Can you imagine a year with no sugar? I cannot. Not that I have a sugar tooth, because I do not. I crave and want salt all day long. That does not mean, however, that I do not have sugar all the time. I will tell you why.

I just finished reading: “Year of No Sugar” by Eve Schaub. An interesting read. Schaub decides to have her and her family go an entire year and not eat sugar. The thing is – sugar is in everything. Of course desserts, breads, and sweets, but also ketchup, sauces, and mayonnaise. Literally everything has some amount of sugar. Even if the ingredient list does not say sugar, companies have found ways to break down the ingredient list into fructose, glucose, etc to make sure it’s not the top ingredient because it is broken into three smaller ingredients. Clever, but dishonest too. Schaub and her family are not 100% hardcore. She has two kids and so over the course of a year they decide that they will have one “sugar-filled” dessert a month and if it is your birthday month you get to select the dessert.

After many months on their adventure, and digging into a monthly “sugar-filled” dessert, Schaub states:

“But now what struck me perhaps most of all was the fact that when I would give in and have something that I wanted, or thought I wanted, or somebody else thought I should want, often it failed to be enjoyable at all. This was newly noticeable–a disconnect between what my brain thought I’d enjoy and what my body actually did enjoy.” page 256

Interesting, is it not? What we think we want is not always what our body wants and what we think we want does not always taste good. I think that is true for a lot of bad foods, bad relationships, and bad jobs. Sometimes we are just good at telling ourselves what we think we want, and maybe it is not at all what we need, or what is good for us.

Yesterday at work I opened a bag of mixed fun size candy bars from Costco. Of course because of just reading Schaub’s book I was very curious about the sugar amounts. You’ll have to click the photo to be able to read the packaging, but in order to truly know how many grams of sugar was in each serving size you have to take the number of candy bars per serving size and divide it by total number of sugar calories.

So the Milky Way has the most calories at 2 bars per serving size, for a total of 20g, which means 10g if you eat one bar, and Nestle Crunch being the best for you at 22g for 4 mini candy bars, so 5.5g if you just have one. GROSS – all that sugar! But they sure do not make it easy to figure out the true number of grams of sugar.

I love how Schaub ends “Year of No Sugar” with such an appropriate quote:

“We save actual sugar for the ‘worth it’ stuff, stuff that is truly meaningful–for birthdays, at special occasions, that wonderful piece of chocolate after a meal. Who knows? Maybe a perfect, shining piece of Napoleon will one day come my way. If it does, I don’t want to be sated with Cocoa Puffs and Snapple–I want to be ready.” page 272

That is how I roll. Make the best of the sugar you have each day. Make it count. Be ready for the good stuff. The homemade cupcakes and damn good desserts. Do not give away your sugar allotment for crappy, processed, shitty food. Hold out for things that matter.