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>> RICH STOKELEY: Welcome to the Microsoft Research visiting lecture series.
My name is Rich Stokeley. It's my pleasure today to introduce Sarah Wilson.
Sarah is a blogger, a television host. She's a health coach as well. And
she's here today to talk to us about her book: I Quit Sugar. This details
her experience weaning herself off sugar. Spoiler alert: She's much happier
off the sugar. She's also going to tell us how we can do that in our own
lives and what we might expect after we pull the sugar plug, so please join
me in giving a warm welcome to Sarah Wilson.
[Applause]
>> SARAH WILSON: Thank you. Hi, everyone. Thank you very much for having
me here. And hello to everybody watching this online from your work
cubicles. I'm sorry you can't be in the room with us.
I quit sugar in January 2011, and back then, I was a journalist. I guess I
still am a journalist. I've been a journalist for 21 years. And I had a
weekend magazine column that I had to write, and I was short of a topic. I
used to write about how to make life better, and I jumped out of an airplane
with Richard Brents and I've meditated with the Dalai Lama. I've cracked
really bad jokes with Edward De Bono and done a bunch of things. And I was
short of a topic, and I thought oh, gosh. I should really try quitting sugar
just to see what happens. I've also got an autoimmune disease, and I don't
know how many of you in the room either have an autoimmune disease or know
somebody. I'm betting that everybody here at least knows somebody with an
autoimmune disease. I've got one called Hashimoto's which affects the
thyroid. I got very, very sick at the time. Shortly beforehand, I was the
editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine and it pursuant myself out massively. I
collapsed in a heap. The doctors said that I was the worst case of
Hashimoto's that they'd ever seen. They said it's a miracle you're still
alive. People were prodding me. They had interns coming to sort of look at
my blood test results and observe it as a frequent of nature. So the
endocrinologists, the doctors and nutritionists all said to me: You've got
to quit sugar. You've got blood sugar issue problems. You're heading toward
cholesterol issues, prediabetes and so on.
So I had two reasons to quit sugar. I had also had a very good reason not to
quit sugar and that is because when you've got an autoimmune disease, your
hormones are all out, and you are particularly addicted to the blood sugar
kind of roller coaster. And I was very addicted. For all intents and
purposes, I looked like a really healthy eater. I was one of those seductive
sugar addicts. I ate dark chocolate. I had honey in my chai tea. I didn't
drink soda or pop as you call it here. I didn't eat any kind of candy, apart
from dark chocolate, but again, I convinced myself that that didn't count.
But it added up to about 26 to 30 teaspoons of sugar a day.
Now to just give you some context, you may have read recently that the WHO,
or the World Health Organization, has just come out with their draft
recommendations to change the daily recommended sugar intake. Now, this is a
really big deal. The last time they tried to do it in 2010, basically every
arm of the sugar lobby lobbied the Republican senators and essentially George
Bush approached the WHO and said we're withdrawing -- I think it was almost
$500 million of funding if you try to instigate these new recommendations.
Now, they're being very cautious this time and they're putting it up for
public recommendation, so at the moment, up until the 31st, so today, people
can have a say. You can go on there and say I support these new
recommendations. I highly recommend do you that if you want to get to your
desks and are franticly getting your say. But essentially what they've done,
the WHO have recommended following sugar intake. For children, it's three
teaspoons a day. For women, it's six teaspoons a day, and for men, it's nine
teaspoons a day. And that's based on an 1800 to 2,000 calorie diet. So
we're talking very small amounts.
The average American, and this is the conservative estimate, eats about
22 teaspoons of added sugar a day. Now, I should tell you also that those
WHO recommendations include fruit juice. They include dried fruit. And they
include other kinds of sugar substitutes as well as honey. So pretty
frightening points of comparison. And in a moment, I will actually share
with you some indications of how much sugar is in everyday products and
everyday healthy products as well.
So what exactly -- and so I should say, I eventually did quit sugar and I did
it as an experiment for two weeks so they'd something to write about. And I
don't know if you know too many journalists, but there's nothing like a
deadline to make you do something. So that gave me the good kick up the
backside to do it. And so I'm actually really grateful for that.
I'm also grateful for my disease. It also forced me to quit sugar. I
probably wouldn't have done it otherwise, to be absolutely honest with you.
Which doesn't sound very convincing, does it, when I'm here trying to tell
you to quit sugar.
But so I quit. I gave it two weeks. Within two weeks, I was feeling
remarkably different. My skin visually changed. It took -- I lost -- I had
put on quite a bit of weight, about 30 pounds from my autoimmune disease.
And that's not that much actually for the kind of disease I had. A lot of
people balloon out. And I soon last that weight. And it just dropped off
really naturally without having to put too much effort into it.
And gradually, gradually, obviously it's a number of years later, but I have
been able to get my disease or my TSH levels, for those of you familiar with
this terminology, to a point where it's almost manageable and almost off
medication from having been on the highest dose possible, I'm almost off my
medication.
I'm very careful about saying that because I don't recommend come off their
medication when they quit sugar. You really have to monitor it yourself, and
I've been doing it for a long time now.
So why is sugar so bad? We're hearing so much about it in the press. I'm
sure you've seen Dr. Robert Lustig's presentation on YouTube. There's
countless books coming out. I've arrived in America with my book. A lot of
people say, look, is it just another diet? You know, we've had Atkins. No
fat. Yes, we eat fat, protein, carbs. What are we meant to eat?
The issue with fructose -- or with sugar is this: Sugar, let's call it the
same thing as high fructose corn syrup. It's the same stuff once it's in
your body, okay? Give or take a couple molecules, but essentially, it's the
same kind of stuff.
