeteners, they reduced the frequency and severity of their Candida. Surprising, right?
Artificial sweeteners also cause glycation, just as sugar does. The process is like the browning that happens in high-heat cooking—only it goes on inside you. During glycation, sugar binds to proteins, like those in your skin and arteries, making them stiffer. They also spew free-radical inducing advanced glycation end products, or AGEs, into your system. Yep, that sure will AGE you!
Now, you might be thinking, well, even though they do all the things sugar does, at least I get the no calories win. Not so much—they might actually be worse than real sugar in that regard. Even though they don’t have calories, they generate responses in your body that set up the expectation of calories, so they can trigger cravings and make you eat more (and not more wild fish and asparagus, either!). This phenomenon is called calorie dysregulation; your body loses its ability to calibrate the degree of sweetness in food with the amount of calories you’re consuming, which sets you up to overeat. And, as you’re well aware, when you eat sweet you want more sweet.
Studies also show that eating sweet substances without calories sets you up to fail, because your body misses all the cues it’s looking for to stop eating. When that relationship between taste and calories falls apart, it may contribute to overeating and weight gain. So artificial sweeteners are far from a free ride—they can seriously stall fast fat loss, the very reason you were eating them in the first place.
And study after study shows that diet sodas increase diabetes risk. In one study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, women who drank just one diet soda a day had a 33% increased risk of type 2 diabetes. The diet soda drinkers also consumed twice as much soda as the sugar-soda drinkers.
Here’s something else, and it’s more than a little scary: did you know that artificial sweeteners might be neurotoxic? If you didn’t, I hope you’ll never forget it now. Aspartame gets called out of class for the most recognition on this one. Even though most of the evidence is anecdotal (though more studies are validating it), aspartame is also reported to create a laundry list of symptoms, including headaches, dizziness, poor balance, vomiting or nausea, change in vision, memory loss, fatigue, and other neurological issues like brain fog or lack of concentration. Aspartame is considered an excitotoxin, which means what it says: it’s an FDA-approved way to excite your brain to toxic levels. It causes your brain cells to become overstimulated and fire uncontrollably, which leads to cell death.
I think it’s fair to summarize it this way: artificial sweeteners can make you fat, put you at risk for metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, and some may kill your brain cells in the process. Plus, they’re so much sweeter than regular sugar, the more you eat them, the sweeter tastes you crave. Not much more to discuss, is there? Just give them up, okay?
NATURAL SWEETENERS
If you’ve been convinced the world will stop spinning without sweets, you may hold the view that natural sugar is the best way to go. The trend to move away from artificial sweeteners is certainly a step in the right direction. But as for feeling so much better about yourself for emptying that little brown packet of “natural” sugar into your coffee, or using molasses in your cookies, well, nice try.
I get more questions about sugar and sweeteners than anything else. Everyone is desperate to know how they can lose weight fast, get their energy back, and look great—and still hang onto a little sugar (just a little!). Is honey okay? Fruit juice concentrate? Can I have agave—it’s natural, right?
So here’s the headline—sugar is sugar. It doesn’t matter if it comes from bees or sugarcane—it still breaks down in your body as sugar. Sweeteners, natural or not, are processed carbs. That’s not hard to figure out when we’re talking about refined white sugar or powdered sugar, but molasses, honey, and brown sugar can be heavily processed, too. Coconut sugar is a step up in the sugar echelon from high-fructose corn syrup. But it’s all sugar, period.
IS IT HONEY DO? OR HONEY DON’T?
True, raw natural honey is packed with phytonutrients, and blackstrap molasses is rich in some minerals like iron, potassium, and calcium, but a “natural” label in the sweetener category doesn’t bestow an automatic gold star. To be sure, it’s better than the alternative, but there are varying degrees of “good” among the natural-branded sweeteners, and there are only a few that will pass my test, even as you transition to Cycle 2. And sugar, whether you call it natural or not, spikes your blood sugar and sends you on a mood ride you know all too well, while in high doses it takes you down a path to weight gain, insulin resistance, and disease.
