All posts by Eve Ogden Schaub

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About Eve Ogden Schaub

Serial memoirist Eve O. Schaub lives with her family in Vermont and enjoys performing experiments on them so she can write about it. Author of Year of No Sugar (2014) and Year of No Clutter (2017) and most recently Year of No GARBAGE (2023). Find her on Twitter @Eveschaub IG or eveschaub.com.

A Year of No Sugar: Post 29

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Here’s what I really want right now: a cookie. Here is what I am having instead: leftover fettuccine alfredo. This could explain- possibly- why after more than two months without added sugar in my diet, I have yet to lose a single pound.

Not that I was trying to lose weight; I’m not. But I notice it in particular because whenever I describe the No Sugar Project to people the first thing they ask is about things I have noticed that are different. “Have you lost any weight?” “Are the kids better behaved?” “Do you feel any better?”

I hate to disappoint them, but the answers aren’t very satisfyingly definitive. No, I haven’t lost weight, but I do find that I seem to be hungrier and eat more. No, I don’t think the kids are noticeably calmer, but then again hyperactivity wasn’t a problem to begin with. In fact, soon after viewing the No Sugar Project’s inspiration (Dr. Robert Lustig’s YouTube lecture “The Bitter Truth”) we stopped buying juice altogether and began a family drink policy of milk or water only, and that was many months ago, pre-project. Consequently the before/after isn’t going to be as dramatic as it might be if up until December 31 we all regularly drank soda/juice/Gatorade, or those whipped cream-and-sprinkles concoctions that now that pass for “coffee.”

But I do feel better, healthier. I think. Sure, it could just be the placebo effect- I think I’m healthier, therefore I feel healthier. But then again, and I’m going to knock on wood very loudly before, during, and after typing this- neither my husband nor I has been sick since we began the no sugar project, and the girls have only suffered sniffles & a mild sore throat for about three days. For my husband, this is not so unusual: he is a health freight train. Germs mostly just seem to bounce off of him. As for me, however, my failure to celebrate February with an unpleasant illness- or series of illnesses- is notable. Again, coincidence? Placebo effect? Who knows.

Meanwhile, I’m still at the Mayo Clinic with my Dad and helping him navigate the maze of tunnels, hallways, doctor’s appointments and tests. I had heard it was an incredible place, and about that there is no doubt. My Dad and I have had about a dozen conversations about how in-a-good-way different Mayo is from the rest of the American health-care world.

In addition to a scheduling system that allows patients to efficiently zip through tests and consultations at an almost alarming rate, how ridiculously friendly and helpful every person one encounters here is, and the fact that the doctors routine consult one another about even the simplest test, prescription or diagnosis… in addition to all that they have Really Cool Stuff sprinkled about such as a multi-million dollar art collection, a lovely grand piano which fills the atrium with live music throughout the day, and a free patient education center where one can go to learn more about a diagnosis.

I was particularly struck by the existence of this though: on the Pulmonary (lung) floor, by no coincidence you will happen upon the Center for Tobacco Free Living. It’s something which I imagine wouldn’t have been remotely possible only a few scant decades ago, back when four out of five doctors smoked Camels. If you didn’t live through it, a good way to get a feel for that era’s attitude towards smoking it is to watch “Mad Men,” the wildly popular TV drama about ad executives set in the fifties. After about the first ten minutes and you’ll have seen every character smoking with such enthusiasm that you half expect them to pass the pack to both the children and the pets.

I wonder if one day we’ll look back and have a similar “what were we thinking?” attitude towards today’s orgy of sugar consumption. Do we think it’s a coincidence that there are now so many diabetics in our culture that they can support their own mainstream magazine? Are we wearing blinders because it’s so much fun to eat sugar, just like it was so much fun to smoke? Or because the sugar industry is so powerful and influential it can quash any attempts at regulation (such as a soda tax, for example?) just as Big Tobacco was once powerful enough to silence obvious medical concerns? Today’s Americans can hardly seem to pass up dessert after any lunch or dinner, just as yesterday’s Americans felt an after-dinner smoke was both a patriotic right and a well-deserved perk of belonging to modern civilization.

When I venture into the Mayo cafeteria I do manage to find a few things to eat- so far salad with cottage cheese has been my mainstay. Virtually everything else on the long cafeteria line- from the hot entrees and sandwiches to the puddings and sodas- has sugar in it… even here, at the medical equivalent of the Super Friends Hall of Justice. Nearby, at the coffee shop, as I sit and drink my tea I watch person after person after person pull Coke after Coke after Coke out of the drink cooler. It does make me wonder how many people are here at Mayo for some type of Metabolic Syndrome. And it makes me wonder if there will ever be a Mayo Center for Low Fructose Living.

A Year of No Sugar: Post 28

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I had Walleye for lunch and dinner yesterday- a first for me. Apparently Walleye is very big out here in Minnesota.

But wait, you say, Minnesota? What happened to Philly? What, for that matter, happened to Vermont? Well, life moves pretty fast out here in No-Sugar Land…

So yes, Minnesota. Turns out my Dad’s back problems have reached epic proportions and it’s time for the experts to be superseded by the experts. So he and I have come to Mayo Clinic. I have been told that the Mayo Clinic employs 56,000 people in the city of Rochester, Minnesota, which leaves me speechless. (remember: I live in a thriving Vermont metropolis of around 1,000 people.)

And this also, of course, means more travel: the No Sugar Lifestyle’s no-so-best-friend. But I’m slightly better prepared this time: for one thing I had the foresight to leave the kids at home, with my husband. I have a much easier time with the concept of going hungry myself, than I do with imposing hunger on my children- especially when actual, viable food is staring them right in the face.