Both of them are about 50 percent fructose and 50 percent sucrose -- sorry,
glucose. So everyday table sugar, high-fructose corn syrup is 50 percent
fructose, and it's the fructose that is the problem. It's the only molecule
on the planet that we are unable to register in our brains as having eaten.
Am so when you eat glucose or protein or any kind of food molecule, we have a
corresponding hormone in our brain that says, ah, I've eaten. I'm now full.
And it turns on this appetite satiation mechanism, and it shuts everything
down and says I'm full now, I don't to eat for a while.
So you have probably noticed that you can consume a container this large of
either soda or fruit juice or some kind of beverage. We can also eat a whole
packet of Oreos in one session. We can also eat a huge amount of calories
contained a in candy bar. And we don't get full.
You try to each that much yogurt in one session or even milk in one session,
you will absolutely struggle to do it. And the reason being is that it
contains fat, it contains a whole bunch of other things and it doesn't
contain fructose.
So appetite mechanism kicks in, it says I'm full, I don't want to eat any
more. Bang, done, move on to the rest of your day.
Sugar does not possess that mechanism.
At the same time, it's been proven, albeit in studies with rats, but this is
not the kind of study you can do on small children, lock them in a room and
give them a whole heap of candy and see what happens. It's the same as
addictive as cocaine and heroin. Now, there's a number of studies that have
actually shown that. Of the rats actually preferring sugar over cocaine and
heroin. This is heroin and cocaine addicted rats. Of so I'm very careful
with those kind of studies because they haven't been done on humans. They're
not gold standard, but it does give you an indication, but again, anybody who
has gone back to the freezer for another scoop of ice cream or another Oreo
knows how addictive sugar can be. And anybody in this room who is sitting
there going, I really don't want to quit sugar, that is the addictive nature
of sugar talking to you right now.
(Laughter)
>> SARAH WILSON: Now, why would this be the case? Why would we be
evolved -- we're pretty sophisticated beings. We've been around a while now.
Why would we evolve to not have an off switch and to be addicted to be sugar?
Well, it makes absolutely, absolutely perfect sense. 10,000 years ago, be we
know when we were running around Savannahs being chafed by wildebeests, we
actually -- there was very, very little fructose on the planet. There was a
few berries, quite a bit of berries, a little bit of honey. All of it was
really hard to get to. You had to climb a tree and combat bees and climb
through bushes and there was really very little on the planet. But when we
did find it, with you found that when we eight it, it was not instant source
of fat.
So fructose is the only molecule, not only is it addictive, not only does it
not possess an appetite off switch, it's the only molecule that goes straight
to our liver and is processed in our liver. So other energy sources are
processed through our cells. And it's a slower process.
Fructose is processed in our liver, and it's basically transferred into fatty
acids or liver fat within an instant. So as you drink your can of Coke, by
the time you put it down, it's turned into fat. And of course, fatty
liver -- fatty acids around the liver is the worst kind of fat. Visceral
fat, you've probably heard doctors and so on talk about visceral fat. It's
the fat that gets in and around your organs. Very hard to lose. It's very
much linked to heart disease and a whole range of other metabolic diseases.
So wonderful when you've chased by a wildebeest or you've got to go and hunt
your honey or berries for a whole day. Okay? We need this energy. We were
designed not to expend more energy than it takes to go and get our food, if
you know what I mean.
So we actually had these pockets of high-saturated quantities of fat via
fructose that actually gave us that instant energy. So of course we evolved
to be highly addicted to it, to seek it out. To be obsessed by it. And then
to gorge on it. To be able to find a berry bush and eat it and eat it and
eat it and eat it and really, really some good quantities of fat into us.
And that made sense back then. Of course. It makes absolute no sense now.
Now, our bodies, our genealogy is exactly the same as it was 10,000 years
ago, but our diets are dramatically different. So I probably don't have to
to spell out how back that equation all works out to be. We only have to
sort of look around the world we're in to see just how sick sugar is in fact
making us.
The final thing of course that we're discovering really in the last 30 to
60 years is that fructose is also causing what are called metabolic diseases.
They're very much the more than diseases we all hear about. So Type II
diabetes, everything -- Alzheimer's. I think they're saying that there's
about 22 different types of metabolic diseases. Depends who you talk to.
We're talking, as I say, heart disease, Type II diabetes, bunch of cancers.
Autoimmune diseases. Anything to do with inflammation. Sugar causes
inflammation.
And essentially, they're now very, very convincing science linking sugar to
pancreatic cancer and I think we're going to see it even linked to more
cancers going forward. The peer-reviewed studies are starting to roll in
week after week, and you've probably seen them in the press on a regular
basis.
So the next question I get asked is, well, why aren't we told all of this?
If this is such terrible news, why hasn't some edicts been issued from above?
Well, I guess there's been attempts. And of course, we -- I was talking to
somebody at lunch today, and those attempts are sort of shattered down by the
sugar lobby as sort of efforts from the nanny state. We've heard that over
and over again. And I was sharing at lunch that somebody said to me recently
at a conference I was speaking at with Dr. Lustig and a bunch of other
American scientists and this woman who was speaking, she said well, look if
we're in the nanny state, well, okay. My nanny, she knew what she was
talking about and when it comes to diets and dietary thinking, I would
actually listen to my nanny before I listened to anyone else. And I think we
actually got to a point where we actually do need government intervention on
this matter.
The problem is, of course, there's a web of -- I won't say conspiracy or
anything like that. I actually think there's very good reason why we've been
led to believe that sugar is fine and fairly innocuous, okay. Empty
calories, but a bit sweet stuff is not going to hurt anyone. Everything in
moderation. You know, I hear that all the time.
