Red, White and Glucose

Crack. There it was again.

As Dana Garvey reached for the staircase railing, she winced, anticipating the pain she had grown all too familiar with. Her forearm now aching, thanks to the pain’s latest greeting. For months now, this had been her reality. Grimacing throughout the day. Propping up her arms and legs at night, all for a chance to finally, desperately catch some sleep. It was torture.

All of it, and it never got better. In fact, it was getting worse.

After months of perpetual discomfort Garvey found a rheumatologist — a specialist in joint and muscle pain — who diagnosed her with arthritis. The recommendation: lifelong medications to slowly treat the pain. Her torment could be over.

Yet, Garvey declined. Instead she parsed through scientific journals, medical sites and online forums, desperate for an "alternative" solution.

Throughout her research, she kept coming back to one word. That one five-letter word which was, unbelievably, almost everywhere she turned. A term fit for a Wordle box, unassuming in its power, was linked to nearly every negative affliction known to man.

A word that Garvey — and the rest of America, which consumes 100 pounds per person per year — knows all too well.

I love sugar.

I mean, what kind of red-blooded American doesn’t?

By this point, it’s even grown synonymous with the word “American” itself, and the similarities between the two are pretty striking. It’s in your face, demands your attention, isn’t the healthiest and — worst of all — is everywhere.

Sounds familiar, no?

Sadly, a few months ago, I had been loving it too much. Thanksgiving led to Christmas, which led to the New Year, which led to … gluttony. Ok, I have no explanation for most of January.

And that’s telling. For years, sugar has been an unavoidable vice, and inseparable from my daily routine. On Jan. 20, I thought, what if that wasn’t the case? What if I could end that precarious habit and slowly transform into the pinnacle of human health?

So, over 30 days, I challenged myself to uphold that standard. No sugar at all. When I first settled on that premise, I thought I knew what that meant. But when I started thinking about what that meant, the task suddenly became much more challenging.

For starters, what even is sugar? According to Webster’s Dictionary entry:

Ok, I got it. I don't know what I expected other than a long-winded, heavily scientific explanation. In the context of this challenge, that definition didn’t mean much.

Throughout my no-sugar month, I paid extra attention to the hidden presence. While I obviously cut the delectable treats out, there are plenty of foods lurking out there, brimming with sweetness yet unabashedly claiming to be "healthy" in some form.

Go into your cupboard right now, flip over and read the label of one of the items I just listed, and stare right where the line reads "added sugar."

I rest my case. Speaking of "added sugar"...

So yes, I split up "added/refined" from "total" sugars. I did this because refined and added sugars strip sweet stuff down to its barebones, removing any essence of nutrients. Your white and brown sugars and high-fructose corn syrups are packed into sodas, candy bars and many other items.

Along the way, I wrote down my thoughts in a daily journal of everything that came to mind throughout the day—thoughts, experiences, difficulties, movie reviews, and so on.

I was not particularly excited.

Thankfully, before I began my journey, I spoke with Garvey about her experiences cutting out sugar. Specifically, why – and how – she went about her process.

Garvey was a lifelong sugar consumer, frequently in coffee, with friends or after dinner at restaurants. Even though it was an established part of her routine that she rarely gave thought to, Garvey figured she might as well try something a little unusual before defaulting to the abundance of daily medications her doctor prescribed.

Ever so slowly, she began feeling better. Her joints ached significantly less. Sleep improved. Physically, she felt the best she had in years. After four months of trying, she finally returned to the doctor’s office. She thought her arthritis may be gone.

As it turned out, she was correct.

"When I went back [to the doctor], I was 80% better… and I hadn’t taken any of the drugs he was going to put me on for the rest of my life," she said.

From then on, she continued toward good health, holding to her diet while slowly adding back smaller amounts of sugar. Three years later, while she doesn’t consider herself entirely “sugarless,” she inspects practically every label.

I asked how she dealt with withdrawal and cravings in her day-to-day life. To her, she says, those thoughts rarely — if ever — cross her mind.

“It just becomes part of how you live and how you eat … and you don’t really even think about it,” she said, adding that if a friend bakes a batch of fresh brownies, for example, she lets herself indulge.

“The biggest advice I have is to cut yourself some slack,” Garvey said. “It doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. Just try to eat less of it.”

My first few days were marked with withdrawal. I felt sluggish, especially by the mid-afternoon. I felt a little worse in the gym and noticeably foggier in class. It was a strange feeling because I knew what was causing it.

I couldn’t quite tell if the cravings and withdrawal were responsible for my newly shortened temperament or just because I knew those feelings weren’t going to go away anytime soon. It was probably a mix of both, but no factor made up for the fact that, in general, I felt tense, querulous and cantankerous.

Even my parents noticed. My dad sent me this a couple of days after we spoke on the phone on Feb. 12.

