(mind)
Beat your
addiction
For years, the message from health experts has focused on eliminating fat.
Yet many low-fat and fat-free products contain an even more insidious
ingredient – sugar. Here, health writer Sarah Wilson, who has been sugarfree for two years, shares her tips for quitting the white stuff for good.
Getty images.
“The only way to keep an eye on your
sugar intake is to know how much is
hidden in products you’re eating.”
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Coco-nutty granola
Makes 5 CUPS
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lifestyle diseases, it seems sugar slips under
the radar. “Processed sugars are the baddies,”
says nutritionist Lola Berry. “They cause havoc
and are linked to diabetes, weight gain, mood
swings and fluid retention, to name a few!”
Try giving up sugar and you realise it’s
easier said than done. Why? Because it’s
everywhere – from the spoonful in your
coffee, to the tomato sauce on your pasta.
Pretty soon, you’re eating 25 teaspoons of
the stuff every day and not even realising it.
In I Quit Sugar (Pan Macmillan), Sarah
Wilson offers down-to-earth, practical advice,
with delicious recipes that make giving up sugar
fun. Eight weeks after you say “so long, sweetie”
you won’t even notice sugar has gone.
“If your muesli lists
30g of sugar per
serve, you’re eating
more than seven
teaspoons before
you’ve even left
the house.”
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Crunchy-nut cheesecake
serves 8
filling
2-3 x 250g tubs cream cheese, at room
temperature
1 egg
dash vanilla powder
2 tablespoons plain, full-fat yogurt or sour cream
¼ cup coconut cream
½ cup rice malt syrup, to taste
base
1 cup pistachios, shelled (or hazelnuts)
1 cup coconut, shredded or desiccated
1 cup (150g) almond meal (or nut meal, or LSA)
½ cup butter, softened to room temperature
Ditch fruit juice and dried fruit
A standard glass of apple juice contains the same amount of sugar
as a glass of cola – that’s about 10-12 teaspoons. And dried fruit
contains 70 per cent sugar. Oh, but the sugar in fruit is natural, you might say. True,
but just because something is natural doesn’t mean we’re meant to eat it. Fruit
is very high in sugar. Eaten whole, with the fibre and water intact, we’re able to
metabolise the fructose. Yet when the fibre or water is removed, in the case of
juice and dried fruit, we’re left with a whole heap of sugar that our system simply
can’t process. The best trick: opt for low-fructose whole fruit, such as berries
and kiwifruit.
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Learn how to read labels
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A few things to bear in mind ...
The only way to keep an eye on your sugar intake is to know how
much is hidden in products you’re eating. To do this, look on the
“nutrition information” panel on the back of the packet and find “serving size”.
Look at the amount of sugar listed in this column. It will be in grams or millilitres.
Then divide the grams or millilitres by four to get the number of teaspoons.
If your muesli lists 30g of sugar per serve, you’re eating more than seven
teaspoons before you’ve even left the house.
✔ Dairy products contain lactose (which is fructose-free), about
4.7g/100g. Anything listed as being more than 4.7g/100g on a
dairy product is added sugar. Double the serving size if you tend to eat bigger
servings than most, as I do.
✔ Many experts and institutions, including the American Heart Association,
advise we should be consuming about 6-9 teaspoons of sugar a day only.
✔ As a rule of thumb, try to only eat products with less than 6g of sugar per
100g or 100mls. More than this and you’ll find, by the end of the day, your
“incidental” sugar intake is way too high.
Crunchy-nut
cheesecake
1 Preheat oven to 120°C. Mix ingredients in a bowl;
spread evenly on baking paper on a tray and bake
for about 15-20 minutes, turning halfway.
2 When golden, remove granola from the oven and
cool immediately to get it crispy.
TIPS: I like this granola with yogurt – nice and chunky.
You may wish to add rolled oats, in which case, toss
2 cups into the bowl with the rest of the ingredients
and add a little more oil and syrup.
food photography by Marija Ivkovic. Styling by Lee Blaylock. getty images.
B
ack when our ancestors were
still living in caves, sugar as we
know it today didn’t exist. Apart
from a few berries, occasional
fruit and wild honey, which
contain natural sugars such as
fructose, their diet was primarily plant- and
protein-based. Fast-forward to the 21st century
and food has undergone a revolution. Highly
processed, low in fibre, full of sugar and salt
– even our grandmothers would have a hard
time recognising much of what passes as
normal food these days.
