Eve O. Schaub told this story on the Internet a month ago. She works at Cornell University and the Rochester Institute of Technology. In the photo below her family.
“A long time ago, I was a healthy person. At least that's how it seemed to me. Of course, I felt sluggish during the day, but I thought that was the case with everyone. My family was waiting with fear for another flu epidemic, but closer to January, all our friends began to show signs of germophobia (fear of germs). It seemed natural.
I considered the health of my family members to be quite normal until I came across an article with alarming data on the effects of sugar on the body. According to the findings of several experts, it is sugar that is responsible for the fact that so many people suffer from obesity and various diseases.
The more I thought about it, the more reasonable the arguments given in the article seemed to me. One in seven Americans has metabolic syndrome. One in three is overweight. The percentage of people with diabetes is growing rapidly, and cardiovascular disease is the most common cause of death.
According to the theory outlined in the article, the root of all these and many other diseases must be sought in the presence of a huge amount of sugar in our regular diet.
Brilliant idea
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I studied this topic up and down and came up with a way out. I decided to set up an experiment and see how hard it would be for my family (me, my husband and our two children, 6 and 11 years old) to eat only those foods that are completely sugar-free.
We have eliminated any sweets from our diet - regular sugar, honey, molasses, syrups, fruit juices, etc. We have given up sugar substitutes and alcohol substitutes. The only exceptions were whole fruits, which were naturally sweet.
As soon as we began to pay attention to the composition, we discovered sugar in the most unexpected products: bread cakes, sausages, sauces, crackers, mayonnaise, bacon, and even in baby food. Why do they add sugar to all these foods?
I was very curious how hard it would be to do without sugar and how it would end. I was convinced that giving up sweets would benefit my family. But I never imagined that the effect would be so great.
A year later without sugar
The effect was not immediate or dramatic, but it was still noticeable enough: the longer I went without sugar, the better I felt, the more energy I had. And if I doubted the causal relationship, then soon an event happened that served as proof: my husband's birthday.
The agreement was this - during this year we allow ourselves to have a family dinner with a sugar-sweetened dessert once a month. If it's a birthday, then the birthday person chooses the dessert. By September, we all noticed that our tastes were beginning to change. In particular, our monthly desserts made us less and less happy.
For his birthday, my husband chose a cake with several layers of sponge cake soaked in banana cream. Not only did I not get pleasure from my piece, but I could not even finish it. The head became heavy and the heartbeat quickened. I felt terrible.
I only felt better after spending an hour on the couch. And I thought that sugar has probably always influenced my well-being so much, but before I did not notice this, because I considered it the norm.
After a year had passed, we returned to our regular diet. I calculated the number of days my children missed school due to illness and compared the result with last year, in which we lived without sugar. The difference was impressive. Last year, my daughter Greta, for example, was absent from class for only two days, and this year - 15.
Of course, we are no longer going to give up sugar altogether, but we have greatly reduced its consumption. In particular, we only allow ourselves desserts on special occasions. My body is very grateful to me for this. Now I am not afraid that in the middle of the day my energy will run out. And in winter we are not as afraid of the flu as we used to be. But even if one of us gets sick, he recovers much faster.
Much to my surprise, after a year without sugar, we all feel healthier and stronger."