Let Us Stop Pretending Sugar Is Harmless

Sugar is not a cute little treat that becomes a problem only when somebody eats an entire birthday cake with a serving spoon. Added sugar is everywhere, it is heavily marketed, it is easy to overconsume and it can keep people trapped in a cycle of cravings, energy crashes, poor food choices and worsening gut symptoms.

It is in the obvious places: sweets, biscuits, cakes, fizzy drinks and puddings. It also turns up in breakfast cereals, flavoured yoghurts, sauces, dressings, ready meals, protein bars, coffee-shop drinks and products wearing a shiny little health halo.

A food does not become good for you because the packet is beige, the word NATURAL is printed in green and somebody has sprinkled three goji berries on the photograph.

If you have IBS, excessive sugar can be particularly unhelpful. Certain sugars are poorly absorbed, some drag water into the bowel, some are rapidly fermented and the constant sweet-food cycle can make it much harder to work out what your gut actually tolerates.

And the problem is bigger than IBS. High intakes of free sugar are tied to tooth decay and can make excess energy intake and weight gain far easier. That matters because excess weight increases the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and several cancers.

So yes, I am going to be blunt. Added sugar is fucking bad news when it becomes a daily habit rather than an occasional choice.

What Counts as Free Sugar

Free sugars are the sugars added to food and drink, plus the sugars naturally present in honey, syrups, fruit juice, vegetable juice, smoothies and purees. The sugar locked inside an intact apple is not treated in the same way because the fruit also brings water, fibre and a physical structure that slows down how quickly you eat and absorb it.

Food manufacturers are not required to put the words LOTS OF SUGAR across the front in enormous letters, sadly. Look for names including:

• sucrose glucose dextrose fructose and maltose
• glucose syrup corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup
• invert sugar malt extract and fruit juice concentrate
• cane sugar coconut sugar agave honey maple syrup and molasses

Several different sugars may appear separately in the ingredients list. That can stop any one of them appearing first, even when the total sweetener load is substantial. Turn the packet over. The front is marketing. The back is where the truth lives.

Why Sugar Can Kick Off IBS Symptoms

Not every type of sugar causes the same reaction, and not every person with IBS reacts in the same way. This is precisely why random restriction is such a poor strategy.

Fructose

Fructose can be difficult to absorb when it is present in excess of glucose. What is not absorbed travels onwards, where it can pull water into the bowel and be fermented by gut bacteria. For a sensitive gut, that may mean bloating, pain, wind, urgency or diarrhoea.

Lactose

Lactose is the sugar in milk and dairy products. If you do not produce enough lactase to digest it properly, lactose can ferment and trigger gas, discomfort and altered bowel habits. This is a specific digestive issue, not proof that every person with IBS must remove all dairy forever.

Sugar Alcohols

Sorbitol, mannitol, xylitol, maltitol and other ingredients ending in ol are common in sugar-free sweets, gums, protein products and low-sugar snacks. They can draw extra water into the gut and reach the large bowel poorly absorbed, where bacteria ferment them. The result can be a spectacular amount of wind, bloating, cramps and diarrhoea.

Sugar-free does not automatically mean gut-friendly. Sometimes it means you have swapped sugar for an afternoon on the toilet.

Sugary Drinks

Liquid sugar is particularly easy to consume quickly. There is little chewing, very little natural fibre and not much to make you feel full. You can swallow a substantial dose of sugar in minutes and still be ready to eat.

Inside The IBS Freedom Method, we look at the exact source, dose and timing of symptoms. The goal is to understand whether the problem is excess fructose, lactose, polyols, a generally sugar-heavy diet, another ingredient entirely or a combination of factors. Your bowel deserves better than guesswork.

Is Sugar as Addictive as Cocaine

Here is the bit that should make everybody sit up. Sugar and cocaine both activate the brain’s reward system and stimulate the release of dopamine – the chemical involved in pleasure, reward, motivation and the desire to repeat an experience.

In animal studies, rats repeatedly chose intensely sweet solutions over cocaine, even when they had already been exposed or sensitised to cocaine.

Read that again.

