Her Family Stopped Eating Sugar for A Year, and This is What Happened | The Mind Unleashed: A Bright Idea
I took all of this newfound knowledge and formulated an idea. I wanted to see how hard it would be to have our family — me, my husband, and our two children (ages 6 and 11) — spend an entire year eating foods that contained no added sugar. We’d cut out anything with an added sweetener, be it table sugar, honey, molasses, maple syrup, agave or fruit juice. We also excluded anything made with fake sugar or sugar alcohols. Unless the sweetness was attached to its original source (e.g., a piece of fruit), we didn’t eat it.
Now that our year of no sugar is over, we’ll occasionally indulge, but
the way we eat it is very different. We appreciate sugar in drastically
smaller amounts, avoid it in everyday foods (that it shouldn’t be in in
the first place), and save dessert for truly special occasions. My body
seems to be thanking me for it. I don’t worry about running out of
energy. And when flu season comes around I somehow no longer feel the
urge to go and hide with my children under the bed. But if we do come
down with something, our bodies are better equipped to fight it. We get
sick less and get well faster. Much to my surprise, after our no-sugar
life, we all feel healthier and stronger. And that is nothing to sneeze
at.
