I Quit Sugar for Life (3 page)

THE OTHER FACTORS I NOTED:

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Daily rest, daily red wine (with meals).

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Walking as transport.

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Seasonal food and not rushing.

All lifestyle approaches I wholeheartedly subscribe to in this book.

I feel it’s important to familiarise ourselves with the ‘scientific’ battle currently playing out in journals and blog forums around the globe as it’s
one we’re going to be drawn into a lot more in coming years. This battle is predicted to get bloodier than the one we had with Big Tobacco a generation back. I’m hoping it’s
shorter.

On one side of the ring we have Big Food. Big Food likes us to eat sugar; it keeps their products cheap and highly addictive. Our health is not their priority, funnily enough!
Big Food is very much in the corner. They’ve ridden off cheap sugar subsidies and the popularity of the low-fat movement (which necessitates adding sugar to make up for loss of flavour and
texture) for decades and they don’t want to back down. Their tactics are awe-inspiring. Their nimblest, so far: funding national nutrition bodies and paying individual dietitians to endorse
sugar in the public domain. (And, in some cases, to publicly refute the work of people like me. Sigh.)

A picture forms, right? And yet . . .

We have a hulking – and growing – body of science proving that what we thought we knew about sugar (a natural part of life, at worst, a harmless bunch of empty
calories?) is wrong. Sugar is toxic, and the proof is rolling in study by study.

Are we eating less or more sugar?

More. Much more. But this is weird: in 2011, two Australian nutrition and diabetes experts published a study arguing that at the same time obesity rates soared (tripling in 30
years), consumption of refined sugar had fallen. They called this phenomenon ‘the Australian Paradox’ in an effort to show sugar is OK to eat. And, yes, I did just tell you
they’re diabetes experts.

The only issue is, there is no Australian Paradox. Indeed, the crux of the case rested on data that doesn’t even exist. The Australian Bureau of Statistics aborted the
survey more than a decade ago because it was unreliable, something they only do in cases where the data is so flimsy. In fact, a recently published study by the University of Western Australia over
a 22-year period showed very large increases in the consumption of sugar in our nation. In fact, Australian Import data shows average sugar consumption from imported food alone is 30 g per day per
person!

LET’S TRY THIS

There’s no point waiting around for laws to change or dietary guidelines to shift. As the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) chair said when announcing
the changes to the Australian Dietary Guidelines: ‘The challenge is there’s so many people out there in the community that have got a vested interest.’ We have to change
ourselves. That’s OK. In fact, it’s more empowering this way. We can vote with our dollar and unlearn the vested information ourselves.

I see this 9-part code as a framework for simple, no-brainer health that supports sugar-free living.

It’s assembled from interviews I’ve conducted with the world’s leading wellness experts and from my health theories. Digest and then turn to the four-week
programme to start your own wellness experiment.

AFTER YOU’VE QUIT SUGAR WITH THE EIGHT-WEEK PROGRAMME
you pretty much continue quitting sugar.

LET’S GO OVER THE GIST AGAIN:

Do we need sugar?

We need
glucose
, for sure. But not fructose. As paediatric endocrinologist Dr Robert Lustig says, ‘There is not one biochemical reaction in your body, not one,
that requires dietary fructose, not one that requires sugar. Dietary sugar is completely irrelevant to life. People say

, oh, you need sugar to live. Garbage.’ In addition: 58% of protein and 10% of fat changes into glucose once in the body, which can be used as needed. In fact, even if you
only
ate meats, eggs and good fats, you’d easily fulfil all of your body’s glucose needs.

How much sugar are we meant to eat again?

As little as possible is the short answer. The longer answer is more convoluted and there are many diverging opinions on intake and what constitutes sugar and, indeed, added
sugar.

Around the world, recommendations are increasingly being revised down and down, which suggests something, right? The American Heart Foundation’s 2013 recommendations
(revised down) advise no more than 5 teaspoons (20 grams) a day for women, 9 teaspoons (36 grams) for men and 3 teaspoons (12 grams) for kids.

The British Dietetic Association recommends about 50 grams or 12 teaspoons a day. The World Health Organisation (WHO) recently advised this figure should be lower following
reviews of the scientific evidence of the link with obesity. However, the UK government’s scientific advisory committee on nutrition – whose senior members advising on the sugar issue
also work for large sugar companies – is fighting this (surprised much?).

The European Heart Network in 2011 set the aim of limiting intake to 6 teaspoons.

In Australia, there are no government recommendations on sugar intake, but the latest Australian Dietary Guidelines (2013) revised down their sugar intake message from
‘eat moderately’ to ‘limit’, again in response to the mounting scientific evidence against sugar.

Where does this leave us? As a general rule, I simply try to keep my sugar intake as low as possible. If pressed for a limit? I work to what many argue is the amount we ate
back when our metabolisms were forming 10,000 years ago, derived from a few pieces of fruit and starches. It’s an imprecise but useful target:

5–9 TEASPOONS OF ADDED SUGAR A DAY IS MY RECOMMENDED LIMIT.

How do we keep to this limit?

As part of IQS, we avoid foods that contain sugar.

Which sugars?

Any comprised of fructose:

We substitute with safe sweeteners.

The recipes in this book use the only two sweeteners my research has found to be safe and that are also easy to cook with:

STEVIA,
which contains stevioside (300 times sweeter than sugar) and rebaudioside (450 times sweeter than sugar). It’s a natural alternative, derived
from the leaf of the stevia plant, and contains no fructose.

RICE MALT SYRUP
(sometimes called rice syrup or brown rice syrup, particularly in the US), a natural sweetener that is made from fermented cooked rice and is a
blend of complex carbohydrates, maltose and glucose. It’s a relatively slow-releasing sweetener so it doesn’t dump on the liver as much as pure glucose does. Make sure the ingredients
list only rice (and water). Some versions add extra (fructose-containing) sugars.

OTHER SWEETENERS THAT ARE OK TO USE IN MODERATION
are
xylitol
(a sugar alcohol that can be digested by our bodies) and
dextrose
(100% glucose).

I don’t personally use pure glucose in my recipes, instead opting for the rice malt syrup which is a slower (and gentler) release. I find recipes that call for
glucose/dextrose use a lot of it (cups instead of tablespoons!) – be careful of this.

THE REST: DON’T TOUCH.
Most have been shown to be either carcinogenic or entirely indigestible, thus causing myriad health issues (um, ever noticed how
‘sugar-free’ gum can make you loose-bowelled and gassy?!). Many of the fake sugars available are banned in parts of Europe, deemed unsafe. Nuff said.