It goes back to the 1960s, basically there was heart disease was on the up
and up. And I think Eisenhower, I think I've got the right era, had a heart
attack and so, you know, the search was on for what was the cause of heart
disease as well as obesity levels were starting to increase.
And there was one scientist here in the U.S. called Ancel Keys and there was
another scientist in the U.K., both working on this very matter. Over in the
U.K., the science had found that sugar was the problem. Over here, saturated
fat was found to be the problem.
Now, the study that was done back in the 1960s, Ancel Keys was the guy that
invented the Army ration packs. He was the beloved scientist within the
government because he was a bit of a hero for inventing these ration packs.
And he was quite a media tart for back then. He knew how to get a headline.
And he managed do this study on 22 countries around the world that linked
obesity and heart disease, I should say, and saturated fat consumptions.
Now, fantastic, except for the fact that he decided to only release the
results of seven of the 22 countries. And of course he cherry picked the
seven countries that showed a connection with between saturated fat and heart
disease. And so back then, before, you know, we had Bing or Google, you
know, people just accepted it. The FDA took on board that advice and
developed the food pyramid. We all grew up -- I think everybody in the
room's old enough to have grownup with the food pyramid.
That food pyramid then traveled around the world. I grew up with the food
pyramid some Australia. It's gone throughout the world. And as you know, at
the bottom, it's got carbs. And if you have a look at the picture that they
draw, there's donuts and muffins and so on. Nobody distinguishes what kind
of carbs so we're talking sugar.
Then you've got protein. And then of course you've got that tiny little
segment at the top which is fat. And we were very much advised not eat
saturated fat many of us grew up being told margarine was the way to go. The
various health organizations took all of this on. Then we got subsidized
sugar and then subsidized corn syrup and then we had excess amounts and
basically it became a very cheap product. There became vested interests in
ensuring that the food that we eat contains sugar and of course corn syrup,
and around and around it went. To the point where now if you have a look at
the Dietitians, I think, Association of America, I think that's the correct
title -- in Australia, it's the DAA. I think it's DAA here as well. If you
have a look at the various heart foundations and so on, have a look at their
sponsorship pages. You will be absolutely horrified, or perhaps not, to find
that their main sponsors are Coca Cola, Nestlé, Kellogg's, and so on.
Basically big sugar.
So we've got these organizations, we've got nutritionists, we've got a whole
range of people invested in this idea that saturated fat is bad. Now,
there's a link between saturated fat and sugar and the link is this: When
you take saturated fat out of a product, you got to put something else back
in to make it taste good and also to replace that fullness-of-mouth texture.
So what has everyone been putting back in for the last 40, 50, 60 years?
Sugar.
So the low-fat industry is in complete cahoots with the sugar industry. So
if you go and compare low-fat and a full-fat version of something, you will
find that the main difference, the low-fat version is absolutely drenched in
sugar. So much so that you end up getting this ridiculous scenario where the
full-fat version is way less fattening once it's in our body. On a plate,
yes. You add up the calories, and the full-fat version will probably come
out as more fattening. But when we eat it, I kind of think we all know that
that's important bit, right? We don't sit there with it on a plate. We eat
stuff.
Once it's in our bodies and it's a completely different equation and
basically the fat gets metabolized, we burn it off, we burn it off slowly, it
triggers the satiation, the appetite hormones, we break things down. But
it's the full-fat version. It's got all the enzymes that help you break down
that particular food. When you take fat out, often all the enzymes come out
so you actually are not metabolizing the food properly.
And yes, you full so you don't eat as much.
And I think last week, I think was it last week, your speaker was speaking
about the whole calories in/calories out. Jonathan Baylor? Is that right?
I think some of you might have come to his presentation. And from what I
know of his book, he very much dispels that whole calorie myth. When we eat
food, it has a very different -- we're not that simple. If it was calories
in/calories out, fat makes you fat, life would be a lot simpler. But
unfortunately that's not the way we work.
So that's why we're not being told. So we've got to work it out for
ourselves and we've got to make the change ourselves. And my book is called
I Quit Sugar. It's not called You Must Quit Sugar or Everyone Go and Quit
Sugar. It's I Quit Sugar, I gave it a go. And I tried it all out and this
is how it worked and this is what might work for you.
I've got a question at the back.
Did you want to ask it now or at the end?
>>: It's relevant now I guess. I'm still confused a little bit about, like,
talking about added sugars and manufactured foods. If I'm eating an apple,
if I'm eating a banana or an orange, so does that come with fructose?
>> SARAH WILSON:
>>:
Yeah.
Or it's okay because it has a whole bunch of fiber.
>> SARAH WILSON: Okay. So the question is: What about whole fruit?
that -- does that contain sugar. Is that included in these sugar
recommendations?
Is
Well, very good question because I'm about to get to all of that right now.
So if you want to wait five minutes, I'll take all of that up. But very good
question.
So I get asked often, what are some things that you can do to cut back on
sugar. There's a couple things you can do. This is where I think I get to
your point.
The first thing you can do is not drink your sugar in any form whatsoever.
So if you don't want to quit sugar straight away, it's all just too much, if
you have got a gnarly white-knuckled resistance to the whole idea, there are
a few really basic things that you may be doing that you can probably start
to eliminate and it will probably make a very big difference. So don't drink
your sugar.
So fruit juice. A glass of Coca Cola, just a standard glass, sort of the
same amount contained in a can, is around about 9 to 10 teaspoons of sugar a
glass of apple juice, whether it comes from a carton or whether it's being
freshly squeezed by Buddhist monks using organic apples on the side of a
mountain top in Burma, it doesn't matter. Right? It's the same stuff when
we're talking sugar.
