Episode 113: Half the Sugar, All the Love with Jennifer Tyler Lee
In this episode, I’m joined by Jennifer Tyler Lee. Jennifer is an award-winning author, game creator, self-trained home cook, and healthy eating advocate.
Her first book, The 52 New Foods Challenge, was nominated for an IACP Cookbook Award, and her nutrition game, Crunch a Color®: The Healthy Eating Game, was named one of Dr. Toy’s “10 Best” Children’s Products and received the Parent-Tested Parent-Approved seal of approval.
In her newest book is called Half the Sugar, All the Love.
Jennifer and I connected on Instagram as we both help people with sugar addiction. But as you’ll hear in this episode, we have different approaches. I coach people through the 21-Day Sugar Detox where they learn how to stop eating sugar to change their palette (and mindset) so they no longer crave sweet things.
Jennifer shares delicious low-sugar recipes to show that reducing added sugar doesn’t mean completely giving up the foods you love. She shows you how to sweeten foods, both savory and sweet, naturally with fruits and vegetables instead of added sugar.
Jennifer’s easy, healthy recipes have also been spotlighted by Jessica Alba, Jamie Oliver, Michael Pollan, Oprah, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn Kids, Whole Foods, Parents Magazine, and US Weekly, among many others. She is a featured contributor at Red Tricycle and shares her recipes each week on her blog, www.52newfoods.com.
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE:
“Cardiovascular disease and the conditions that lead to it, like Type 2 Diabetes, Fatty Liver Disease, are a series of health problems that are associated with consuming excess amounts of added sugar. But the good news is you can reverse those trends.”
Read the Episode Transcript...
Naomi N.: Welcome back to the Live FAB Life Podcast. This week I am so excited to be joined by Jennifer Tyler Lee. Jennifer is an award- winning author, a game creator, a self-trained home cook, yes, and a healthy eating advocate.
Her first book, The 52 New Foods Challenge was nominated for an IACP Cookbook award. Her Nutrition Game, Crunch a Color, The Healthy Eating Game, was named one of Dr. Toy's "10 Best" Children's Products. It received the Parent Tested Parent Approved, Seal of Approval. Her latest book that recently came out is titled Half the Sugar, All the Love.
Jennifer and I first connected on Instagram because we both help people quit sugar, but as you will hear in our episode, we take very different approaches. As a 21-day sugar detox coach, I lead people through this program where they stop eating sugar with the goal of changing their palette to no longer crave sweet things.
In Jennifer's book, she shares delicious low-sugar recipes to show that reducing added sugar doesn't mean completely giving up the foods that you love, and she shows you how you can sweeten foods, both savory and sweet foods, naturally with fruits and vegetables instead of added sugar.
Jennifer's easy healthy recipes have also been spotlighted by Jessica Alba, Jamie Oliver, Michael Pollan... I love his books, Oprah, William Sonoma, Pottery Barn Kids, Whole Foods, Parents Magazine and US Weekly, among many others. She is also a featured contributor at Red Tricycle, and shares her recipes every week on her blog, www.52newfoods.com, which I will link to in the show notes for this episode, that you can find at www.livefablife.com/113, for episode 13.
I had so much fun chatting with Jennifer, especially after learning that we are actually neighbors. She just lives in the town right next to me and so we had a really delightful conversation and I hope you enjoy it too. With that, let's get to the show.
Hi Jennifer, how are you? Welcome to the show.
Jennifer L.: Thank you so much for having me on the show, Naomi. It's great to be here.
Naomi N.: I am excited to connect with you. We actually first connected, I believe it was on Instagram and come to find out we are actually neighbors in the same neck of the woods.
Jennifer L.: I love it. I love when it's sort of the big brave world of the internet and then you realize, oh, it's someone in my backyard.
Naomi N.: Yeah, this world is just so small. I was not familiar with your work beforehand. And what happened was, I think you were doing a giveaway and a friend of mine tagged me in it and I was like, "Oh, this looks like a really cool book. Maybe she want to come on this show." So for those who may not be familiar with your work, can you just introduce us to who you are and what it is that you do?