Also very helpful is the box of Kashi cereal I packed in my suitcase. One of the biggest lessons I learned on our trip to Philadelphia last week was that the hardest meal of the day for no-sugar is breakfast… hands down. Just take a look at it and you’ll see what I mean: there’s cereal (added sugar), toast or bagels (added sugar), juice (is sugar), waffles (added sugar, and that’s even before the syrup), muffins and danishes (oh, come on!),… Pretty much black coffee and eggs without toast and without bacon are what you get left with. Ew.

Which leads me to a confession to make on this account. Last week on our PA. trip the breakfast situation got so dire that I had to enact the “Philadelphia Breakfast Exemption” which read as follows: Don’t ask about the bread. Just don’t.

Evidently our hotel has never heard of the “complimentary breakfast” phenomenon that is sweeping the rest of the western world, so we ate almost every day at a small diner around the corner that felt very “retro”… two formica u-shaped counters were lined with swiveling chrome stools. Honestly, for the first time in our project I was too intimidated to ask about the sugar content of the menu items… I’m not sure if it was the Russian waitress with three stars tattooed behind her right ear, the two local guys who came in every morning and ordered coke with their French Toast, or the fact that there would simply be nothing left for us to eat but eggs with eggs and eggs on the side, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Instead, we stuck to the things we knew were safe: bland unsweetened oatmeal, grapefruit, and of course eggs. Okay, we had whole wheat toast and we had bagels. Judging by my experience at sugar-hunting to date, I’d say there was a really, really good chance there was some amount of sugar in those bread products. Which was why the “Philadelphia Breakfast Exemption” was key to our sanity. I was determined, however, not to let it happen again.

Having already learned my lesson the hard way, this week I felt prepared. I proudly smuggled my cereal into the complimentary breakfast bar this morning, brazenly making use of their styrofoam bowls, plastic spoons and paper napkins (evidently our hotel has never heard of the “catastrophic environmental meltdown” that’s sweeping the rest of the western world) as well as a heap of raisins which were originally betrothed to some instant sugar-containing oatmeal, before being abducted and eloping with 7 Whole Grain Nuggets at the last minute.

So I’m guilty of a shotgun wedding, I’m afraid. Well, at least they didn’t end up with the Walleye.

A Year of No Sugar: Post 27

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There is a lot of banging of pots and pans downstairs right now, which I am steadfastly going to ignore because it has been far too long since my last post. I just hope the girls aren’t burning down the kitchen… stay tuned.

The reason I haven’t posted in several days is that we took advantage of the school break to take a family trip to Philadelphia and see all the requisite tourist stuff: Liberty Bell? Check. Independence Hall? Check. Philadelphia Museum of Art? Check.

Meanwhile, we also had to eat. Oh yeah- I forgot that part. In fact, I was so much in denial about this inconvenient truth that, in our frantic rush to get out of the house on Monday, I neglected to pack any snacks at all, which is really weird, because in our family I’m The Snack Lady… if I can’t bring a Larabar or a banana I’m not going. Consequently the girls have picked up the habit of digging in my purse when I’m not looking and handing out snacks found therein to every kid in ballet class. In this way I’m kind of a healthy-snack vending machine.

Normally. But on this hungry occasion, not so much. There we were, driving all afternoon having had no lunch and no snacks. Normally under such circumstances we’d relax our healthy eating standards j-u-s-t enough to allow for a pizza lunch at one of the thruway travel plazas… but of course with the “no sugar” project in full swing, eating at any of the colorfully advertised chain restaurants which bloom at rest stops like colonies of algae would be out of the question.

But maybe, I hoped, we could at least find a suitable bag of pretzels before somebody’s arm got gnawed off. At the next travel plaza we were astonished to have those hopes far surpassed when we found fruit cups (consisting of: fruit!) and cellophane-wrapped to-go sandwiches with lists! Of ingredients! on their label stickers! Wow! After a happy, hurried survey of ingredients I selected some fruit cups (consisting of: fruit!) and three turkey sandwiches, as well as some cheese sticks (ingredients: cheese!) and bottled water.

I felt surprised and delighted- we would have lunch after all! Wow- maybe the world was coming to it’s senses, I thought. Maybe things aren’t as bad as they sometimes seem. Maybe the consumer pressure to clean up our act in the eating department has finally elicited some response in the age old capitalistic form of sellers meeting market demands, I thought. Most of all I was thinking about stopping that gnawing in my belly without having to break any project parameters.

However. After we got back on the road I did that thing which by now I should know not to do: I double-checked. (Note to self: if you want to eat? DO NOT DOUBLE-CHECK.) You can guess what I found I’m sure: sugar. Plain old sugar- not even some tricky euphemism hiding it and I still missed it in my hungry hurry: ingredient number five in the sandwich bun. Sure, there was a panoply of other ingredients which ordinarily would’ve worried me much more, and most of which probably should have seemed more like chemistry class experiments to me than “lunch” but remember: I was starving.

So I ate around the problem. I ignored the sandwiches and enjoyed a nice lunch of cheese, fresh fruit and strong coffee- I felt very European.

And by European, I mean hungry. About a half-hour later I broke down. I ate half of the thousand-ingredient sandwich. It left an icky chemically taste in my mouth, metallic tasting, as if I’d been sucking on a lead pencil. My punishment I suppose. (Maybe it was those four different kinds of sodium in the turkey meat?)

Meanwhile, back at home I was now mentally picturing all of the no-sugar food I should have thought to bring. I was suddenly worried: what would we do for no-sugar food in Philadelphia? Would we be forced to pick through our meals like scientists? Would we just starve? Worse, would my family revolt, abandoning our lofty no-sugar project for the satisfaction of a decent meal?

All I can say is, so much for The Snack Lady.