Glass by glass, they contain exactly the same amount of sugar. About 9 to
10 teaspoons. So if you're somebody who is skipping breakfast and going to
one of those juice bars and getting a kale, apple pear, peach, and Spirulina,
whatever it is, I'm betting your sugar consumption is way over your daily
sugar, recommended sugar consumption, and that is a really scary thing.
So if you can, cut out juice, never drink juice.
coffee.
Drink water, milk, tea,
While I mention milk, milk is sweet. It does contain
lactose. Lactose is not the same as fructose. A lot
especially in western cultures to actually metabolize
got lactose intolerance, it's a different story. But
of view, it contains absolutely no fructose. Milk is
can tolerate it.
sugar. It contains
of people have evolved,
lactose. So if you've
from the fructose point
fantastic stuff if you
So fruit juice.
The next one is low-fat products. I mentioned a moment ago when they take
fat out, a lot of manufacturers put fat back in. So compare your mayonnaise.
Low-fat, full-fat. Go and have a look at the sugar content and you'll see
what I mean.
Probably the worst culprit -- and again, it's a breakfast food -- is yogurt.
So if you're looking at a small carton of yogurt, you know, or standard serve
for a low-fat plain unsweetened yogurt, okay, no added sugar, you're talking
about six teaspoons of sugar. Now, how can they whack on a label that says
natural and no added sugar? Well, disguise it and they put it in the form of
things like inulin, which is essentially a sugar once it's broken down in the
body, but it can be classified as a fiber or a prebiotic. We know this
wording from the side of the [indiscernible], don't we? So low-fat yogurt in
particular is absolutely drenched with sugar.
Now, if you want to go into the detail of how to read a label, I've got that
in my book. Bear in mind it's probably going to become, hopefully, outdated
very soon because the FDA is about to change their labeling laws which is
fantastic news because American nutritional labels are -- you need a degree
in science or maybe to work at Microsoft to be able to read them and
calculate how much sugar you're actually eating.
But as just a top [indiscernible] thing, eat the full-fat version, people.
You know, it's the best way to go. It contains the enzymes that break down
the food. It will satiate you so you eat less of it. It will contain the
nutrients that you need so you're not actually eating empty calories.
means it doesn't contain the added sugar.
And it
The final thing that you can do is avoid sauces. People say to me, well, I
eat out quite a bit. I used to be a restaurant reviewer. I still am very
heavily involved in the food industry and I eat out quite a bit. So how do I
do that? Well, the best thing to do is to avoid sauces. So when you go to,
I don't know, foot Court over here at Microsoft or even if you choose in
between restaurants, I went over to the food Court and had lunch over there
today. I chose fish, pork, vegetables with no gooby sauces. Gooby sauces,
the goop, that's sugar. Okay? Barbecue sauce, tomato sauce, 50 percent
sugar. Contains more sugar than chocolate topping, chocolate ice cream
topping.
When you go to a Thai restaurant, you know, you can have in one serve up to
half a cup of sugar. And that's why it tastes so good.
If you're going out for different, choose Indian over Thai and just request
that there's no sugar, but generally sweetened with coconut products.
And coconut is fantastic stuff, very low in fructose, and beautiful sweetener
and a beautiful source of fat. This is a piece of trivia for you. I am
often asked what's my big sort of go-to thing to eat when I've got a sugar
craving? This is when everyone's ears perk up. And I did -- oh, gosh, I
forget the name of it, not day break. What's that -- good day, this morning,
be and I left my coconut oil with Margaret because she was like what's the
trick? What do I do? What do I do when I just get that hankering. And I
think a lot of women in the room, men as well, know that feeling after lunch
when it's like I'm not feeling full. I'm needing something sweet. And you
hold out until about 3:00 o'clock, then you go and have your muffin or your
candy bar.
My trick is to eat a tablespoon or two of pure coconut oil. Pure saturated
fat. It's sweet. I mix it with cacao sometimes. It's got a beautiful sweet
flavor. You have it, and a few people in the room might have tried it
because I was speaking earlier. You eat it and all of a sudden, you just go,
oh, and then you can get on with the rest of your day and you can get through
to dinner without needing to eat another thing.
Now, it's a medium chain fatty acid. The only other -- and it contains an
acid called lauric acid. The only other substance on the planet that
contains lauric acid is breast milk, mother's breast milk. It is incredible
for your metabolism. If you are needing to use a little bit of weight, it is
the secret weapon.
I can see your face. Your face is not looking impressed with the idea of
eating a spoonful of coconut oil. But seriously, it is -- what was that?
>>:
Two tablespoons?
>> SARAH WILSON: One to two. Yeah. One to two. And if you like, you can
mix it with some cacao powered and to make it into a chocolatey snack. I
make my chocolate recipe's basically coconut oil, cacao, and a little bit of
brown rice syrup as a sweetener. Or I personally don't use the sweetener
anymore. I don't need it. My taste buds have changed quite a lot.
But I put my
point. It's
what they're
well. So if
sweet potato, I cook chicken. It's got a really high smoke
one of the safest oils to cook with. Indian cooking, they know
on about. It's fantastic and fantastic for inflammation as
you've got any kind of chronic illness, it is wonderful stuff.
I'm not paid by the coconut oil industry, by the way.
So sources. Yes. Indian food can often be a lot better than Thai food.
Greek food is fantastic. It's grilled meats, it's salads, it's vegetables.
Anything where you can see what the -- if you can point to the ingredients
and you know what they are, then it's generally okay.
Gooby sauces, avoid them.
So getting back to the fruit question. I've said fruit juice is bad. I'll
also add to that dried fruit. Dried fruit works out to be around about 60 to
70 percent sugar. That's why breakfast cereals, the healthy breakfast
cereals contain just in one cup just about five to six teaspoons of sugar,
and it's predominantly from the dried fruit. Oh, it's natural. Well, my
response to that is well, so is arsenic and petroleum. Doesn't mean we need
to eat it.