That’s why processed honey and molasses, along with maple syrup, are given a high-SI rating. They’re really high in calories and dense with sugar. Besides, most honey is heavily processed, and processing strips the nutrients out of it. Locally grown organic raw honey is full of vitamins and minerals and has some homeopathic benefits for wounds and allergies. If you have immune responses to bits of mold and dust, organic honey can strengthen your immune system and help you handle those things better. But you only need about a half teaspoon a day to do the job.
SWEET NOTHING
And, of course, there’s agave. Agave is often lumped in with honey and molasses when people refer to natural sweeteners. It’s taken from the agave plant, true enough, but the natural stops there. It’s not only an imposter, it’s a major high-SI culprit. Don’t feel bad if you bought into the hype—there’s been a lot of public duping about agave.
The truth is, many agave nectars contain 70–90% fructose—more than in high-fructose corn syrup. Most of the nutrients in this fructose syrup are destroyed during processing, so there’s not much left to get excited about. It has a low glycemic index, which means it doesn’t spike blood sugar as much as some other sugar, but you know by now that’s not always a good thing. The high amount of fructose in agave goes right to fat metabolism central—your liver—where it can raise your triglyceride levels, store them as fat (hello, belly!), and trigger inflammation.
FRUIT JUICE CONCENTRATE
Another common misconception is that fruit juice concentrate is a great natural sweetener because it’s nothing more than fruit, concentrated. Now that you’re an expert in all things fruit, you know fruit in any form is not the all-you-can-eat food we all want it to be. Making fruit juice concentrate involves little more than removing the liquid from natural fruit juice.
What the process really concentrates is the sugar and the sweetness of the fruit. When you compare the same volumes of freshly squeezed fruit juice and concentrated juice, the concentrate packs a lot more sugar and calories than juice itself, pound for pound. In full-volume juice, nutrients and sugars are diluted to a fraction of what they are in a sample from concentrate. And you know that when food is “unwrapped” from its fiber, and fruit juice most certainly is, it’s left without its protective phytonutrients, vitamins, and minerals, and its SI is exponentially increased. More processing just exacerbates the issue.
Don’t be fooled: this was never really about giving us a natural sweetener; it helps manufacturers save money and space for shipping, and it extends shelf life. To be made into a sweetener for mass production, fruit juice concentrate is stripped of its vitamins and minerals until it’s reduced to a sugar syrup, so it can be used just like corn syrup. It also has the same effect on your blood sugar. The clincher is that manufacturers aren’t required to identify this as added sugar, so you’ll find it in “healthy” products, listed as fruit juice concentrate along with the “no added sugar” claim.
NATURAL BEAUTY
I promised that I wouldn’t leave you without any solutions, and that’s true: there are plenty of low-SI sweeteners out there for you to choose from. I’ve done the homework so that you don’t have to! Here’s the skinny on your best SI options: monk fruit, stevia, the sugar alcohols erythritol and xylitol, chicory, and inulin.
MONK FRUIT
Monk fruit is a lemon-sized fruit with an extract 300 times sweeter than sugar. It’s also known as Lo Han Guo and is commonly marketed as “Lo Han sweetener.” It’s been used for centuries as a sweetener and in herbal medicine. In China, monk fruit sweetener has been used for nearly a thousand years to treat obesity and diabetes. Studies show monk fruit is rich in antioxidants and offers anti-inflammatory benefits.
I’m seeing more manufacturers use monk fruit as a sweetener these days. So Delicious Dairy Free coconut milk ice cream has no added sugar and comes sweetened with monk fruit (and a whopping 10 grams of fiber per serving). A delicious low-SI win!
The company that makes Splenda has marketed its version of monk fruit sweetener as Nectresse. Although they claim it has “zero calories,” they’ve added erythritol (which is good; more on this soon) but also sugar and molasses (bad) to their monk fruit powder. Thankfully, there’s a minuscule amount of sugar and molasses, so little they don’t even register as calories. But if you can find pure monk fruit, or monk fruit blended only with stevia, xylitol, or erythritol, they’re a far better choice.
STEVIA
Stevia is an herb that grows in North and South America that’s also 300 times sweeter than sugar. Stevia is available in liquid and powder forms, but all of them are extracted from the leaves of the stevia plant. Some people like it, but others complain it has a licorice or bitter aftertaste. It has no calories and is a low-SI natural choice, but beware of calorie dysregulation. Oh, and it’s not so hot for baking.
