SugarDetoxMe: 100+ Recipes to Curb Cravings and Take Back Your Health

INTRODUCTION

About three years ago, while working on sustainable food systems, I began a journey to understand why I craved sugar so much. This curiosity and the need to know how to overcome my seemingly innate sugar habit led me on a Nancy Drew–like investigation. I began researching all I could about our relationship to the sweet stuff and how it got into our food system in the first place.

When I first did a sugar cleanse, I did it just for me. I felt like my sugar tooth was the one thing that was standing in my way to become optimally healthy, and I wanted to get a handle on it. I decided to design a guide that I could stick to, that would keep me honest, and that I could turn to again and again, if I ever fell off track, until it became a way of life. In short, the focus on sugar in my own diet was a lens that helped clarify and define my vision of a healthier life—one that I’d like to pass along to you.

I started documenting my sugar cleanse via my website SugarDetox.me, which later led to an easy-to-follow, empowering program to help others do the same. When I set out on my journey, I didn’t expect that so many people would be interested in doing it with me. Some of their reasons were different from mine, because eating too much sugar can have varied and far-reaching health effects, everything from energy dips to skin problems to cavities to metabolic disorders such as diabetes, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, and even gout.

Let’s backtrack, though. Even though I considered myself a healthy eater in general, it wouldn’t be uncommon for me to eat half a box of cookies in one sitting, if they were just lying around. Luckily, I rarely purchased sweets at the store or made them at home, but when I did, they wouldn’t last long! Sound familiar?

I really wanted to get to the root cause of what was driving me to eat sugar in such quantities. Most of the sugary stuff that I was eating had zero nutritional value, too. I repeat: zero, which means I wasn’t getting any health benefits whatsoever or any vital amino acids, vitamins, or minerals to fuel my brain and body. It was a total drag for someone who considers herself healthy, relatively speaking. Plus, I was the kid of two health-conscious parents, but unlike my mom and dad (or my brother for that matter), I was the one saddled with the sweet tooth.

I ATE THE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS

Even before I was able to comprehend the consequences of certain eating habits, I was drawn like a magnet to sweet-looking foods. One Christmas, to my mother’s horror, two-year-old me reached into a green glass bowl of colored Christmas lights that I could barely get to on my tiptoes. Thinking they were a friendly relative of Skittles® or some other Willy Wonka–esque candy, I began to crunch the glass bulbs. My mother screamed, which immediately halted my treacherous actions. Open your mouth, she commanded. Don’t swallow anything. And then she quickly ushered me to the emergency room, without any major damage.

Even when I was aware of the consequences, however, I struggled to curb my almost inexorable desire for sweets. Even as I’m writing this, it’s unbelievable how vivid the memories are around my obsession with sweet stuff. At my cousin’s birthday party as a five-year-old, I recall that I knowingly stole his bag of candy and proceeded to eat everything, from powdered candy in a straw to gummy worms. As I reminisce, I can even remember what I was wearing; I can see my mother scolding me in the gravel driveway, and taste the tartness of the powder on my tongue. The theft of the candy resulted in tears from my cousin and for me, a reprimand from my mother.

Years later, there was an even more embarrassing event, which involved caching sweets from the candy bowl at my piano teacher’s house. I would arrive early for my lesson, remove my shoes, and give my teacher her check. She would then take the check to another room and wouldn’t come back to the piano until it was officially time for the lesson to start. I made it a point to have my mother drop me off early so that gave me more time to raid the big candy bowl in my teacher’s living room. If I didn’t have pockets, I would stuff the candies beneath the seat cushions of her couch so that I could covertly remove them while putting on my shoes before heading home.

I was, of course, a little embarrassed to take any candy from the bowl while she was in the living room, because, after all, I couldn’t take just one. Hence the stash technique. Like a fugitive, I would hide the candy under the cushion and without fail walk away with handfuls of the sweet contraband.

I would have probably forgotten about this recurring episode except that one day the routine changed. My piano teacher’s mother, knowing our lesson wasn’t going to start for another ten minutes, decided to vacuum the living room. I fretted. Just two minutes before, I’d stuffed a heaping handful of hard candy into the corner of the couch. What if she picked up the couch cushion—like my mother did at home—to clean up any crumbs?