Now, granted, fruit, whole fruit contains wonderful fiber. And it contains
lots of minerals and vitamins. And yes, it does contain a lot of fructose.
So an apple will contain around about three teaspoons of sugar. Banana, 3 to
4 teaspoons, depending on, obviously on the size of the piece of fruit. You
can choose low-fructose fruit and that's what I tend to eat. So berries are
fantastic. Strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and so on. Kiwi fruit is
fantastic. It's low in fructose as well.
Grapefruit is okay. Your stone fruits are medium. Your worst culprits -and you're probably not going to be surprised: pineapple, bananas, and
grapes. And watermelon. Okay. Really high in sugar. And you know, I don't
know about you but most people don't eat just a small handful of grapes.
People can eat this many grapes. And you are eating vast quantities of
sugar.
So whole fruit is fantastic stuff and if you're getting your sugar intake
from whole fruit, that's the best thing you can do for your health and I have
absolutely no problem with it. The fiber slows down the passage of the sugar
on to your liver. You know, the water also slows it down and ensures that
everybody is metabolized well.
But if you're eating a fruit salad with 3 or 4 pieces of fruit in it, you are
consuming double the amount of sugar that you're meant to in one day. So
just bear that in mind.
I personally, I err towards vegetables. I find vegetables contain more
minerals. It's more bang for your buck. And that's just how I go about
things.
So some of the other questions I get asked, and I'll cross over to your own
questions in a moment, but I'm getting that some of you might be wondering
about alcohol. Well I've got good news. Good news and bad news.
The good news is that in wine, for instance, I'm a really keen red wine
drinker, it's the sugar that ferments to become alcohol, so very little
fructose is left in red wine. White wine, not so much. Champagne,
sparkling, I'd avoid because it's still got quite high quantities.
You're white spirits, your dry spirits are no fructose, so they are a better
option.
Beer is maltose, again, it's not fructose. So I'm absolutely not advocating
going out and getting sloshed instead of having desert, and Dr. Lustig has a
really good saying: A glass of wine, treat it as desert. So a glass of
wine, one or two glasses of wine a night is absolutely fantastic for your
metabolism and so on, and in fact, Lustig, in his latest book, outlines
science which is not absolutely proven but it does point to the fact that the
health benefits of red wine, it actually sends your body into a slight shock,
gets your body activated, and your blood sugar levels kind of fired up. And
it means that when you eat your meal, you actually metabolize it in a fast,
safer way. So one, maybe two if you're a bigger person glasses of wine is
great.
When you have these spirits, mix it with soda water or seltzer or whatever it
is that you want to call it. Not tonic water. Tonic water is just as
sugary, almost as sugary as Coca Cola.
So yes, that's the answer on alcohol. Again, remember alcohol taxes your
liver, so if your liver is going through a rough time, really go easy on the
alcohol.
And then sweeteners, people often want to know what sweeteners I use. And in
my book I outline the details in a lot of detail. I looked into it for a
number of years and looked at the science, looked at what was happening
overseas. There's a number of artificial sweeteners that are allowed in
Australia and the U.S. which are banned in Japan and the A.U. Splenda I
think is one of them. I avoid all of those. Anything ending in O-L.
Sorbitol, maltitol and so on, avoid it's a sugar alcohol. And what that
means is that it's very hard to digest.
I don't know if you've noticed when you have chewing gum, it can make you a
little bit gassy. That's basically because your stomach is just going I
don't know what do with this I'm just going to -- it's like it doesn't have
the choppers to break down the molecules so it just passes it to the large
intestine and the large the intestine basically has to use all kinds of
bacteria to try to break it down and it invariably produces a bit of wind.
(Laughter)
>> SARAH WILSON: So not good on your stomach apart from anything else.
avoid anything ending in O-L. And a lot of sugar-free products have
maltitol. Be really aware of that.
So
There are two exceptions: Xylitol. If anyone who goes to health food shops
you might have noticed xylitol being sold. It's deemed relatively safe.
It's fairly processed. Not the best option. The two sweetener -- and the
other exception is eurotrol which is generally mixed with Stevia. And I know
many of you would have heard of Stevia because it's starting to get a little
traction. Stevia is a plant. It's related to the minute plant and it's got
a bit of a bitter taste. It's mixed with eurotrol to kind of turn it into a
granule like sugar so it can be used one for one like normal table sugar and
it also gets rid of that sort of bitter taste to a certain extent, so I think
here the most popular one is Truvia, and I think Equal also make a Stevia.
And in fact, I found one this morning -- it's in my other jacket pocket.
It's Stevia mixed with dextrose. And dextrose is glucose, and I mentioned
another exception to the O-S rule. Dextrose, glucose, we can metabolize
them. So I think this particular one is mixed with dextrose which is -- I
hasn't seen before.
So Stevia, fantastic. It's natural, albeit processed. But it's quite a good
substitute. And the other one that I really like to use and it's relatively
unheard of here, is brown rice syrup. It's essentially a slow-releasing
carbohydrate. It's 20 percent moisture, 80 percent a sort of concoction of
glucose and maltose. And it breaks down quite slowly in the body. So it's
not that huge dump into the system. I use it like honey. I bake with it. I
drizzle a little bit of it now and then on some things. And it's available
in most health shops. It's going to become more readily available, I feel.
And it's really interesting, Gwyneth Paltrow put out her cookbook a little
while back and maple syrup and agave and blah, blah, blah. And agave, as I
mention the -- I think it mentioned -- is 70 to 90 percent fructose. It is
one of the worst things that you can do. Do not touch agave. Apart from the
fact also that it's really processed. There's all kinds of political and
ethical issues with it as well.