Unlike the artificial stuff, it has no adverse effects on blood sugar, though. One study on human volunteers even found it can increase glucose tolerance, which makes stevia an ideal sweetener for people with insulin resistance and diabetes, though most similar studies have been conducted in rats. One randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in Chinese men and women also showed stevia can reduce mild hypertension.
SUGAR ALCOHOLS
I’m a big fan of sugar alcohols as natural sweeteners. They got their name because their biochemical structure resembles a hybrid of a sugar and an alcohol. They’re naturally occurring in foods like fruits, and they’re used as sweeteners in treats like chocolate, candies, chewing gum, and jams. They’re also used as bulking agents, and they have some, but only a few, calories.
I like sugar alcohols precisely because they contain some calories, though even those are incompletely absorbed by the body. Remember, the problem with no-calorie sweeteners like stevia is that they throw off your body’s ability to associate sweetness with calories.
Some common sugar alcohols are sorbitol, mannitol, maltitol, erythritol, and xylitol. Of these, my favorites are erythritol and xylitol, because they can actually have some health benefits. Xylitol is thought to be antibacterial and has an impressive history of reducing cavities and ear infections. Other studies show xylitol can reduce risk for osteoporosis and control oral infections of Candida.
Erythritol doesn’t seem to create the gastric distress other sugar alcohols can, although as with any sugar alcohol, a little bit goes a long way. Studies show that erythritol is tooth-friendly and doesn’t contribute to dental problems. It also makes an ideal sweetener for people with diabetes. One study showed it had no adverse effects on blood glucose levels. I recommend that you look for 100% erythritol or an erythritol-stevia blend.
CHICORY AND INULIN
Chicory is a woody perennial plant used to bring out flavor in everything from salads (its leaves) to coffee (its roots). It adds sweetness and sourness, and can intensify chocolate flavors, which is just one of the many reasons to love it.
Chicory root syrup is a natural sweetener made from the root of the chicory plant. Chicory root is one of the highest natural sources of inulin, which is used to replace sugar, fat, and flour in processed foods. Chicory syrup has a mildly sweet taste, but it’s not absorbed by the intestines, so it doesn’t affect blood sugar levels.
It’s been suggested that it has other health benefits, too, like supporting liver function by pulling toxins out of the body and helping break down fat. Chicory root is also considered a natural prebiotic that feeds the good bacteria in your gut. Both chicory syrup and inulin have a low SI and get the green light, even in Cycle 2.
YOU’RE SWEET ENOUGH
Best of all, when you do reset your sugar sensitivity, you’ll be moving toward full appreciation of the gentle sweetness in whole natural foods and natural sweeteners like cinnamon and vanilla. They can give your tea or organic coffee a kick and wonderful flavor without any downside.
The goal is to move slowly away from addiction to sweet, and to focus on savory flavors such as sea salt, basil, rosemary, and other yummy spices. I want you to reclaim your sensitivity to sweet—and your taste buds. They’re yours, take them back!
You’ll also be eating good sources of clean, lean protein, and they’ll help reduce your cravings and support your move away from sweet foods, too. So don’t go crazy with legal sweeteners. I’ll be watching!
DARK CHOCOLATE IS NOT MILK CHOCOLATE WITH THE LIGHTS OFF
You’re going to love me for this: I want you to eat chocolate every day. Even in Cycle 2, as long as it’s 100% dark chocolate with no added sugar. Yes, feel free to do the happy dance! Dark chocolate is another sweet way to satisfy your cravings and support your blood sugar.
To save you the hunt and the trouble of trying lots of brands that don’t measure up, I’m going to give a shout-out to two brands I’ve found that are making 100% dark chocolate with no sugar. It’s been tough searching and taste testing for you (cough), but at long last I can suggest these amazing options. If you’re in the United States, check out ChocolaTree Organic Oasis, and if you’re in Canada, you have Aracana Soba chocolate (see Resources at http://sugarimpact.com/resources). Both of these have no sugar whatsoever, and eating them is sort of like eating raw cacao, which I do every day. I really love raw cacao nibs, and I throw them on top of my shakes. They’re packed with fiber, and they’ve got just a little natural sweetness. It’s such a great way to check that box when a craving just won’t give you any peace. You’re welcome!
