What’s So Great About Breaking a Sweet Tooth?

The benefits of removing sugar from one’s diet go beyond those effects that people typically desire which can take weeks to months: weight loss for example or improvement in blood sugar numbers.  Within two weeks, removing sugar from my diet helped me recapture a piece of my inner child.

Recently, I gave up sugar.  When I tell my friends, a dozen have had the same reaction: “I could never do that.”  Before I gave it up, I thought the same thing: that there would be nothing immediately great about going without sugar, and therefore it would be too hard.  There was the prospect of eventually solving some blood sugar issues I had, and maybe losing weight, but these were benefits still in the hazy future.  I couldn’t see that there were other benefits that would immediately impact my culinary life and my sense of delight in food.

A craving for sugar: it’s so common!

I have always had a major sweet tooth.  When I was a kid, it was a weekly, nail-biting task to decide how much of my allowance I could spend on candy without getting into trouble with my parents.  I would sneak home-made raw sugar concoctions when my parents weren’t at home (a tactic I learned from tasting cookie dough).  As an adult, an afternoon sweet was a must, and I loved sugar in my coffee.

Most people I meet have some sort of craving for sugar.  Of course we do—seeking sugar is a great survival advantage that evolution gave us.  Sweet means high calorie, and because calories were hard to come by, our bodies adapted to treasure sweet flavors.  But as most people know, at least in their minds, if not in their gut, too much sugar can cause health problems, and now that sugar is ubiquitous in our environment, we get too much.  For me, as I got into my late 30’s, any sugar high would cause a delayed but equal amplitude sugar low that affected my mood and my propensity to snack too much.  Among other factors, sugar caused me to gain weight and may have contributed to other health problems at that time.  Eventually, out of desperation, I changed my diet and cut out all sugar.

There have been many health benefits to cutting out sugar from my diet.  Yes, I lost weight and I crave sugar less.  Along with other changes to my diet, it has helped my digestive issues, mood issues, some autoimmune conditions, and my sleep.  But here’s the real gem that I didn’t know I would mine from this approach.  Food simply tastes better.

Hidden reward: increased appreciation of flavor

Fruit now tastes like dessert used to.  My favorite dessert right now is a banana smeared with almond butter.  Vegetables also taste better…especially the sweeter ones like carrots and tomatoes.  And the rare occasion that I have dessert?  It’s hard to describe, but I’ll try.

I had not had sugar for 5 months, except maybe 3 desserts at special gatherings and some dark cocoa-spritzed almonds on occasion, when I took a trip with my husband to a river rafting rendezvous in Idaho.  This July in Idaho, the weather was hot, but because of a hefty snowpack, the rivers were still high and cold with snowmelt.  So we wore wet suits while we were floating to stay warm in case we fell out of the raft into the frigid current.  But if we didn’t fall in, by the end of our float, we were hot.  What really helped our mood at the end of the day was the prospect of ice cream.  So one afternoon, after a long and dusty hike out of the river canyon, we went to one of the many small shops along the valley in which we were camped.  Since I hadn’t had a sweet for about 3 weeks, I figured it was a good time for a treat.  I gave in to the suggestion of the ice cream purveyor: a vanilla and homemade caramel malted.

How can I describe the taste of this ultra-sweet concoction on my tastebuds after so long not eating anything nearly that sweet?  The only way is with another short story…a picture really, seared into my mind of the first time a child has cake.

Like a child’s first cake experience

A couple of years ago I went to the first birthday party for my neighbor’s kid Annelise.  Like us, they lived in a small, 1920’s era craftsman-style house with wood floors and a great room.  When we arrived, the adults were chatting in various corners of the room and Annelise was playing with a few other kids with her toys near the front door.  Of course, Annelise didn’t really understand the concept of a birthday yet, and she was completely oblivious to the presents, the decorations and of course, the cake. 

However, soon after we arrived, our neighbors decided we had reached maximum occupancy, and it was time for dessert. I found myself in a corner of the dining room area watching them introduce their daughter to a ritual of our culture I had nearly forgotten had to be taught to young kids: the birthday cake. 

Our neighbor’s announcement to Annelise that it was time for cake had no effect on her whatsoever, so he hoisted her up and carried her into the dining room to her highchair and fitted her with a bib.  They lit the one candle on her cake and endeavored to encourage her to blow it out, to no effect (how I love the innocence of little kids), and then they helped her extinguish the flame.  The first piece of cake went to Annelise, and she was completely nonplussed.  She stared at it, then casually started squeezing the frosting with her little fingers.  Of course, being frosting, it stuck to her hands, so she engaged the instinct that is in all of us when young and have something stuck to our hands…she licked it off.

Her mouth formed an “O” and her eyes immediately grew wide in surprise at the sensation on her tastebuds.  She licked again, her eyes still wide, and then she grabbed the frosting on the cake in her fists and ate.  That was what my face looked like tasting that vanilla caramel malted.

 I felt that original visceral pleasure from sugar that we as humans wish to experience again and again, until we are numb to the sensation.

I feel like I’ve reclaimed part of my inner child.

So what’s so great?

Giving up sweets makes it more enjoyable to eat food that I’m supposed to…that’s better for my health.  And I don’t have to give desserts up all of the time—just have them very rarely…like once a month.  But that occasional ultra-sweet treat just tastes like heaven, like cake to a child, like an ice cream malt to a hot and sweaty river rafter.   I love tasting this sweetness again, and I will keep the sugar out of my diet to keep those moments of pure heaven in my life.  Most people may not need to go to the extremes that I did in cutting sugar completely out of their diet, but if you can, there are rewards beyond benefits to your health that are waiting for you.