Jennifer L.: Yeah, I've got a new book just out called Half the Sugar, All the Love, and it's all about enjoying our favorite foods in a healthier way. And so I'm excited to share that with you today. I'm also a bowling game mom, I've got a nutrition and healthy living certificate from Cornell university and my co-author of the book is Dr. Anisha Patel and she's an associate professor at Stanford.
Naomi N.: Also, in our neck of the woods.
Jennifer L.: Yes.
Naomi N.: Awesome. I was reading through your bio in your website and you have some really interesting things there. I saw that you are a game creator. Tell me a little bit more about that.
Jennifer L.: This food adventure started for me back in 2011 with a little game that my daughter named Crunch a Color. Before food I was in strategy consulting. I was in a totally different world. But when I had my daughter and she was three, she turned into this incredibly picky eater and we struggled a lot at the dinner table.
So we came up with this little game and it was about earning color cards and points and bonuses for trying new foods. That little game called Crunch a Color was published in 2011 and went nationwide with Pottery Barn Kids and Barnes and Noble. And so all of a sudden we were in the world of fruits and vegetables and talking a lot about fruits and vegetables. And that sort of started my adventure in food.
Naomi N.: I love it. You also have on your bio that you have these cookbooks that you've come out with, these award-winning cookbooks, but yet you are a self-trained home cook. Well, I am a self-trained semi cook. Tell me a little bit more about that.
Jennifer L.: I think it's really... We all can cook. You do not need to be a chef to be able to cook healthy foods for your family at home. I will say with this new book, with Half the Sugar, All the Love, because it's so challenging to cut out the sugar and maintain the texture and flavor in the foods that you love.
I worked with a team of chefs, actually three chefs to help me develop and test and refine the recipes, because you'll learn that cutting out sugar is not an easy thing to do. I discovered why it's so valuable as a tool. I can see it adds texture, it adds flavor, it does a whole bunch of things, and when you take it out, it's hard to make those recipes work. So it really take building the recipes from the ground up with a team of chefs to make them delicious. But they're done in a way where you can open up your pantry and I would bet you have all of the ingredients already sitting there to make the recipes in Half the Sugar, All the Love.
Naomi N: Awesome. How did this whole project come about?
Jennifer L.: A couple of years ago, my son and I were actually talking about added sugar and the effects that added sugar have on your brain. And he said, "Mom, I want to try and reduce added sugar. I want to try and eat no added sugar." He was nine, so that's kind of challenging to do. But it opened up a really good conversation at our table and I said, "Okay, let's give it a try. Let's try reducing added sugar for a day." And then that turned into two days, it turned into a week.
And then he said, "Mom, I want to still enjoy all the food. I love Apple pie and I love ice cream and I love waffles. Can you make those for me with no added sugar." That was kind of the impetus, that's what catalyzed me. I said, "You know what? I can do that."
And so that's started 100 recipes that are sweetened with fruits and vegetables instead of added sugar, and those are the recipes that I share in the book.
Naomi N.: I love that. And how insightful of your nine-year-old to come up with this?
Jennifer L.: Well, a lot of great things start at our family table, right?
Naomi N.: Yeah.
Jennifer L.: I think when you take the time to gather around the table and have those conversations with your kids, so many good things happen.
Naomi N.: Yes. My listeners are very familiar with the fact that I am a 21-day sugar detox coach. I've been teaching people and coaching people through this program for a number of years. And so we have very different approaches to this with the same end goal in mind. I want to get into that a little bit.
Your book is titled Half the Sugar, All the Love. And so for listeners who might be thinking, well, we have different approaches here and yes we do. I approach my program from a place of healing because most of the people I work with have health issues that they are really struggling with. And so that is mostly the goal that we work through.
I know when I think about my own people in my life for them to take the approach that I take is definitely a stretch. And I think that your approach is very family-friendly, especially like you said with your kids, but also as a stepping stone for someone who may not be dealing with some pretty serious health issues but yet still want to reduce sugar.
Jennifer L.: Yeah. I actually think, to clarify that, we are trying to solve the same problem. Many of my readers struggle with cardiovascular disease and the conditions that lead to it. When you consume too much added sugar, and right now women are consuming three times more added sugar than the daily limit. Children are consuming three times too much. Actually, their weight, children are consuming their weight in added sugar every year, about 64 pounds. Men are in about 2.8 times the recommended limit. So we're all consuming way too much and it's leading to serious health problems.