As I endured my challenge, I turned to a 2015 study by Carole Bartolotto, a Los Angeles-based registered dietitian and then Kaiser Permanente consultant. Bartolotto followed her lifelong passion for nutrition into a career in education, teaching classes at Pepperdine before joining the staff at UCLA Dining.

Bartolotto eliminated sugar from her diet entirely over two decades ago.

Bartolotto noticed how even foods on the opposite end of the sugary spectrum, such as baby carrots, tasted sweet. She was motivated to explore how quickly human tendencies and taste buds can adapt and how dependency plays a factor in sugar addiction. Soon after, she conducted a study on 20 of her fellow Kaiser employees. Bartolotto instructed participants to eliminate all added sugars for just two weeks.

The study's results confirmed her suspicions and blew her presumptions out of the water. Here is the raw data from her study:

• After the challenge, 95% reported that sweet foods and drinks tasted sweeter or too sweet
• 75% noticed that other foods, such as baby carrots and apples, tasted sweeter
• 95% intended to use less or no sugar moving forward
• 86.6% experienced reduced sugar cravings after six days

Bartolotto wasn’t as surprised at the physical transformations since she underwent the same process. What took her aback was the mental impact of sugar reduction. She remembers subject after subject telling her afterward how they felt a level of “disassociation” when faced with no sugar to turn to.

“One participant told me they realized they were emotionally dependent on their nightly sugary snacks, and they weren’t helping them reach their goals,” Bartolotto said.

Bartolotto’s study motivated her to sink further into the science of sugar addiction and industry.

“I don’t keep sugar in the house,” she said. “Willpower is a limited resource; if it’s there, you’ll eventually eat it.”

I couldn't agree more. On day 9, I cheated for the one and only time, as I busted out my spare New Year's candy. I don't regret it.

Bartolotto defined the “bliss point,” when sugar is just enough to get you hooked but not enough to stop.

“Some people say sugar addiction isn’t real, but we know it activates the dopamine regions of the brain,” Bartolotto said.

Food scientists have figured out the correct equilibrium point – and that’s reflected on supermarket shelves.

“Even things like vitamin water, soy milk, and pasta sauce can have five, six, even eight teaspoons of sugar in a single serving,” Bartolotto said.

“We’re being set up to desire more and more sugar,” she said, encouraging me to keep up my challenge.

Officially halfway through the challenge, I felt about the same as I did a week or so in, at least on the mental side. Sugar cravings had lessened, but I still felt slightly upset after dinner, with no scrap of sugar in sight.

But since the withdrawl never surpassed a level beyond mild annoyance, I could definitely live it. Additionally, the mental pressures were nothing compared to anything life or school-related.

However, I began feeling rather energetic in the gym starting on day 12, and that trend continued throughout the rest of the month. I felt considerably looser, and my lifts were going up at a rate greater than before. I even tested my bench press maximum, and hit a mark I had never hit in my lifetime. I didn’t make the connection to sugar immediately, but once I did, I asked myself:

That answer, in part, came from my conversation with food industry historian Xaq Frohlich, an associate professor at Auburn University and author of the 2023 book From Label to Table, an exploration of the evolution of food in American culture. He told me our cravings aren’t just natural – they’ve been carefully studied and manipulated by food manufacturers for close to a century.

"People producing the sugar are always thinking about, how can we get this into new kinds of products?" Frohlich said.

Frohlich explained that around the mid-20th century, as packaged and processed foods became a common fixture in American households, sugar played an instrumental role in masking dull flavors and extending shelf life.

Moreover, he pointed out that as Americans began to grow steadily unhealthier, the sugar industry began lobbying federal politicians to declare fat as the main risk factor, not sugar.

"There was a kind of exposé about this... where they found out the sugar association in the 1950s had been funding research on fats because it was trying to push researchers toward looking at fats for heart disease and away from thinking about sugar as a cause of heart disease,” Frohlich said.

I asked him about the reliability of food labels, and their involvement in masking sugar’s involvement in health issues over the past 70 years. As Frohlich explained, what consumers see on packaging often serves the sugar industry’s interests above public health.

“There’s a lot of money interest in this that creates these kinds of things that shape a lot of the consumer perception around sugar as a healthier and healthy thing,” Frohlich said.

In other words, even when regulations exist, they certainly don’t guarantee transparency. The food label has become a marketing tool, and as a constant surveyor of labels throughout the month, I realized how often I was likely being not just lied to, but manipulated.

"In practice, they're making all these health claims all over the place, and the FDA kind of picks and chooses when it wants to make a lesson out of someone,” Frohlich said.

Products slapped with words like “natural,” “no added sugar” and especially “fat-free” may sound tantalizingly healthy, but are likely just as poor quality – if not worse – than products without them.

