Tara Leong is an Associate Lecturer in Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of the Sunshine Coast, and chief nutrition myth buster and tasty recipe creator at

The Nutrition Guru and the Chef. Find out more at thenutritionguruandthechef.com This article appeared in The Conversation.

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Not so long ago, fat was the dietary villain. Before that it was salt. Now the sugar-free diet has appeared on

the health and wellness scene. How should we react?

QUITDON’T

SUGAR

You

to improve your health

need to

Sugar-free diets encourage people to avoid table sugar (sucrose), sweeteners such as honey and maple syrup, refined flours,

condiments, soft drinks, sweets, and fruits such as bananas. Some sugar-free diets also encourage eliminating or restricting dairy products.

The advocates of today’s sugar-free diets rightly note that excessive sugar consumption may lead to obesity and therefore increase the risk of heart diease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers.

And it’s true that Australians are eating too much of the sweet stuff, with 35 per cent of an adult’s total

daily kilojoules coming from discretionary foods, which includes lollies, chocolates and soft drinks.

But you don’t need to quit sugar to lift your game on healthy eating. Quitting sugar is unlikely to improve your health any more than cutting down on ultra-processed foods, eating more vegetables, cooking food from scratch, or limiting how much extra sugar you eat and drink.

At best, the sugar-free diet is confusing and imposes an arbitrary set of rules that aren’t based on scientific evidence. At worst, it can create food fear, or an unhealthy relationship with food.

What about sugar REPLACEMENTS?

Whole fruit is a wonderful source of fibre,

vitamins & minerals

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Don’t drop the GOOD STUFFSome sugar-free diets advise people to cut out or restrict food groups such as fruit and dairy, without evidence to support the exclusion. This may contribute to nutrient deficiencies.

These diets also recommend people to avoid fruit for a period of time, and then re-introduce a limited list of expensive ‘healthy’ fruits, such as berries, while still avoiding the cheaper ‘unhealthy’ fruits, such as bananas.

Yet whole fruit is a wonderful source of fibre, essential vitamins and minerals, as well as healthy antioxidants. Given only half of Aussies eat the recommended two serves of fruit per day, the advice to further restrict fruit could result in people missing out on these benefits.

Many sugar-free followers also avoid plain dairy products, believing they contain sugar.

The sugar found in plain dairy products is natural lactose — a carbohydrate, and nothing to fear. Avoiding dairy may increase your risk of osteoporosis.

Eat plenty of plants, enjoy whole grains, beans and legumes. And fruit is your friend — not your enemy at all. Most people could probably eat a little less sugar, a little less often, but

you don’t have to quit sugar for good to be healthy.Savour every mouthful of that chocolate cake or ‘sometimes food’.

Turn off technology and eat the cake mindfully, so that your brain can register that you have eaten it. That way you get pleasure and

satisfaction from it, and you won’t be craving it again an hour later.Remember that health is not simply about the number on the scales, the size of your waist, or the foods you avoid. It’s also

about your psychological health and your relationship with food, which is just as important as your physical health.

Strangely, many sugar-free recipes use expensive sugar alternatives — such as rice malt syrup (due to its low fructose content), maple syrup and dates — to replace sugar.

However, these are still sugars and contain the same number of kilojoules per gram as any other sugar. These alternatives offer no additional nutritional benefits — other than rice malt syrup, which is a useful option only for those people who have a fructose malabsorption issue; and dates, which contain fibre.

In fact, people often eat more of the foods that contain these alternatives — under the guise of them being sugar-free — which could then lead to unintentional weight gain. One study found that people ate about 35 per cent more of a snack when it was perceived as healthy, compared to when it was seen as unhealthy.

The bottom line …

Ditch the DIET MENTALITYThe sugar-free diet is restrictive, containing lists of ‘allowed’ foods (such as whole grains, blueberries and grapefruits) and ‘not allowed’ foods (such as white bread, bananas and raisins). This inadvertently creates a diet mentality and causes followers to worry about accidentally eating something not allowed.

People who worry about food are more likely to diet, studies have found. This may be because they’re worried specifically about their weight, or about the impact that certain nutrients have on their health.

Research also shows dieting is not effective over the long term and can lead to greater weight gain. The brain interprets dieting and restriction as famine, which causes the storage of fat for future shortages.

Dieting is also stressful. In response to this, our body releases stress hormones such as cortisol, which may cause the body to store fat, particularly in the abdominal area.

Worrying about food can lead to stress, anxiety and depression, and is one of the defining features of the condition known as orthorexia.

Orthorexia is the overwhelming preoccupation with eating healthily. People with orthorexia spend a lot of their time thinking and worrying about food, and eliminating foods that are deemed impure or unhealthy. Some experts suggest this behaviour is a precursor to, or a form of, an eating disorder.

There are currently no clear diagnostic criteria for orthorexia, which makes it difficult to measure its prevalence. But we do know that 15 per cent of women will experience an eating disorder at some stage in their life. So we need to ensure nutrition advice, however well-intentioned, doesn’t promote or encourage disordered eating.