So cardiovascular disease and the conditions that lead to it, like type two diabetes, fatty liver disease is involved. There are a series of health problems that are associated with consuming excess amounts of added sugar. But the good news is you can reverse those trends-
Naomi N.: Yes, absolutely.
Jennifer L.: ... by eating a low-sugar diet. The studies that Anisha shares in the book, we talk about a moderate approach. And for families that makes a lot of sense because going all-or-nothing can be really hard to maintain. So the approach that we advocate for in the book is sweetened with fruits and vegetables instead of added sugar and think about reducing your total intake, but you don't necessarily have to go completely sugar-free.
All the recipes in book actually are at least half the sugar, but some of them have no added sugar at all. So, for example, the banana bread, the super moist banana bread, I sweeten with dates instead of added sugar, so that has zero added sugar. And the oven baked Korean chicken wings for dinner with a spicy chili sauce are sweetened with dates too. Those also have zero added sugar. There's a wide range to make it easy for you and your family to reduce added sugar.
Naomi N.: And I'm glad you pointed out the wings because I know a lot of people when they think of sugar they immediately think of the sweets and the pastries, but sugar is in all kinds of stuff. And so if you're eating a savory dish like chicken wings or something like that, people may not realize that, "You know what? There's sugar in there too," because it's hidden in a lot of places.
Jennifer L.: That sneaky sugar shows up in places when you're not expecting it. And it's a big part of why our consumption is so high. 20% of added sugar intake comes from sauces, condiments, dressings, things like that. It's interesting that you bring up the sauce, because yesterday, just yesterday I was getting ready for a TV segment on ABC7 and we were talking about sneaky sugars. And I pulled a jar of Hoisin sauce off of the grocery store shelf. And literally that little jar had 30 teaspoons of sugar inside.
Naomi N.: It is amazing.
Jennifer L.: I had to do the math. I had to do the math five times. I was like, "Did I calculate it wrong? I know it's January. I know I'm a little tired. Did I really? Did I miskey something? Is that really 30 teaspoons of added sugar in that jar?" It's sneaky and there's a lot of it.
There's a recipe in the book that I offer for Hoisin sauce that's sweetened with Miso paste. And if you don't have Miso paste in your fridge, you can use unsweetened peanut butter, and it has zero added sugar.
Naomi N.: I'm looking at your book right now and I think it's on page two. You have the graphic here. It's a beautiful graphic of all of the different names that sugar could appear as on an ingredient label.
Jennifer L.: Yeah, we should talk about labels too. And this is a really, I love this page too. It's beautiful. What it illustrates are just all the different ways that added sugar shows up. Date syrup. Somebody yesterday asked me about date syrup. I said, "Oh, that's made with dates. Isn't that an easier way to sweeten?" No, date syrup is just like honey, maple syrup, granulated sugar, because all of the fiber is removed.
So added sugar honey is not healthier for you, it is still an added sugar, just like granulated sugar. So it's important to make that distinction. What you want to do is reduce added sugar and increase fruits and vegetables. In those fruits and vegetables you'll find naturally occurring sugar, but that naturally occurring sugar comes with fiber. And that's really the difference.
Naomi N.: Tell me about labels. It's a habit of mine, as soon as I see a product, I pick it up, flip it over to see what's in it. I even see that, I think most of us know that when it comes to reading ingredient labels, the first ingredient is what has it has the most of, but if you look at the names, there's actually multiple sources of sugar just with different names to even I guess, trick the consumer to think that, "Oh wait, there's not as much sugar in here as I thought there was. Your book is so beautiful. Besides the recipes, it has a lot of educational material in it as well.
Jennifer L.: Thank you. On page three where I talk about how added sugar adds up, you know this. You can exceed your added sugar intake by breakfast. In some cases a granola with yogurt can have more added sugar than a candy bar.
Naomi N.: I know. And people think that's a healthy breakfast too when they have granola with some yogurt. I did for a long time.
Jennifer L.: Well, this is what is really interesting sing and I learned a lot in the process of writing this book too, because when we started to reduce added sugar, the first thing I went to was I said, "Okay, well let's have honey and start. How about Stevia? Let's use Stevia instead." Because before I had dug into all the research, That seemed like the right place to go. Then I learned honey is the same as maple syrup and granulated sugar-
Naomi N.: And agave.