I tried to act calm, but I was getting nervous and fidgeted restlessly on the piano seat. Pretty soon she took the attachment off the vacuum cleaner nozzle and began to remove the couch cushions. She started with the farthest cushion from the candy pile and began to vacuum the crevices—carefully rimming the corners of the sofa with its powerful suction. Then she removed the second cushion, placing it on top of the first on the coffee table. She cleaned every part thoroughly. My piano teacher walked through the kitchen. If only she would come out and start the piano lessons early! Her mother made a motion toward the last cushion, lifting it up in one fluid motion …

I played it off as if I didn’t do it, but I felt and no doubt looked culpable. I was so mortified that I couldn’t concentrate on my piano lesson—and clearly it’s something I’ve never forgotten.

BLAME IT ON YOUR MOTHER … WELL, SORT OF

One day, when I was a little bit older, my mother admitted to me that she craved sweet things when she was pregnant with me. I would eat bags and bags of oranges, she said. I didn’t have the same cravings when I was pregnant with your brother.

This was a revelation for me.

Although I didn’t study for a degree in nutrition science, I am an environmental scientist by training, and I had a hunch that what my mom ate could have influenced my early childhood cravings. Taste preferences, as I found out, are indeed established in utero. It is projected that at 21 weeks after conception, growing fetuses begin gulping several ounces of amniotic fluid and, as a result, their smell and taste receptors are ignited. This amniotic fluid is flavored by what the mother eats. In fact, the sweeter it is, the more the baby wants to swallow. By the time we are born, our taste is fairly developed, and it continues to develop, depending on what our mothers eat and whether we’re fed breast milk or nursed on formula. The type of formula has an impact on a baby’s preferences. Studies show that babies who are fed more bitter-tasting formulas will be more likely to prefer bitter foods as they mature. There is now evidence that those of us whose mothers ate more sugar before we were born have a higher likelihood of craving sugar, according to some peer-reviewed reports of animal trials. Those of us who might have been fed sweet fruits before vegetables might very well have a stronger preference for sweets, and, if we were particularly fussy babies, some of our mothers and fathers might not have had the patience, knowledge, or resources to try to feed us savory food at least thirteen times, which is the average number of times it usually take for a baby to accept a taste of something savory.

Our love of sugar goes even deeper than this. A recent study conducted on mice shows that mother mice with metabolic disorders can negatively affect three subsequent generations. Three generations! And don’t think that your father or grandfather can get away scot-free, either. New evidence in rats shows that obesity and metabolic disorders can be passed from generation to generation through males, too. Scientists found that when babies were born, they were all in good metabolic health, but as soon as a high-fat, high-sugar, junk food diet was introduced, all the male rat offspring reacted dramatically and within just a few weeks they developed fatty liver disease [and] pre-diabetic symptoms, such as elevated glucose and insulin in the bloodstream. And if both parents are compromised, you can assume a double whammy effect on their offspring. We’re not rodents, but if this is any indication of what can happen to humans, we need to consider not only our health, but our kids’ health, and their children’s well-being.

The good news is that it’s possible to curb your sweet tooth, as I’ve found out, and you can stop blaming your parents for it. More and more studies, both formal and informal, show that removing sugar from your diet, for even a short period of time—say two weeks—can reduce your taste for sugar. And rebalancing your brain with the proper vitamins, minerals, and amino acids will help reduce cravings so that you’re set up for even more success! Eating is a learned behavior, and we are masters of our own destiny when it comes to our taste for food. And although it is true that some of us may have to contend with more challenging, uphill battles—for example, with leptin resistance, the satiety hormone that signals us to stop eating—or struggle with a high-stress lifestyle or the impact of having been exposed to too much fruit juice in utero, we can still put ourselves on a path to better health, when we have the curiosity and will to understand our body’s needs and wants. The next step is reevaluating the way we live our life and exploring our personal cravings and relationship to food, as we all have our own unique story and experience to share. Then we can begin rediscovering the joy of eating well.

WHY I WROTE THIS BOOK

Given that so many of us can’t seem to satisfy our sweet tooth, I felt compelled to create a web-based resource (SugarDetox.me) and this book to help you kick your sugar habit safely, easily, and effectively. At its very essence, SugarDetoxMe is a foundational guide and cookbook that will give you an achievable path toward better health. The book arms you with knowledge about what is happening to you when you eat sugar and suggests ways to change your behavior to help build the foundation of a healthier lifestyle. It also aims to reinvigorate your taste for food that is truly good for you, as well as simplify cooking to make healthy eating achievable for those of us who live busy lifestyles.