But she's now in her second book, she has a very famous brown -- a browny,
chocolate brownie recipe. And in her first book, it's made with maple syrup
and agave. And in her second book -- and I flatter myself to think that I
might have had something to do with this, she actually does contribute a
recipe to my book, but she uses brown rice syrup.
chefs starting to use this. Yes?
>>:
So there's a few more
What about coconut palm sugar?
>> SARAH WILSON: Oh, good question. What about coconut palm sugar?
Sometimes there's also coconut nectar as well and coconut blossom nectar. It
is essentially palm sugar and which is about 35 to 45 percent fructose. And
it's not as sweet. So a lot more is used. That's what's often used in Thai
food is the palm sugars and large amounts of it. So a lot of health food
shops and vegan places and raw food places use it, and they love to say
natural. So is arsenic and petroleum. But yeah, it's not as high, but you
do tend to -- people do tend to add more of it, so it works out much the
same.
So yeah brown rise syrup, I think it's great stuff. It's quite affordable.
It's about the same price as honey. I've gradually reduced and reduced and
reduced the amounts that I need, which is a really good idea because any
sweetener now -- they've released some studies that have shown that even just
the sweet taste can continue a sugar addiction. So the more that we can get
off these artificial sweeteners and sugar substitutes the better.
I do confess to having a number of desert recipes in my book, but I do flag
that they're to be treated as treats. Even though they're sugar free, they
need to be eaten as treats.
So that's sort of my overview. I try not to get too preachy, be but I
sometimes can't help it because I'm behind a pulpit and I have a microphone
and a willing audience, so any questions? I can see a hand up at the back.
>>: [Indiscernible] as a sweetener? And is there a difference
[indiscernible] dried fruit and regular fruit [indiscernible]?
>>:
>> SARAH WILSON: Okay. So the first question is monk fruit. A relatively
new sweetener and [indiscernible] hearing about it. It's some African fruit
that's really ugly looking and it's been used as a sweetener. And I think
it's been used in a very similar way to Stevia. It needs to be mixed with
eurotrol to be sort of granulated and to be palatable.
They're still experimenting with it. I'm not seeing it being used by many
manufacturers yet. Coca Cola and Pepsi and so on are all experimenting with
Stevia at the moment and I'm hearing all kinds of rumors about Pepsi trying
to buy out all Stevia crops around the world, that kind of thing. I'm not
hearing it about the ugly and humble monk fruit yet. But keep an eye out for
it.
In Australia, we can get it as a granulated sort of substitute. But I
haven't found great results with it yet. But I'd say the science
[indiscernible] to improve.
Second thing was the dried fruit thing. Dried fruit is basically you take
all the moisture out, you're left with a very concentrated nod drool of
sugar. So around about 70 percent sugar. So it's a really -- if you can
eat -- if you can eat sort of a dried apricot if you have two half, two
pieces of dried apricot and that's as much as you eat, then that's fantastic.
I don't know too many people that only eat two halves of a dried apricot.
You generally eat a handful. You consume about five pieces of fruit. So
avoid dried fruit. Absolutely. Yes?
>>:
What about things like rice and other grains, pasta, bread?
>> SARAH WILSON: Carbs. Starchy carbs.
where does that all fit in.
I get asked this all the time,
So I'm the quit sugar girl. I focus on that message. Ask me personally
about carbs, I say work one thing at a time. So if you're trying to get
sugar out of your diet, work on processed sugar and obviously sugars and then
if you do it for a couple months and you startle to see some results, you may
find benefits from cutting back on these starchy carbs. Now the science does
show that these starchy carbs break down pretty fast into essentially sugar
and has the same, very similar metabolic affects. And we're seeing a lot of
people, paleo diet and all that kind of thing, there's a lot of credentials I
think. There's also a lot of nutters attached to some of these movements,
and I distance myself a little bit from it.
Ask me personally, yes, I eat minimal carbs. Because I just find them hard
to digest. The toxins as well, the argument I make is that a lot of these
grains contain toxins. Cows have hoofs. Various animals have horns to
defend themselves. Grains have husks which are very -- which contain toxins.
So that's why a lot of people get bloated when they eat legumes and various
grains. If you are somebody who's preparing your grains really well, that
can make a difference. Generally most people don't. So yeah, I tend to
avoid them. They have low nutritional value. They contain toxins and so
place a load on your digestion, and we all have weak digestive systems now,
and there are much better things to eat.
I sort of see them as a waste of my saliva glands.
>>:
If you were going to eat them, what would be the best --
>> SARAH WILSON: Okay. So I'll give you a nice little snapshot thing.
People ask me what's the best bread to eat. Sourdough. Even some commercial
sourdoughs that you get from your Safeway or whatever will still be better
than a lot of whole grains. Whole grain bread, forget it. It's a very long
story. If you want to read about it, read Michael Pollan's Cooked. It's a
fantastic book and it does go into quite some detail into the whole grain --
I'd prefer to eat white bread to whole grain, to be honest, in terms of the
toxic load on my stomach and digestibility. It provides very little
nutritional benefit, but really, but so you remember Doe, the yeast that's in
the live culture, it actually helps break down the gluten and it will also
breaks down any sugar. So that's the best way to go. Yes?
>>:
What can you share on milk, whole milk versus non-fat milk?