Jennifer L.: ... [crosstalk 00:15:16], and so it still counts as an added sugar, agave, all of those, date syrup, all of it. And that needs to be reduced. And then with respect to sugar substitutes like Stevia, it's already weary of artificial sweeteners, but natural sugar substitutes have become very, very popular. But there are new studies suggesting that Stevia is not a smart choice for substituting both because there's an effect on your microbiome in a not positive way.
And also Stevia is 400 times sweeter than sugar.
Naomi N.: It is so sweet. I can't eat it myself. It is really, really, really sweet.
Jennifer L.: Yeah. And what it does is it just encourages and trains your brain to keep craving the sweet. And so there's a lot of new research out on this topic. In the book we recommend not using any sugar substitutes, not artificial sugar substitutes and not natural sugar substitutes because of this new research and where it's going.
It really does bring you back to fruits and vegetables are the key, and cooking is the antidote to added sugar.
Naomi N.: What are your favorite fruits and vegetables to use instead?
Jennifer L.: We talked about dates. They are definitely one of my favorite ingredients for sweetening without added sugar. And I use them in a bunch of different ways, both in savory dishes like those Korean wings and in sweet dishes like the feature in my chocolate chip cookie. When I remastered the chocolate chip cookie, I use dates instead to sweeten because they've got this delicious caramely flavor. They're great.
You can use fresh, I prefer fresh Medjool dates, which you'll find in the produce aisle. But you can also use the dried dates that come in the package. Just make sure you soak them first to soften them up a little bit.
I also use a lot of canned fruits and vegetables. Canned sweet potato is a great resource. It's something you should have in your pantry. I use that sweet potato to sweeten the double chocolate brownies in my book, which are also gluten free by the way.
Naomi N.: Awesome.
Jennifer L.: I love that recipe and it's really easy because it comes together in the food processor, so you just throw in the canned sweet potato, some almond butter, a little bit of maple syrup, the cocoa powder. That whole thing comes together in the food processor so quickly.
Naomi N.: It's on page 137, if people are wondering, I just opened up to it.
Jennifer L.: Oh yeah, 137. There it is. It's so delicious this recipe and it's less than half the sugar of a boxed brownie mix. A typical boxed brownie mix per serving, like one brownie is going to have four and a half teaspoons of sugar, added sugar. This double chocolate brownie in my book contains one and a half teaspoons of added sugar. You get that from the chocolate chips that I've got in there, and also the little bit of maple syrup. But you're less than half.
When I serve these brownies, I don't tell anybody they're low-sugar brownies. I just serve brownies, and people love them.
Naomi N.: And then they find out after the fact and they're like, "Really?"
Jennifer L.: Yeah. Nobody can guess the secret ingredient.
Naomi N.: Exactly. Well, these brownies look fantastic. What's your other favorite recipe from the book?
Jennifer L.: I had a friend ask me this question last week. She said, "I bought your book. I'm so excited, but I'm so busy with work. I want to do this but I find it really hard to start. How do I start? What's the one simple thing I can do?"
I would recommend the creamy poppy seed dressing, which is featured in the Mason jar salad that's in the book, which a lot of people are trying to eat more salad right now. It's January, sort of health it up. That recipe, the salad is on page 82 and it's got so much delicious color in there. It's got pomegranate seeds and butternut squash, kale, Brussels, it's packed with all sorts of great stuff.
But that dressing, the creamy poppy seed dressing is sweetened with pear. And there's no cream in the creamy poppy seed dressing. The pears make it creamy enough and there's a little bit of Dijon mustard and white wine vinegar. It's so easy to make. You throw it into the blender, it takes three minutes, and you can use that throughout your entire week.
You can use it for salad dressing, you can use it for marinade, you can use it for a dip. That jar of salad dressing that I remastered, in that jar was 18 teaspoons of added sugar.
Naomi N.: I'm like, I'm making a winter salad tonight. I might make this tonight, I already have all the ingredients like you said.
