Cutting back on sugar harder than it seems

I've always known that changing dietary habits is tough. But I've really been feeling it the last two weeks as my family is trying to cut out sugar.

We decided to go off sugar for about three weeks.

There are lots of reasons to avoid sugar. First, it's low on the nutrition totem pole. Sugar offers calories, but no nutrients.

Nutrition experts agree on that, and they agree that sugar can cause tooth decay. But beyond that, they don't seem to agree on much.

A few nutrition experts, such as Dr. Elson Haas in his book "Staying Healthy With Nutrition," associate high consumption of sugar with obesity, hypoglycemia, digestive problems, immune dysfunction, recurrent infections, hyperactivity and difficulty with concentration, mood swings, anxiety and more. In general, though, these do not have mainstream acceptance.

I don't know whether any of this is true. But we decided it was worth an experiment.

For us, it boiled down to a personal experiment. We wanted to see if eliminating sugar would change our kids' behavior.

I also liked the idea of improving their nutrition. When you remove sugary foods, you almost can't help but replace them with something more nutritious. Even the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Dietary Guideline for Americans recognizes sugar's guilt by association and recommends limiting sugar consumption.

The USDA suggests just 40 grams (less than 1½ ounces), or 10 teaspoons of added sugars, a day for a person eating 2,000 calories. That allotment gets consumed in one 12-ounce soda.

The funny thing is, we don't need sugar. We just crave it.

The average American ate 142 pounds of sugar and other sweeteners in 2002, according to the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That's up from 119 pounds in 1970.

Sugar takes many forms. In addition to refined table sugar, there's honey, molasses, maple syrup and sucrose. There's fructose in fruit, lactose in milk .... The list goes on.

Our goal was to eliminate added sugar. So we accepted whole fruit and plain dairy products. We rejected sodas, pies and the like. We mainly wanted to target refined table sugar, but we also scrapped corn syrup, honey and everything else added to food. We even avoided artificial sweeteners. In other words, we're not chowing down on sugar-free cookies and candy to satisfy a sweet tooth.

The most interesting part has been learning how omnipresent sugar is the American diet.

You think you can cut out sugar by just eliminating sodas, cookies, candy and other sweet stuff?

Think again.

Want ketchup with those fries? Sorry, it has sugar.

Want mayo on that sandwich? It probably has sugar.

Oh, and the bread for that sandwich? I'll bet you $10 that the bread in your kitchen has some type of added sugar.

The dressing on your salad? Sugar or corn syrup.

The tomato sauce on your spaghetti? It probably has sugar.

The Goldfish crackers? Oops, sugar. Many other crackers, including Triscuits, use maltodextrin, which comes from maltose, or malt sugar.

There are exceptions, such as Duke's mayonnaise. But you sometimes have to hunt to find a common food that does not have a sweetener. Zeer.com is a good Web site that provides ingredients and nutrition information for thousands of products.

So how did my family's diet change in the past two weeks?

My wife gave up cereal, her breakfast of choice since childhood.

My 5-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter now eat eggs and sausage for breakfast instead of Pop Tarts.

My son used to put ketchup on just about any kind of meat, but surprisingly gave it up without complaint. I miss ketchup more. A French fry just doesn't seem complete without a dab of it.

I now drink my coffee without sugar. I still miss it, but I've learned to enjoy sugarless coffee almost as much.

"Treats" are now fruit or smoothies made with whole fruit and plain yogurt.

My kids used to have ice cream as a reward for eating a good dinner, including vegetables. Now they don't have that incentive. Now the incentive is more subtle: Eat nutritious food or go hungry.

I think I miss ice cream more than anyone. It's the one sweet I truly crave.

I haven't even mentioned the social difficulties of cutting out sugar -- my daughter's soccer party with luscious cupcakes; the day that my son's kindergarten glass made ice cream; the potluck supper with friends that had a table laden with cookies, brownies and cakes.

Given the ubiquitous presence of sugar, it's probably no surprise that we have failed to eliminate it.

I've even cheated on the job -- judging a pound-cake contest the other week.

But we have made significant reductions. And though our evidence is anecdotal, I do think that my son's behavior has improved.

Our three-week experiment comes to an end this week, and I feel as if we are just now learning how to live without sugar. The big question is, will we all go back to our old ways?