This past week I’ve made an effort to get back to healthier habits after overindulging on meals and cocktails last week while on our fantasy Bermuda cruise. The book I happened to be reading, Year of No Sugar by Eve Schaub, helped me stay on track and pay more attention to the amount of sugar hidden in common foods such as balsamic vinegar salad dressing and mayonnaise. (I still can’t believe I’ve never known that Hellman’s Mayonnaise has sugar as one of the ingredients.)
Year of No Sugar is a stunt memoir along the lines of Julie & Julia by Julie Powell, The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, and all of A.J. Jacobs‘ books so far, i.e. when a writer does a specific thing with the intent of writing a book about it. A category of nonfiction that Henry David Thoreau is said to have started with Walden way back in 1854!
Starting on New Year’s Day in 2011, blogger Eve Schaub and her family – her husband Steve and their two daughters, aged 6 and 11 — embarked on a year of not eating food with any added sugar. For a Vermont family, giving up maple syrup was a big deal all by itself; now throw in no sugar, no honey, no molasses, no high-fructose corn syrup, no fruit juice (with the exception of lemon) and no artificial sweeteners of any kind.
For an entire year — including the two giant festivals of sugar, Halloween and Christmas.
I read Eve Schaub’s second stunt memoir first, A Year of No Clutter, and really enjoyed her mix of humor, personal anecdotes, and facts backed by research in writing about her relationship to what she called her house’s “Hell Room” — a room so stuffed with, well, stuff, that no one really knew what was in there.
In both books, the author starts with her personal story and broadens it to cultural, philosophical, and societal issues that people all over the world could be grappling with, or maybe should be.
Eve’s idea for a year of no sugar came from seeing the 90-minute video “Sugar: The Bitter Truth” by Dr. Robert Lustig on YouTube.
“In the first seventeen minutes, Lustig calmly drops facts like precision bombs…But it isn’t until minute twenty that Lustig throws down the gauntlet:
‘My charge before the end of the night is to demonstrate that fructose is a poison.’
That’s right–a poison. And fructose is in sugar — all kinds of sugar.I was hooked. I was astounded. High-fructose corn syrup is bad? Well, sure. We all suspected that anyway. Table sugar too? Um…okay. But honey? Maple syrup? Agave? Fruit juice? Yep. Yep. Yep.”
Year of No Sugar (Sourcebooks, 2014) by Eve Schaub
In Year of No Sugar, the author explains how she implemented the project, starting with getting her family to agree, tackling the particular challenges of each month (birthdays, vacations, class trips, holidays, etc.) and ending with the family’s unexpected responses to the completion of the project.
A few exceptions were determined from the outset — such as for one special family dessert per month, for the girls to choose to share in treats offered at school, etc. — but was still an extreme effort to avoid most, if not all sugar, especially in restaurants or when visiting other people’s homes. It’s everywhere!
In the ten years since 2011 when the author watched “The Bitter Truth”, some nutritional myths have been busted; artificial sweeteners and high-fructose corn syrup are more widely acknowledged to be bad for you, for example. But America’s love affair with sugar in its myriad of forms goes on!
Read an excerpt from Year of No Sugar by Eve Schaub.
Eve recently posted about quarantine bread baking (no added sugar in the dough) on her Year of No Sugar blog. She also has a new project underway– a year of no garbage.
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I’ve been trying to reduce my own annual sugar intake over the past two and a half years or so. In that spirit, and in the spirit of quarantine baking, I made homemade granola today and left out the two tablespoons of brown sugar the recipe called for. It was sweet enough with just the maple syrup.
I know it’s not pumpkin-spice season, but comfort food is always in season. Also, the recipe has maple syrup in it! I lightly sweetened a cup of plain yogurt with one teaspoon of maple syrup and sprinkled a couple of tablespoons of granola on top for a delicious snack.
Check out Purely Pumpkin cookbook author Allison Day’s blog, Yummy Beet, for more granola and other recipes! Cookbook review coming soon.
Happy Weekend Cooking!
Shared to Weekend Cooking, a weekly feature hosted by Beth Fish Reads.
This one’s available online so I’ll give it a go. Cheers
wow, just reading this makes me want to go eat a cookie! I’m not a fan of extreme food choices, and this looks pretty extreme. Things are tough enough already.
be well… mae at maefood.blogspot.com
Well, I’d be partial agreement. Avoid buying foods with added sugar, don’t add it to my bread, or drink fruit juices or soda, but then there’s chocolate! I frequently make my own and use or get the type with organic sugar. Yes, there is a big difference in how it’s grown – without pesticides added in. Same with flour.
I can’t even go a day at the moment!
We try to limit our sugar but it’s never going to be totally out our lives. We don’t drink soda (and never, ever have) and don’t use many prepared foods (including salad dressings), but I’m not giving up birthday cake or a weekend cookie . . .
Cheers, Carole!
Hi, Mae! Well, the Year of No Sugar project was ten years ago and an experiment! The author wrestles with this kind of question of extremism and worries about “not being fun” any more, being seen as outside even Vermont’s very broad mainstream, messing up her children’s childhood memories, etc. She’s not advocating an extreme sugar-free diet, just trying to get us to understand that most of us have a very inaccurate idea of what a “moderate sugar intake” actually is, especially compared to the amount of sugar the average American consumed even just fifty years ago.
I know giving up sugar would be a good idea but it is so difficult. It could be interesting to read about the experience.
I think you and the author are on exactly the same wavelength, Claudia! I believe myself to be fairly knowledgeable about nutrition, and knew that natural sweeteners such as the honey or maple syrup we buy at the market are no better for you than the same amount of plain old table sugar, but the amount of sugar added to liquid medicines, chewable vitamins for kids, whole-grain cereals, sandwich breads, etc. — things that aren’t seen as treats but are supposed to be good for you — still surprised me!
Haha I know what you mean, Marg! I have a sweet tooth, and have been pretty good at going to unsweetened tea, adding my own amount of sweetener to plain yogurt (less and less, but I still don’t like it completely unsweetened yet!), and modifying recipes, etc. But a sugar addiction is like any addiction — the more we have, the more we want, especially when we’re looking to food to comfort our anxious selves!
Hi, Beth! The author’s family definitely made exceptions for really special occasions. As with any special diet, you just have to be careful that every occasion doesn’t become a special occasion, or pretty soon you’re not really following your special diet at all! And they each were “allowed”, under their rules they formulated at the outset, to choose one complete exception. The author chose wine! I think her main point of the Year of No Sugar project was to raise awareness of the amount of sugar, on average, Americans (even those of us who are watching our sugar) actually consume annually. I think nutritional guidelines have changed over the ten years since she did the project, too, so that now we know that it’s not just excess amounts of fat that’s bad for us, it’s excess sugar, too.
I try really hard to stay off sugar. I’m usually fine until I take a bite and then it can take me weeks to get back on track. Looks like an interesting book.thanks for the review.
I’m not sure I could go a whole year without any sugar….scratch that, I am sure I couldn’t.
This sounds fascinating! I’m iffy on stunt memoirs but I also try to limit my sugar intake after having way too much of it for too many years. Fantastic review, I loved how much context you provided around this!
Thanks for stopping by, Rennie! I’ve borrowed an e-cookbook from the library, “Half the Sugar, All the Love” that I hope to review soon.
Sorry, your comment went into my spam for some reason! They did make some exceptions to the no-sugar rule but even then, it was really hard!