Jennifer L.: Good. Well, and so here's the other bonus. When you're running behind and you've got that fruit that's sitting over in the fruit bowl that's kind of looking a little brown, those are your friends. That's great. I actually pulled to pear... We had been on vacation, I forgot to take the pears out. I got back, they were a little bit brown and I thought, "Oh, I'm going to make creamy poppy seed dressing." That's perfect because that's when all of the natural sugars have really started to develop and it adds sweetness without added sugar.
Naomi N.: I love it. I love it. Well, I have quite a few friends who are cookbook authors as well and so I have come to appreciate what a labor of love, something like this takes to produce. You have to develop the recipes and then you have to do all the taste testing and then you have to make the food and then do the photography and then do the writing. This is fantastic. Congratulations to you.
Jennifer L.: Oh, thank you. It really does take a team. What I love is we had such a great team that came together for this. Anisha brought so much evidence-based science to the book. Our three professional chefs really helped ensure that every single recipe in this book, they're just so, so, so easy to make and they deliver. We had a dietician working with us who also made sure that all of the nutritional information, there's a nutritional information for every single recipe in the book that I provided. And then the photography and food styling team, Aaron Scott took all the pictures. She's based in Berkeley. It was a really great team of people.
And then of course all of the staff at Workman Publishing who have been a dream team to work with. They're really supportive of this idea. I hope that the book really helps all of us enjoy our favorite foods in a healthier way.
Naomi N.: Well, it is a lovely book and it is out right now as of today, right?
Jennifer L.: Yeah, it's out. It's out. It debuted at number 25 of all new cookbook releases on Amazon. So I'm super excited. I was sitting there right underneath Jamie Oliver's new book. I was pretty excited for that. I hope it just keeps its trend going up the charts.
Naomi N.: Congratulations. So it's on Amazon. Where else can people find it?
Jennifer L.: You can get the book where ever books are sold. I would encourage you to support your local bookseller. They need our help. So go buy two books, buy one for yourself and buy one for a friend from your local bookseller. They will love that. It's also at Barnes and Noble and their New Year, New You tables, that's along with a bunch of other great resources for starting the new year on a healthy note. So you can find it in all of their stores across the country. Wherever you like to buy books just go grab it. Grab one for a friend and let's start cooking.
Naomi N.: Awesome. Where can people connect with you? Are you on social media? What's the best place where people, they want to connect with you beyond the book. Where should they go? Jennifer L.: You can check out my, which is 52newfoods.com. When you get there, if you sign up for the newsletter, I'll send you a bonus pack of exclusive low-sugar recipes to kind of get you started, in addition to the book I've got some other ones to share. You can also follow me on Instagram @JenniferTylerLee. That's where we met, Naomi and I.
Jennifer L.: I'm actually sharing out, I'm participating in the New York Times Seven-Day Sugar Challenge. We're on day five right now, we're rolling into day six. On Instagram, I'm sharing the tip from the Times along with a recipe from the book to help get you started. That's a really fun and easy way to kind of kick start your healthy new year.
Naomi N.: Awesome. I'll have links to all of those in the show notes. We didn't even get into 52 New Foods. I'm going to have to have you back to talk about that at another time.
Jennifer L.: Oh, it's so much fun. It's all about trying something new every week and you can start with Half the Sugar, All the Love.
Naomi N.: Yeah. A friend of mine who's actually a teacher had shared that with me, the 52 New Foods and how much she loves bringing that into her classroom.
Jennifer L.: That's great, hurray.
Naomi N.: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here. I know you have so much going on with the new book, but I appreciate you taking the time.
Jennifer L.: Thanks Naomi. It was so great talking with you and I hope you have a healthy start to 2020 filled with many sweet surprises.
Naomi Nakamura is a Functional Nutrition Health Coach. She helps passionate, ambitious high-achievers who are being dragged down by fatigue, burnout, sugar cravings, poor sleep, unexplained weight issues, and hormonal challenges optimize health, find balance, and upgrade their energy so they can do big things in this world.
Through her weekly show, The Live FAB Live Podcast, programs, coaching, and services, she teaches women how to optimize their diet, support their gut health, reduce their toxic load, and improve their productivity, bringing work + wellness together.
Naomi resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and can often be found exploring the area with her puppy girl, Coco Pop!
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