While fat and refined carbohydrates have
been named and shamed as major contributors
to the global obesity epidemic and so-called
4-5 tablespoons coconut oil (or butter), melted
3 cups coconut flakes
2 tablespoons chia seeds
1 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
2 cups almonds, cashews, pecans, walnuts and
pepitas, chopped roughly
3 tablespoons rice malt syrup (optional; I don’t
sweeten my granola at all)
1 Preheat oven to 160°C. Crush pistachios in a food
processer until they are semi-fine chunks. Add in
coconut, almond meal and butter; rub with fingers.
The more you rub, the more you’ll release the oils
in the nuts and achieve the right dough-like
consistency. Add more butter, if required.
2 Line the ring and base of a springform pan with
baking paper. Cover base and sides with mixture to
an even thickness, about ½ cm.
3 Bake for 5-8 minutes or until it starts to turn
golden. Remove from oven and allow to cool fully.
4 Meanwhile, in a large bowl, mix all remaining
ingredients. Don't over-mix, and try to keep
aeration to a minimum while stirring – it will make
the cake puff up, then collapse during cooking.
5 Spoon mixture into the base and return to the
oven for 20-30 minutes or until mixture pulls away
from the base a little and the centre is custard-like.
Place in the fridge to firm for two hours.
6 Be sure to allow several hours to cool before
serving, otherwise the cake can taste too eggy.
Coco-nutty
granola
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There are different types of sugar
in food, but it’s fructose that attracts
the controversy, with studies showing
it causes health and weight issues.
Ordinary table sugar is about 50 per cent
fructose, 50 per cent glucose. Honey
is about 40 per cent fructose. Lactose
(in milk) and maltose (in beer) are also
sugars, but don’t contain fructose.
Why does sugar
make us fat?
It converts to fat as soon
as it enters our body.
Fructose (the “bad” part of sugar)
isn’t metabolised in our cells like other
molecules. Our bodies didn’t evolve to
deal with large amounts of fructose (it
didn’t exist in caveman days, apart from
a few berries and a little honey), so our
systems just can’t cope with it. Fructose
transfers directly to our livers. Our livers
get confused, freak out and immediately
store the fructose as fat – in and around
our liver (fatty liver) or as triglycerides
(leading to cholesterol issues).
It disrupts our hunger cycle.
Fructose messes with our finely balanced
hormones, disrupting the processes that
tell us we’re hungry, or need energy.
It causes us to binge.
We don’t have a corresponding enzyme
in our brains that tells us when we’ve
eaten fructose. We have one for fat. And
one for glucose. These enzymes scream
“I’m full” when we’ve eaten enough cheese
or roast lamb, but we don’t have one for
fructose. What does this mean? Fructose
enters our system “undetected” and we can
eat it and not get full. Which is why you
can consume 750ml of juice, but not
yogurt. And it’s why we can eat a block
of chocolate without realising!
Plus, it’s addictive
Some studies claim fructose is more
addictive than heroin. This was handy when
we were cavemen and food was scarce – we
were programmed to seek out fructose and
binge on it because it was a source of instant
fat. Which was good back then, but not now
sugar is thrown at us from all directions.
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Eat full-fat dairy
When fat is taken out of products like yogurt, it’s often replaced
with sugar (and other nasty ingredients) to make up for the lost
texture and taste. Take a look at the back of a yogurt tub. Any sugar listing
over 4.7g/100g (which is the fructose-free and safe lactose content) is added
sugar. Some yogurts contain 6 teaspoons of sugar in one individual serve. The
same applies to mayonnaise – always choose whole-egg and full-fat versions
to avoid the fattening sugar dump.
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Bacon
and egg
cupcakes
eat more fat and healthy protein
I’m not talking fried fats or trans fats. I’m talking the kinds of fats
our grandparents ate – eggs, cheese, butter and chicken (with the
skin left on). The French eat this way and, like our grandparents’ generation, do
not have an obesity issue. It adds up. The other thing about fat and protein is
that they fill you up, which helps with sugar cravings. Some ideas that work:
when out at a restaurant, order the cheese platter instead of dessert; eat cheese
and crackers at afternoon tea instead of chocolate; swap muesli
for eggs and ham.
