Every year around now a bowl of candy appears. In the office, on the kitchen counter, by the front door. For about a week it’s everywhere and it’s free.
I don’t eat it. Not because of the sugar, but because of everything else in it: corn syrup, dyes, flavours. I’m an 80/20 person, and sweet things are firmly in my 20. I’d just rather they be made of real food and not in a lab.
But I still feel the week. The sweet things I do eat come out around now too, and by Thursday I’m heavier and sleeping worse. So I looked into what’s going on, and most of it has nothing to do with whether the candy is “clean”.
1. The grazing matters more than the sugar
Between meals, once the stomach is empty, the gut runs a cleaning cycle. A slow wave of contractions moves from the stomach through the small intestine and clears out what’s left: crumbs, bacteria, bits of the last meal. It’s called the migrating motor complex. It only starts after about ninety minutes without food.
Halloween week interrupts it all day. One piece at 10. Two at 11:30. One on the way out of a meeting. Every time something arrives, the stomach resets and the cleaning wave is cancelled. If something sweet is within reach all day, the cycle never runs.
This is true of a date as much as a fun-size bar. The heavy, stuck feeling by mid-afternoon, on a day when you haven’t eaten much, is mostly this. The problem is when you eat, not what.
2. Some sugars ferment instead of absorbing
Ordinary sugar, sucrose, is half glucose and half fructose, and the gut handles it fine. The trouble is with what gets used instead of it.
Fructose on its own is absorbed by a transporter in the small intestine that has a limit. Past a certain amount, the rest goes on to the colon and is fermented by bacteria. Fermentation produces gas. Conventional candy is mostly sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, which is one reason I don’t eat it.
Then there’s sugar-free candy, sweetened with sorbitol, maltitol or xylitol. Sugar alcohols are hardly absorbed at all. Nearly all of it reaches the colon, ferments, and draws water in with it.
The organic candy brands mostly sweeten with cane sugar, brown rice syrup or tapioca syrup. Rice and tapioca syrup are mainly glucose, which absorbs without a ceiling.
3. Sugar and fat together slow the stomach down
Most sweet things aren’t just sugar. They’re sugar and fat, which is why they taste good. Dark chocolate, a date with almond butter, a coconut caramel.
Fat slows the rate at which the stomach empties. That’s normal and it’s how a proper meal keeps you full. But when dinner is still in the stomach and chocolate lands on top at 9pm, the whole evening stretches out. Food that would have moved on by midnight is still there at one.
4. Waking at 3am
I’ve written about this before, in your gut doesn’t clock out when you do, but sugar adds its own version.
Sweet food late in the evening pushes blood sugar up and then, a few hours later, down. The body responds to the dip with a little cortisol and adrenaline to bring it back. For a lot of people that’s the 3am wake-up: suddenly alert, nothing wrong.
So the week goes like this. You graze all day and the cleaning cycle doesn’t run. You eat something sweet and rich late and dinner takes longer to leave. The blood sugar dip wakes you in the night. You’re tired the next day, and the bowl is still there.
What I eat instead
For the house, and for anyone who comes to the door, I buy things with a short ingredient list and sugar that came from plants.
Chocolate. Hu and Alter Eco for dark chocolate, UNREAL for the peanut butter cups and the coconut bars. Cane or coconut sugar, no emulsifiers or sugar alcohols in any of them.
Gummies and chews. YumEarth and Surf Sweets, both coloured with fruit and vegetable juice, pectin instead of gelatin, cane sugar and rice or tapioca syrup. Cocomels for caramels.
Fruit. Stretch Island fruit strips and That’s It bars are just fruit. Good, but see section 2: they count as fructose, so they go with a meal, not between.
At home. Dates with tahini, a square of 85% chocolate, dried figs. Same rules apply.
The Dupes
Reese’s → Hu peanut butter cups
M&M’s → UNREAL coated gems
Starburst → YumEarth chews
Milky Way → Cocomels
Fruit Roll-Ups → Stretch Island strips
Snickers → a date with tahini and a square of 85%
What I do with the timing
Sweet things with a meal. After lunch, after dinner. The grazing is what stops the cleaning wave, so I keep the treat and drop the grazing.
Nothing sweet after nine. The earlier the last piece, the more of the blood sugar swing happens while I’m awake and don’t notice it. A date at four is nothing. The same date at eleven wakes me up.
Fruit-based sweets with food. Dried fruit on an empty stomach is the fastest way to hit the fructose limit. Next to protein or fat it goes in slower.
Chew. Chocolate especially. It’s the first step of digestion.
That’s it. No detox, no reset. The bowl is gone in a week and the gut catches up in a few days, as long as it gets some gaps.