BECOME A SUGAR SHERLOCK: READING LABELS
Sugar is a master of disguise, and labels have been designed to win a high-stakes war for your precious dollars, not look out for your health. Key into what these labels really mean, and you’ll be less likely to be deceived into buying a sugar- or sweetener-heavy food that will stall fat loss instead of kicking it into high gear.
LITE—RIGHT!
The FDA guidelines for using “Lite” (or “Light”) is that the product has one-third fewer calories, 50% less fat, or 50% less sodium than the original version. The hidden land mine to look for is what’s compensating for the light ingredient—the food still has to taste good, and that means it could be heavy in another unwelcome ingredient.
NO ADDED SUGAR AND SUGAR-FREE
When I see “no added sugar” and “sugar-free” labels, I look around to see if somebody’s winking at me. Technically, this label means the food has fewer than 0.5 grams of sugar or fat per serving. But even if there’s no added sugar in a packaged product, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have sugar or that it’s low in sugar. First, that processed treat made of flour is really sugar—just give it a few bites and see. Plus, it can still be sweetened with fruit juice concentrate or full of artificial sweeteners. If that’s the case, you’ll probably eat more, since you’re at twice the disadvantage—your body isn’t registering sweetness, and you don’t want to stop pretending those cookies are calorie-free.
This will fire you up, too—manufacturers only have to list the calories of an ingredient if it is a half-gram or more, so if it has 0.4 grams of sugar, they can leave the sugar off the label! Sometimes portion sizes are scaled down in order to make a product look better than it really is. So “no added sugar” foods are far from being all-you-can-eat, worry- and guilt-free fests.
REDUCED SUGAR
The by-the-book definition of a reduced sugar label is that the food has at least 25% less sugar than the original item. It doesn’t mean it has to have fewer calories. The low-sugar label, on the other hand, is completely unregulated and can mean anything a manufacturer decides it means. My thoughts exactly.
ALL NATURAL
Danger ahead! This is another “anything goes” label. The FDA doesn’t have a definition for “natural” (there’s a joke in there somewhere) but it does have a decades-long policy that says it won’t object to a food being labeled “natural” as long as the product “does not contain added color, artificial flavors, or synthetic substances.” Good to know!
YOUR SUGAR IMPACT SWAPS: SWEETENERS AND ADDED SUGAR
After reading a chapter about making better sweetener choices, you may have a pretty good idea of where to go from here. But I always like to give you a cheat sheet just to make sure you’re crystal clear on which swaps will help kick your sugar addiction the fastest. I mean, there’s no point in dragging this out, is there?!
YOUR SUGAR IMPACT SCALE: SWEETENERS AND ADDED SUGAR
Sweeteners and added sugars keep your body in sweet-seeking mode, so lowering your SI in this category will be a huge leap forward in your ability to kick your cravings and satisfy your sweet tooth with the real deal in whole, natural foods.
LOW SUGAR IMPACT
100% dark chocolate
85% dark chocolate*
Chicory
Erythritol
Inulin
Monk fruit
Raw cacao (powder and nibs)
Stevia
Xylitol
MEDIUM SUGAR IMPACT
70% or higher dark chocolate
Blackstrap molasses
Cane syrup (non-GMO)
Coconut palm sugar
Coconut sugar
Glucose (aka dextrose; non-GMO)
Local organic raw honey
Mannitol
Raw brown sugar (nonprocessed)
Rice syrup
Sorbitol
HIGH SUGAR IMPACT
<70% dark chocolate
Acesulfame-K
Agave
Aspartame
Candy
Caramel sauce
Chocolate syrup
Corn syrup
Crystalline fructose
Cyclamates
Fruit juice concentrate
High fructose corn syrup
Honey (processed)
Licorice
Maltodextrin
Maple syrup
Marshmallows
Milk chocolate
Molasses
Neotame
Processed brown sugar
Saccharin
Splenda
Sucralose
As the last of the seven high-SI foods, sweeteners and added sugar may have been the most surprising. When you lower your SI here, you break the habit of making your foods overly sweet, and really throw your addiction a knockout punch. It’s a giant leap toward getting more satisfaction from what you eat and ensuring spectacular, long-lasting results from the Sugar Impact Diet.