>> SARAH WILSON:
>>:
Whole milk, so milk -- whole fat versus --
[Indiscernible] --
>> SARAH WILSON: -- semi or whatever? Skim milk. Always eat the whole
food. Our grandmothers, our great grandmothers, they knew what they were
talking about. Now, essentially, when you -- pig Farmers, when they want to
fatten their pigs they feed them skim milk because it's basically got a much
higher sugar load. Not because it's added, but because when you take out of
other bits and pieces, what you're left with sugary water. Okay. So keep
that in mind. It's far more fattening. I know it doesn't seem to make sense
but have a look around at everybody eating low-fat products and have a look
around at how many of them are not using weight.
The other thing is when you take out fat, you
enzymes, so lactase is the enzyme that breaks
people I know who thought that they were milk
full-fat milk as an experiment and found they
drinking the enzyme that helps break down the
take out a lot of the wonderful
down the lactose. A lot of
intolerant started drinking
had no problems because they
lactose.
Don't mess with your food. Never eat an egg white omelette. Oh, my
goodness. It's probably one of the worst things you can do. Egg white is
really hard to digest. You need the enzymes that are contained in the egg
yolk to break it down. You also need the fat that's contained in the egg
yolk to actually absorb the proteins.
Mother nature knew what she was doing.
(Laughter)
>> SARAH WILSON:
We just tamper and get fat and sick.
Yes?
>>: I want to go back to what you said [indiscernible] what is the link
between [indiscernible] sugar [indiscernible] sugar and then you mentioned
that you went off your meds and [indiscernible] you have to supplement your
[indiscernible].
>> SARAH WILSON:
>>:
Yeah.
Okay.
You obviously know --
Are you saying that you can no longer need to supplement --
>> SARAH WILSON: No, no, I was careful to say that I -- through diet, over a
very long period of time, I have been able to reduce the amount of medication
I take and I've been able to modulate my health. So the question was the
link between autoimmune disease and sugar consumption and also where quitting
sugar has seen me come off my meds.
I still take thyroxin. And I may have to take it for the rest of my life.
And that's fine. Modern medicine is required when you have a complete
deficiency. So I take a small amount. Am so I've reduced it from 250
micrograms down to 25 a day. And that works for me now. You know, and I
find that because my blood sugar levels of stable all of my hormones have
kicked in, you know, I've basically will restored a lot of damage and doctors
sort of go wow, how did you do that? So, and I'm not -- I'm not unusual.
There's a number of people that are now in my orbit who have done the same
thing through food. They met -- you manage your illness rather than it
managing you.
So the connection between autoimmune and sugar at its most basic level sugar
inflames. Of autoimmune, all autoimmune diseases are an inflammatory disease
and the other thing, sugar basically destroys your gut. You have probably
heard of leaky gut. And essentially, most people with autoimmune disease
have a leaky gut and what happens is toxins and foods and gluten in the case
of thyroid in particular, gluten passes through into your bloodstream, your
ant bodies come out as they need to and attack -- you have probably scratched
yourself and got a scab, gets inflamed, gets red and pushed to the surface.
That's what our immune system does. Or a splinter, it will push it to the
surface and do its work and heal. It's fantastic.
What happens when you have got an a autoimmune disease. It gets confused and
it goes, hey, let's just kind of go out and attack some organs while we're
here. And in my case, the gluten molecule is very similar looking to the
thyroid receptors on our cells. Pretty much every cell in our body has a
thyroid receptor. And so when we eat gluten, it brings out the antibodies
and the antibodies go, hey, let's go and attack. And so it goes around and
has a bit of a party on my thyroid. That's what happens with all
inflammatory diseases.
So that's a couple of the connections. Then you introduce the insulin, you
introduce the hormone imbalances and it's just this cluster. I was going to
say the rude version of that word, but the cluster of stuff. Yeah.
How much time have I got left? I haven't been keeping a line on time. Oh,
there's the time. I've got -- how much more? I've got another ten minutes
of questions. I think I saw a hand up over there. Yes?
>>:
If you [indiscernible].
>> SARAH WILSON: How to quit sugar, cold turkey or otherwise. Well, a lot
of people say moderation and I say you can't -- unfortunately sugar is the
only molecule on the planet we just can't do moderation. We're not designed.
It's the only thing on the planet cannot do moderation with it. So yes, I do
suggest cold turkey.
My eight-week program, it's -- I don't like doing sales-y thing, but I did
research with addiction theorists and so on and worked out sort of the best
kind of way to do it. So it's easy enough for one week, and then it's cold
turkey. It's replacing sugar with fats. Essentially you're switching your
body from a kind of -- if you can imagine your metabolism is like a fire and
you -- when you eat sugar and cheap carbohydrates, you're throwing caro and
paper on to the fire. And it will keep burning but you're going to have to
tend to that fire all day.
When you throw on proteins and fats, it's like putting a long on the fire.
You put it on, you eat it, five, six hours, it slowly burns and in five or
six hours, you've got to replace things and you're ready for your next meal.
So that takes about six weeks to adjust that appetite mechanism. So I
recommend an eight-week process and for six of those weeks there's absolutely
no sugar, no sweetener either. No rice, brown rice syrup or Stevia. And the
final week, you introduce fruit and things like that back in. So it's no
fruit for that six weeks which people go oh, but I lived to tell the tail. I
lived for six weeks without fruit. Yes? I've got another question here. Of
I saw you.
>>:
So you said that [indiscernible].
>> SARAH WILSON: Okay. So green smoothies versus green juices. So green
juices is the difference being you squeeze and don't include the fiber. A
green smoothy if it's actually made in the proper way, blended, where you
don't actually Chuck any of the stuff out is a much better option because
you're getting the whole fruit you're getting fiber everything in there.
I actually have a thing against food waste. I campaign against it in
Australia. And so I have a problem with juicing for that reason as well.
But green smoothies if you're going to go for a green smoothy, go for one
that has very little fruit in it. Personally don't need the fruit in it.