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Avoid sauces
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Eat simply
Bacon and egg cupcakes
Makes 4
4 rashers bacon
4 eggs
fetta
chives and herbs, chopped (optional)
coconut oil, butter or ghee, for greasing
Did you know barbecue sauce contains roughly the same amount
of sugar as chocolate topping – about 50 per cent? Tomato sauce is
much the same. My advice is to develop a taste for good-quality mustard and
whole-egg mayonnaise instead. Tomato-based sauces are also full of sugar,
especially when you consider you rarely eat 50g of it at a meal, but more like a
cup, or 250g (which entails multiplying the sugar amount two-and-a-half times).
Again, I consult my grandmother’s way of eating here. She didn’t
eat food covered with lots of fancy, sugar-laden sauces. It was meat
and vegetables. The easiest way to eliminate hidden sugars, especially when
you’re out, is to choose food that has as few ingredients as possible. At a
restaurant or pub, go for a steak and vegetables or salad drizzled in olive oil
instead of the Thai curry (Thai food is brimful of sugar). In the supermarket,
opt for the version with the shortest ingredients list. This, again, will see you
eliminate a lot of processed foods.
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Watch out for health products
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Allow eight weeks
Some of the most sugar-laden foods are often found in health food
shops. To avoid the “sugar” tag, many seemingly nutritious packaged
foods are sweetened with honey, palm sugar, coconut sugar and agave – all
sugar with another tag. Agave is one of the most problematic, with more than
70 per cent fructose.
According to various studies, it takes between 21-60 days to reverse
a habit. Sugar is a particularly tough habit to kick and one with many
deep emotional ties. I find it takes most people about six to eight weeks to get
sugar out of their system. After about two months their bodies are then able
to determine how much sugar they want. When they reach for sugar, it’s not
because they’re addicted. There is one other morsel of advice I like to share with
people: go gently. Quitting sugar isn’t a draconian diet, it’s a gentle switch. It’s
not about rigidly forcing something, it should be a simple experiment to see
if it works for you.
Find Sarah Wilson’s I Quit Sugar: An 8-week Program at sarahwilson.com.au.
1 Preheat oven to 200°C. Loop or press one slice
of bacon to line each hole of a lightly greased
muffin tray, using the small broken bits to line
the bottom. It needn’t be perfect and use up any
extra bits to fill in the gaps. If you like your bacon
crispy, place it in the oven for 5 minutes before
continuing. Gently crack one egg into the centre
of each bacon cup. Sprinkle with cheese and herbs.
Bake for 15 minutes or until the egg is white and
set. Let them sit and, using a knife or spoon,
gently remove from the tin.
Pumpkin pie with cream
serves 12
food photography by Marija Ivkovic. Styling by Lee Blaylock. getty images.
It’s all about
fructose
filling
3 eggs
½ cup rice malt syrup
1½ cups pumpkin purée
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, grated
¼ teaspoon each nutmeg and cloves, ground
rind of 1 lemon
¾ cup cream
1-2 tablespoons arrowroot
1 teaspoon salt
crust
¼ cup butter, softened
2 cups almond or hazelnut meal (or combination
of both, or LSA)
1 teaspoon salt
1 Preheat oven to 180°C. Combine softened butter,
nut meal and salt in a bowl and mix well (I find
the base “holds” better the more you work it,
Pumpkin pie
with cream
releasing the oils in the nuts). Also, I mix it in the
actual pie dish – no need to use a separate bowl.
Press mixture into the bottom and sides of a
9 inch [23cm] pie dish. If it isn’t quite enough
mixture, throw in a bit more of both butter and
meal (directly into the dish, if you like). Cook for
5-8 minutes or until it starts to turn golden.
2 Let the crust cool fully (place in fridge or freezer
if you have to). Cream eggs and rice malt syrup,
then blend in the rest of the ingredients. If it’s a
bit too runny, add extra arrowroot. It should be
a thin, custard-like consistency.
3 Gently pour the filling into the crust and bake for
about 45-55 minutes or until the centre of the pie
sets (when it starts to crack away from the base a
little is a good sign). Remove from the oven and
cool completely before putting in the fridge.
4 Don’t be impatient – this pie is much better
when it’s properly cooked and looks like a baked
custard. It’s also best when left to cool for a good
few hours and is actually nicer the next day, when
set fully. Serve with a good dollop of cream.
TIP: It also works well frozen and thawed just a little!
I Quit Sugar by
Sarah Wilson
(Pan Macmillan,
$34.99) is available
in bookstores from
January 24 and
online from
sarahwilson.com.au.
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