Lauren Manaker, dietitian, on the challenge of cutting sugar out of your diet: “You can just treat it like food”
The dietitian spoke about reducing overall sugar levels in what we regularly consume.
Most of us have tried the “just do it” advice at some point when it comes to quitting sugar, but we quickly realise that it’s best to leave that slogan to elite athletes. However, emerging science suggests that cutting sugar might not be the magic cure many believe it to be.
A large six-month clinical trial published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that people who drastically reduced the sweetness in their diet did not experience a lasting change in how much they preferred sweet flavours, compared with those who maintained or even increased their sweet intake. In other words, your innate liking for sweetness stayed stable regardless of how much sweet food you ate or avoided.
Lauren Manaker, a registered dietitian, points to this research to shift how we think about sweets. Rather than viewing them as addictive substances to be completely banned, she encourages us to see them as just another type of food, something we can enjoy without guilt: “If eating sugar doesn’t inherently make you crave more sugar, then you don’t need to treat it like a dangerous drug. You can just treat it like food,” writes Laura Manaker of SELF.
The science behind this is apparently rooted in human biology. Sweet taste preferences appear to be remarkably stable in adults, influenced more by lifelong patterns than by short-term exposure or avoidance.
The study’s authors found no meaningful change in sweet preference, energy intake, body weight or even markers of metabolic health when participants followed low, regular, or high-sweetness diets.
Focussing on balanced eating that keeps your blood sugar steady. Dietitians encourage including lean protein, fibre-rich carbohydrates, and healthy fats in each meal. Another practical tip is to pay attention to overall eating patterns rather than single ingredients. Staying hydrated, sleeping well and managing stress also play significant roles in how strongly you experience cravings.
“Altering exposure to sweet-tasting foods did not change sweet taste liking, nor other outcomes. These results do not support public health advice to reduce exposure to sweet-tasting foods, independent of other relevant factors such as energy density and food form,” the authors concluded.
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