YEAR OF NO SUGAR

A Vermont blogger mom’s delightfully readable account of how she and her family survived a yearlong sugar-free diet—and lived to tell the tale.

After Schaub watched a video of a professor of medicine that claimed sugar was “a poison” and suggested that American culture “was the modern-day equivalent of an opium den,” she was both horrified and intrigued. She knew that eating sugar in excess was unhealthy. But Schaub had no idea that sugar—and, specifically, its main ingredient, fructose—was at the heart of a worldwide obesity epidemic that was affecting infants as well as children and adults. Determined to help her family kick the sugar habit (or at least moderate it), the author challenged her husband and two young daughters to live without sugar for one year. What she and her family didn’t realize was that going truly sugarless would mean more than just giving up desserts. They quickly discovered that everything—from bread to soups to salad dressings—contained trace amounts of sugar, but Schaub and her family worked around the problem. They created recipes (a few of which the author shares) for meals made from whole foods and treats sweetened with fruits or dextrose, a sugar which contains no fructose. Over time, the author found that her family’s hyperfondness for sugar gradually faded and that she herself no longer enjoyed confections as much. In fact, she developed powerful, and unpleasant, sugar headaches that left her feeling irritable and lethargic. The most telling result of this experiment revealed itself in her children’s pattern of attendance. During the family’s year of no sugar, the girls’ illness-related absences from school dropped by 75 percent. Sugar may have become the cultural shortcut “to better taste, to more convenience and to ever-higher food industry profits,” but as Schaub suggests, the path to health and happiness is best traveled conscientiously rather than quickly.

A funny, intelligent and informative memoir.