Could You Go a Year Without Sugar? This Family Did.

“This experiment was pretty much guaranteed to wreak all kinds of unpredictable havoc with our lives,” writer Eve Schaub admits early on in her memior, “A Year Of No Sugar.”

The Schaub Family.

“I loved it.”The idea for the Vermont mother-of-two’s journey began in 2010 when she and her husband watched Dr. Robert Lustig’s video “Sugar: The Bitter Truth.” The message—that sugar is posion—clicked for Schaub. It convinced her that that “sugar is everywhere, it’s making us all fat and sick, and almost no one realizes it.” (Editor’s note: It is. We’ve written about it here).One of the hardest challenges was finding sugar-free versions of certain food staples: “I made my own mayonnaise, because at our supermarket I can’t find mayonnaise that doesn’t have sugar in it,” said Schaub. “I had to search far and wide to find bacon that didn’t have sugar in it. I will buy mayo and bacon now, but I still don’t buy bread. I bake my own bread as often as I possibly can, and when all else fails I will buy the one type I can buy [without added sugar]. I’m very stubborn on this issue. Same with tomato sauce — you can find it at the store but you have to look.” The family details their hunt in this video.

So how’d it work?”Our palates changed over time,” Schub told The Huffington Post. Things that were sweet began to taste different to us and really repellent by the fall. Things that normally looked very appealing looked obscene and disgusting. We felt healthier, it seemed like we got sick less, like we got better faster or got milder colds. My kids missed significantly less school.”