US Magazine
September, 1998
Faces & Places
Unsweetened Hollywood
By Lauren David Peden
Goodbye, Gummy Bears. After years of cutting fat and counting carbs, L.A.’s elite are saying yes to “Sugar Busters!”
There’s no denying that Sugar Busters! is the hot diet of 1998. People gab about it around the water cooler. Dateline NBC devoted an entire segment to the controversial book that spawned the craze. As spokesman from Barnes and Noble says he hasn’t seen a diet craze like this since The Zone hit bookstores in 1996.
It’s hardly news that a diet book – especially one that favors red meat and butter over vegetables like carrots and corn – is being embraced by a country in which 138 million people are overweight. What’s surprising is that the Sugar Busters! fad hit so fast and hard in Hollywood, perhaps the only town in America where if you’re not thin – or John Travolta – you’re not working. Borders in Los Angeles hasn’t been able to keep Sugar Busters! on the shelf Exclusive spas have started to incorporate Sugar Busters! guidelines into their menus. And many of Hollywood’s personal trainers are spreading the Sugar Busters! gospel among their clientele.
“About 25 of our clients are on the program,” says Todd person, owner of the Metabolic Project in Los Angeles, where he trains Christian Slater, Rachel Hunter and Jeanne Tripplehorn. “Some of our clients were having trouble getting the last 5 or 10 pounds off, and this is working for them.”
For those who haven’t dipped into the country’s No. 1 best seller, the premise of the diet is simple: Abstaining from all refined sugar as well as processed grain products like white bread and white rice, which your body quickly converts into sugar will slow down your production of insulin. This will lower your cholesterol, increase your energy and decrease your risk for diet-related health problems. Says who? you might wonder. Says H. Leighton Steward., the sixtysomething New Orleans businessman who co-wrote the book with three doctors (non of whom have a background in nutrition). Steward, who got the idea from a French diet book called Dine Out and Lose Weight, says he lost 20 pounds on the Sugar Busters! diet.
Hollywood was ready to hear his story – if only because sugar plays such an important role in the local culture. “A lot of actresses live on [sweets],” says Gunnar Peterson, who trains Alyssa-Milano and Andrew McCarthy: “They’ll say, ‘I don’t eat any fat – I just eat licorice and Swedish Fish.’ But if all you’re eating is sugar your body will store it as fast. I had to tell Annabeth Gish to [go easy] on the sugar. She was living on licorice, Gummy Bears and hard-ball candy.”
That certainly doesn’t sound healthy. But is chocolate really better for your weight-loss regimen than carrots, as Sugar Busters! suggests? The medical community has pondered such questions as well. “I give[Sugar Busters!] an A+ in terms of how to write a successful diet book – it’s easy to read” says nutrition expert C. Wayne Callaway, M.D. “But scientifically, this is the equivalent of puff pastry: It goes down easily, and it won’t cause harm if you don’t stick with it long-term.”
Perhaps. But don’t tell that to Gillian Anderson. During a recent visit to the Rancho La Puerta spa in Baja, Mexico, Anderson requested that her meals not contain any potatoes or other starches—forbidden foods on the Sugar Busters! diet. “About 10 percent of our dietary requests are now falling into this category,” says the spa’s executive chef Bill Wavrin. When Kate Winslet visited Rancho La Puerta, she also adhered to a program of no starch, no potatoes, no beets. “She did drink beer,” Wavrin notes. “But she’s English.”