They chose the sugar.

Now, an animal study does not prove that eating biscuits creates exactly the same clinical addiction as taking cocaine. But it DOES demonstrate just how powerfully intense sweetness can stimulate the reward system.

This is why sugar cravings can feel so overwhelming. You eat it, dopamine is released, your brain registers the reward and then encourages you to repeat the behaviour. Over time, you may need more sweetness to experience the same satisfaction.

Feel tired? Reach for sugar.
Feel stressed? Reach for sugar.
Energy crashes two hours later? Reach for more sugar.

And round and round we go.

People may plan to eat one biscuit and finish the packet. They hide wrappers, think about sweet food constantly, become irritable when they try to stop and feel as though sugar is controlling them rather than the other way round.

So yes, I understand exactly why sugar has been compared with cocaine. In my personal opinion, concentrated added sugar should be treated far more seriously – and I believe there is a strong argument for classifying it as a drug.

Will that ever happen? Probably not.

Sugar is cheap, enormously profitable and woven into thousands of everyday products. There is far too much money being made from selling it – and from managing the illness and disease associated with excessive consumption.

But whether governments ever call it a drug or not, your brain does not need an official classification to become hooked on the reward.

Does Sugar Feed Cancer

This subject needs a straight answer because terrifying half-truths help nobody.

Cancer cells use glucose. So do your brain, muscles, immune cells and every other tissue in your body. You cannot starve a tumour simply by removing table sugar because your body works hard to keep glucose available and can make it from other nutrients.

That does NOT give sugar a free pass.

A diet loaded with sugary foods and drinks can encourage excess calorie intake and weight gain. Being overweight or obese increases the risk of at least 13 types of cancer. High sugar intake is also associated with tooth decay, and sugar-sweetened drinks make it easier to consume large amounts without feeling properly fed.

So the accurate message is not that one spoonful of sugar directly feeds a tumour. It is that a high-sugar dietary pattern can help create the metabolic conditions in which poor health becomes more likely, particularly when it contributes to weight gain, insulin resistance and an overall diet dominated by ultra-processed food.

That is hard-hitting because it is true. We do not need a meme when the established evidence is already serious enough.

The Coca Cola Bone Experiment

We have all seen versions of the experiment: put a tooth, bone or piece of meat into cola and watch what happens. It is look like it ‘prove’ that Coca-Cola melts bone overnight…

What we do know is that Cola is acidic, and frequent exposure to acidic soft drinks can erode dental enamel. A sugar-sweetened cola also delivers a large dose of free sugar with almost no nutritional value. Teeth are directly exposed to every sip, particularly when somebody grazes on a drink over hours. Once enamel has been lost, the body does not simply grow it back.

So what does Coke do to your gut? It can deliver a rapid sugar load, carbonation may aggravate bloating in some people, caffeine can stimulate the bowel, and the drink may contain sweeteners or other ingredients that an individual gut dislikes.

Frankly, the real case against sugary soft drinks is strong enough without pretending your stomach is a rusty two-pence piece in a school science experiment.

Sugar Is Big Business

If you have ever wondered why the public message around sugar has felt confused, there is history here.

An analysis of internal industry documents reported that the Sugar Research Foundation funded a 1967 review that emphasised fat and cholesterol as causes of heart disease while downplaying evidence about sucrose. The funding and industry role were not disclosed in the published review.

That does not prove that every doctor, dietitian, food company or health organisation is involved in a giant plot. It proves something much less theatrical and far more useful: industries protect markets, funding can influence research priorities and consumers should be allowed to ask who benefits from a message.

Sugary products are cheap to manufacture, easy to sell and enormously profitable. Meanwhile, diet-related illness creates vast costs for individuals, families and health services. I am not trying to make you even more frightened of food. I am interested in making sure you understand the system you are buying from.

Honey Maple Syrup and Molasses

If you are going to sweeten something, I would generally choose a small amount of honey, pure maple syrup or raw molasses over a heavily sweetened ultra-processed product.

They are natural, full of flavour and, between them, can offer antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties, manganese and other useful nutrients.

Unlike table sugar.