I'll throw 1 or 2 frozen strawberries in and blend it up with some cucumbers,
celery, and so on but yeah, I think green smoothies are fine. It's green
juices that are the problem because they don't have any of the fiber. Yes?
>>: So another thing that we were taught to do is graze every 2 to 3 hours
for meals. I noticed you just said 5 to 6 hours, so I don't know if you were
being literal.
>>: Yes, I am being absolutely literal. Solet whole idea of grazing and
eating five to six meals a day was invented literally in the 1990s so it was
kind of invented by a nutritionist because we were all having blood sugar
issues. We were so addicted to sugar that we need to keep the roller coaster
going. So you speak to generations previously, they ate three meals a day.
And if you go to Europe, they don't snack. They have breakfast lunch and
dinner. In fact, in many countries, the lunch and dinner. They'll have
something very small for breakfast and it's lunch and dinner, but they sit
down and they eat a proper meal.
I now this sound ridiculous but I think one of the big problems s in the
west, we don't eat enough. We don't eat enough at lunch in particular. Am
so people have these little kind of sushi roll and then, you know, a little
this and a little that or a little salad, hold the dressing and then they go
and eat a whopping great piece of banana muffin in the afternoon and then
they go and eat something else before dinner. They pre-eat and then they go
and have their dinner and have something after dinner.
Throw a log on the fire and get on with the rest of your life and stop
thinking about food is what I say.
So I eat three meals a day. But I eat two -- 12 to tablespoons of butter or
oil on everything. Vitamins A, E, K, and D which are your essential vitamin
in vegetables, especially leafy greens, are not absorbable without fat:
They're fat soluble vitamins. And there we are eating these -- eating them
without fat.
The French, our grandparents, they all put butter on their vegetables for
that reason. So yeah. I'm very much against -- in fact, in my eight-week
program online, I have an online program if you want menu plans and shopping
lists and the whole things, recipes for the whole eight weeks. At
Iquitsugar.com. You -- I actually --lets no snacking from week seven on
wards. Yeah. So I eat my snacks with my lunch. That's why I say, end of
lunch I have my coconut chocolate thing. Yeah. So that's the way I do it.
I eat like that. I eat that much food for lunch. And then I'm done. So
yeah. Anyway there's a lot -- you'll read a lot more about all of because
the science is rolling in and showing that you know, it's not good for us to
keep -- not give our stomachs a rest.
I've got room for one more question.
>>:
I'll do these two, sorry.
On a typical day, being what do you eat [indiscernible].
>> SARAH WILSON: What do I eat typically? Okay. So for breakfast, I will
eat -- some of these recipes are in the book. I'll eat some spinach and
frozen peas. Sounds ridiculous. I cook all my vegetables and I encourage
this in the book, is to cook up your vegetables when you first buy them, so
I'll buy my broccoli and my kale I steam them all up and put them into Ziploc
containers. I am single. I life on my own. So it's a way -- my freezer is
full of these individual servers. So grab one of those, put some frozen peas
in it. I take it to work. Of I throw them in a bowl, two eggs, and maybe
some cheese, stir it up, put it in the microwave. I don't have a problem
with microwaves if it gets real food into me. And that's my breakfast. Or I
have a green smoothy and eat it with a handful of nuts. I will make a big
smoothy with basically cacao, a chocolate smoothy with cacao and milk and
yogurt and chia seeds and so on.
For lunch I do a lot of slow cooking so I make these big batches of
slow-cooked meat with vegetables and freeze them in batches so at the office,
I defrost it and I just take zucchini and handful of beans and steam that up
with it so it's vegetables and meat. I have these mish-mash meals and I've
got some recipes in there where I just kind of one-pan wonders, just cook up
the vegetables I use sausage, a really good quality sausage. I cut that up
and cook it up. Dinner is much the same thing or I'm out for dinner.
So at a restaurant, I'll order -- I eat Greek food. I eat a lot of cheese.
I eat calamari. I'll eat fish and vegetables. So yeah. That's -- and
coconut oil. Yeah. At the back?
>>:
[Indiscernible].
>> SARAH WILSON:
(Laughter)
I didn't mean to groan, sorry.
>> SARAH WILSON: Yeah, it is harder. I'm going to sound sales-y. In
Australia we're very awkward about doing hard sell. We almost pretend we've
got nothing to sell. In fact, we almost tell people not to -- don't, don't
buy my book. Maybe I should feel confident here saying I've got a book
called I quit sugar [indiscernible] cookbook which is available online. It's
an E book. And so it's got kids recipes and advice for how to deal with
kids.
A couple of really quick pointers, I'm sure many of you here are parents.
Don't stigmatize sugar. Don't talk about not eating sugar. Just have really
great food in your house that just happens to not contain sugar. Don't get
hung up about kids parties. If I go to a party and eat a whole lot of sugar,
as soon as you stigmatize it, you know when you see a wet paint don't touch
sign all you want to do is touch it. Tell kids not to eat sugar, they're
just going to become obsessed. So I think kids, just like adults, if they
start to eat less and less sugar, they'll go to the party, have a couple of
sips of soda and feel sick and that generally is what happens. I think keep
it as natural as possible. Cut out the fruit juice, the dried fruit in the
granola bars and all that kind of thing. Just make swaps without making a
big deal of it. And get your kids cooking. And get your kids shopping. So
if you want to start to educate your kids at that age, take them shopping
with you and tell them to go and find the mayonnaise with the least amount of
sugar. Or the yogurt with the least amount of sugar and then they're
responsible. So there are just a couple tips and good luck.
(Laughter).
>> SARAH WILSON: All right. I think that's all I've got time for. I'm
going to sign some books, so if you've got specific questions, come and ask
me. Thanks.
[Applause]