Transcript

What I hear a lot from patients is that when they have lots and lots of sweet drinks and foods that they crave sweet things for taste.  Their taste buds are so saturated with sweet things that they cannot taste the more subtle flavours of other foods and hence need to keep adding sugar and other sweet things to foods to get some “flavour”.  This is a never ending cycle though and people keep chasing more sweetness.

Small studies have actually shown that when you mostly cut out sugar and sweet foods and drinks then after ~4 weeks your taste buds start to go back to normal and become sensitive to tasting normal food again, and when they do have sweet foods they taste much sweeter and often “too sweet”.  Many patients who drank lots of coke, some patients I have had have drunk up to 21 cans which is about 7 litres a day, have told me after 4-6 weeks of cutting out sugar that they would try a coke again and hated it, they would said “it was disgustingly sweet, I couldn’t keep drinking it”.

So the moral of the story here is – yes at first when you cut out the sweet drinks and foods then things will taste a little dull to you.  But after only 1-2 months you will start tasting and experience new foods again, you will taste the beautiful flavour of real foods and you will feel better at a whole body level.  And perhaps even better you won’t want sweet foods as much because when you do have them you will not enjoy it. One of the most common things I hear and I experience myself is when people do have a sugary food they say “I hated the sugary gunk around my teeth and mouth, it’s gross”.  You will satisfy yourself with foods that are naturally sweet when you need them like berries.

So if you are craving a sweet food, try a piece of fruit or some berries, drink a glass of water, and wait 5-10 minutes.  There is a very high chance that the desire for sweetness will go. With time you will want to less and less, and be very satisfied with your healthier whole food choices.

References:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26607941