16 grams a serving, or 44% (women) or 64% (men) of daily value (per the AHA)

7 grams a serving, yet recommended for type 2 diabetics

11 grams of sugar in total, marketed as a health product for nature lovers

5 grams a slice, so no wonder the average sandwich tastes as sweet as it does

My next visit to the grocery store, I took one look at the fat-free cheese sticks I had been buying for several years, assuming they were at least somewhat healthier than its full-fat counterparts. This time, I took a full scan at the label. Under added sugar, it read:

“5 grams per serving.”

The regular, full-fat cheese sticks?

“2 grams per serving.”

I stood there for a second and sighed. At that moment, something became painfully clear: the modern food landscape isn’t even just about reading what’s in front of you. It’s about reading between the lines.

Leaving that grocery store, I was a bit frustrated at my ignorance to that reality. However, I also couldn’t help but feel a little glad at one fact: my relationship with food would never be the same.

With one sugar-free week to go, I was excited to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But whether I wanted to enter that tunnel or not, I had no answer.

After 30 days, I awoke on March 6 a new man. And a physically smaller man, at that.

On day one, I weighed in at 220.6 pounds. Thirty days later, I was down to 216.9. I am not saying eliminating sugar from my diet was solely responsible for my weight loss. However, it is interesting to note that not only did I feel physically better, I had finally lost the few pounds I had been attempting to lose over the past few months.

My girlfriend baked me a batch of beautiful chocolate chip cookies to celebrate the challenge's end.

As I took my first bite, I paused. It tasted good, but it felt like I had just eaten sugarcane. It was so sweet that I felt a bit queasy and set my treat down with just a single bite.

After a month of increased mental clarity, this was the clearest moment of all. I remember thinking, “I don’t want any more sugar today,” a thought that, if it came at all, occurred at midnight, not nine in the morning.

This was my turning point. The cravings were gone, the snacking seemingly disappeared and most importantly, my palette had evolved. Fruits like oranges tasted sweeter, and sugary-laden snacks were entirely unappealing.

Mentally, I noticed a shift: my drowsiness, my focus was improved and I felt less “on edge.” It was almost like removing sugar allowed for my bodily function to stabilize to levels they never had before.

And yet, the challenge revealed some deeper issues. I couldn’t take it anymore with the constant reading labels and overthinking with every meal. I couldn’t eat out with my roommates, or get ice cream with my girlfriend.

Throughout my life, bonding over a meal or snack has been essential to my — and the American — social experience. So, it wasn’t just the willpower that made this difficult – it was accepting that things like simple social interaction would be negatively impacted.

Over the past two months, I’ve slowly incorporated small amounts of sugar into my diet. And while I’m not scanning food labels, I haven’t been going out of my way to reach for a sweet treat.

I even changed the way I cook on a regular basis, too. Check out this meal I made frequently throughout the month (and continue to do so).

Overall, my relationship with sugar feels different now as if I’m more cautious or intentional. I can stop after just a bite or two. I’m choosing the healthier option nine times out of 10.

For the first time in my life, it feels like I’m controlling sugar – instead of it controlling me.

But as I reflected on the month, I couldn't help but feel as if something was missing. I still felt unfillfulled - as if I were on the precipice of something so much deeper, but finished before I could find it.

I spoke with Florida-based sociologist and sugar policy researcher Dr. Laura Schmidt as part of my “reflective” process following the social experiment.

“We consume more sugar than any country on Earth,” said Schmidt, who has written dozens of articles, videos and research on the negative health consequences of sugar on the American diet. She emphasized that our sugar consumption is imbalanced and wants to help people understand the consequences of too much sugar.

In her view, what makes sugar especially dangerous is its addictive nature. From grocery stores to college campuses, the constant presence of sugar creates a system where making healthy choices isn’t just difficult – it’s practically discouraged.

Schmidt’s research has confirmed that overconsumption of added sugar has led to major chronic illnesses, from heart and liver diseases to Type 2 diabetes. I asked if the threat starts when you're elderly, sick or even middle-aged.

“No,” Schmidt warned me. “The cumulative effects of an unhealthy diet start in your twenties – and by your fifties, it’s too late.”

Speaking with Schmidt made me realize quitting sugar isn’t just about personal willpower; it’s an act of rebellion against the American culture of consumption

I have entirely new mindset: Quitting sugar changed my worldview. It taught me that change isn’t just about resisting temptation; it’s about rejecting a system that profits on our lack of well-being.

So, I encourage you to take on the challenge yourself or reduce your sugar intake just a bit.

Throughout the rest of my time on Earth, I plan to continue advocating for a more honest relationship with food. I want to take a stand against manipulation and additives, prioritize personal health and reclaim my autonomy.

And in that sense, my journey didn’t end after 30 days. It’s only just begun.