In order for a sugar cleanse to be effective, I realized that what is needed is not another fancy cookbook with impossibly complex recipes but, instead, an easy-to-follow, foolproof guide that offers healthy, affordable, and intuitive meals that are easy to make. The 100-plus recipes in this book are familiar, intuitive, easy, and non-fussy, and they contain ingredients that are affordable and readily available to most of us. The recipes are also designed to be flexible—so, if you add an extra quarter teaspoon of salt, or switch in kale for spinach, or use chicken broth instead of vegetable broth, don’t hyperventilate! Your recipe will still work. This should come as a relief to those of us who aren’t particularly well versed in the cooking department. The book will really give you an opportunity to feel much more confident in your abilities.

By the time you get to chapter 5, you’ll discover Meal Maps, basic plans that list ingredients for a number of recipes and then show how those ingredients can be used across multiple meals in order to maximize your use of those ingredients, minimize waste, and help save money. Each Meal Map contains its own shopping list, recipe list, and meal plan to help you shop and eat better. Meal Maps are meant to be foundational, not rigidly prescriptive. In other words, feel free to swap out ingredients—like meat for beans or tempeh—or come up with your own Meal Maps. Have fun with the process, whatever you do. Meal Maps are meant to combine formulaic but versatile ways to make good food again and again, all while nixing sweet cravings, reducing the time you spend prepping and cooking food, and offering appetizing and energizing meals you’ll enjoy.

What we eat is influenced by all sorts of internal and external cues. I encourage you to take a closer look at your own life so that you can achieve greater freedom from sugar. I’d like you to think of this book as a guide and a set of tools that will make healthy foods more inviting, accessible, and joyful! My hope is that SugarDetoxMe inspires you not only to reduce your sugar intake, but also to take your first step to making healthier overall lifestyle choices.

I encourage and invite you to take the time to explore your personal cravings and relationship to food, since none of us has the same story or experience. When you’re able to put the pieces of your own puzzle together to see the whole picture, you’ll begin to feel empowered to discover the path toward health!

CHAPTER 1

WHY

DETOX

FROM

SUGAR?

I’VE HAD A SWEET TOOTH FOR AS LONG AS I CAN REMEMBER. IF YOU HAVE ONE, TOO, I’M SURE YOU HAVE MORE THAN A FEW VIVID MEMORIES OF EATING—AND HOARDING—SWEET THINGS. I KNEW THERE WAS SOMETHING INHERENTLY WRONG ABOUT THIS WHEN I WAS GROWING UP, BUT I STILL FELT COMPELLED TO RAID THE COOKIE JAR, LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY.

Although not everyone struggles with a sweet tooth on a regular basis, we do have something in common: every single one of us is biologically hardwired to like sugar from the start, meaning we are programmed to want it even as infants. Mary Poppins, the acclaimed British nanny of the P. L. Travers books who was brought to life by Julie Andrews in Walt Disney’s 1964 musical film, was onto something when she enthusiastically sang, A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down! But Poppins would blush to know that since the film was released, sugar consumption around the world has increased by more than 50 percent! Added sugar can now be found in everything from coffees to breads to sauces to cereals. Sugar’s sweetness has the power to change your brain. As soon as a sugar molecule hits one of your tongue’s 10,000 taste buds, a stimulus is shot off to your brain and gut, triggering your happiness centers and literally altering your biochemical pathways. If you do this enough times, your brain can become conditioned to want more and more sugar. This is because sugar can mimic and eventually replace or desensitize your natural feel-good neurotransmitters, which is why when you try to wean yourself off of sugar or quit it completely, you can get downright cranky. These are called abstinence symptoms, and they are just one of the many reasons why more scientists and people are looking at excessive sugar consumption as an addiction.

Sweetness receptors developed in the brains of our primate ancestors over 35 million years ago and carried over into humans. Carbohydrates, in the form of starches and sugars, provide glucose as energy for our bodies. It’s that sweetness or starchiness that then triggers our reward centers. Sugar releases beta-endorphin,