The quality of honey matters ENORMOUSLY. Some cheap supermarket products may be heavily processed or blended with sugar syrups, leaving you with something far removed from genuine, good-quality honey.

Buy from a local beekeeper, visit a farmers’ market or choose a producer you genuinely trust. Eating honey produced from plants local to you may also help support your immune system—and, more broadly, we should all be eating more food grown and produced within our own local environment.

However, the bigger shift is still to retrain your palate so that everything does not need to taste like pudding.

Fruit Is Not the Enemy

Please do not read this article and become frightened of an apple.

Whole fruit contains naturally occurring sugar, but it also comes with fibre, water, vitamins, minerals and plant compounds. You have to chew it. It takes time to eat. It is very different from drinking a bottle of fruit juice or eating a snack bar made from concentrated fruit paste and syrup.

Choose fruit that suits your gut and pay attention to portion size. If certain fruits trigger symptoms, that may relate to fructose, polyols, fibre load or the total amount eaten. It does not mean that all fruit is bad.

Get used to finishing a meal with berries, kiwi, citrus fruit, grapes, melon or another fruit you tolerate rather than automatically reaching for biscuits, cake or chocolate. Your palate adapts to what you repeatedly give it.

How to Get Sugar Out of the Driving Seat

This is the practical work we do inside The IBS Freedom Method. We do not remove forty foods, cross our fingers and call it gut healing. We look at patterns, symptoms, ingredients, portions, routines and the reason the craving is there in the first place.

Start here:

• remove sugary drinks from the daily routine and make water your default
• eat proper meals containing protein fibre and suitable fats so you are not hunting for emergency energy an hour later
• check cereals yoghurts sauces dressings snack bars and supposedly healthy products for hidden sugars
• stop keeping family-sized quantities of your biggest trigger foods within arm’s reach
• choose whole fruit more often than juice sweets biscuits or concentrated fruit snacks
• use smaller amounts of honey maple syrup or molasses when you genuinely want sweetness
• watch sugar-free products containing sorbitol mannitol xylitol maltitol and other polyols
• reduce sweetness gradually so your taste buds have time to adjust
• track what happens to cravings energy bloating pain and bowel habits as your intake changes

Do not replace a high-sugar diet with a trolley full of artificially sweetened ultra-processed food and assume the job is done. Read the ingredients. Notice your symptoms. Eat real food.

And if you have been using sugar to get through exhaustion, stress, poor sleep, skipped meals or emotional overload, deal with that too. Removing the biscuits without addressing why you needed them at 4pm is how the biscuits end up back in the cupboard by Friday.

What Changes When Sugar Stops Running the Show

When people reduce excessive added sugar and begin eating balanced meals, they often notice that cravings become less demanding, energy feels steadier and food decisions become calmer. People with IBS may also find it easier to identify their genuine gut triggers once the daily noise of fizzy drinks, sweet snacks and sugar alcohols has been reduced.

The aim is food confidence. You decide when something sweet is worth having. A product, habit or 4pm blood-sugar crash does not make the decision for you.

That is a core part of The IBS Freedom Method. We help you understand your gut, rebuild your meals and create a way of eating that supports your digestion and your wider health for the long term.

Want Personalised Support

If sugar cravings, energy crashes, bloating or unpredictable bowel habits are controlling your food choices, you do not have to keep guessing.

You can book your free Gut Health Call with Helen and we will talk through what is happening, what you have already tried and whether The IBS Freedom Method ™ is the right next step for you.

About Helen Jane

Helen Jane is a qualified Nutritional Therapist and IBS Coach with over ten years of experience helping people reduce IBS, bloating, food intolerances, digestive discomfort and low energy through practical nutrition and lifestyle changes. As the founder of Your IBS Freedom and creator of The IBS Freedom Method ™, she supports clients across the UK, Europe and the USA.

Disclaimer

This article is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for personalised medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Speak to your GP or healthcare professional about persistent symptoms, unexplained weight loss, blood in your stool, severe pain, diabetes, cancer or any significant change to your health. Do not change cancer treatment or another prescribed medical plan based on this article.