Back around the beginning of the year, I told you that if you wanted to lose weight, you were going to have to cut refined sugar out of your diet. And I mean all of it: sugar, sucrose, dextrose, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup; all of it. In fact, I think you should think twice about products with “alcohol sugars” like malitol and sorbitol in them. Such products are added to certain low-carb foods to make them appear lower in carbohydrates than they really are. Frankly, if a product needs alcohol sugars, it is probably something with more calories than a person trying to lose weight should be eating. I realize this point of view is mildly controversial and strictly my personal opinion.
Earlier this week, Reuters reported that a third of the American diet is junk food, the vast majority of it sugary stuff. As much as 7.1% of the calories was soda alone — by extension these people could reduce caloric intake by 7% just by switching to diet soda, or better yet water. A researcher was quoted as saying “It’s no wonder there’s an obesity epidemic in this country.”
Meanwhile, a school principal in Georgia was so inspired by her own experience cutting sweets out of her diet — not a low-carb diet, merely cutting out sweets — that she made her campus sugar free. She made Coke put only Dasani water in the vending machines. She reworked the school lunch menus. She made the bus drivers keep the kids from eating sugary snacks on the way to and from school. She invited the skeptical parents to nutrition seminars.
A year later she found out that not only had many students lost weight, but there were almost a third fewer visits to the school nurse, substantially fewer disciplinary problems, and higher test scores. She accidentally found a cheap way to improver her school. Of course I bet there’s a positive impact on the community as a whole, too. Here’s another school trying to go junk food free.
The bottom line is that cutting sugar works, and it has unexpected benefits.