When Lin Yin, a 27-year-old livestreamer from Xiamen, Fujian province, was unexpectedly diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes last September, she acted quickly. Shocked that she had contracted the illness so young, Lin announced on the very next day to her more than 500 followers on social media platform Xiaohongshu (RED) that she was quitting sugar.

With blood test results that showed both her fasting blood sugar level and glucose tolerance were more than double the normal range for someone her age, Lin decided to cut out cookies, soda, and milk tea, plus local delicacies like stewed pork with sweet sauce and pig’s feet with rice. “After one month, my fasting blood sugar level dropped to 5.4 millimoles per liter, within the normal range…my weight fell by 13 kilograms…even the doctor was amazed,” Lin boasted on social media last November regarding her new health regimen, which also included not eating processed and salty foods, and exercising two hours a day.

China’s per capita sugar consumption has rocketed over the last three decades, but now increasing awareness of sugar’s detrimental health impacts has seen a growing number of young Chinese wage “war” against the sweet stuff. This is enthusiastically supported by influencers and a booming market for sugar-free products, which was valued at 11.7 billion yuan in 2020 according to a report issued by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) last November.

But while Lin has made a success of her sugar-free diet, others continue to wrestle between their sweet tooth and their desire for health. Elsewhere, “low sugar” products, featuring reduced sugar content or sweeteners (also known as sugar substitutes), see their own problems with unsatisfactory taste, high cost, and health concerns of their own.

Among young Chinese, sugar is now considered the number-one enemy to those looking to lose weight and get healthy. On Xiaohongshu, an app popular with users mostly between 18 and 34, searches for phrases such as “quitting sugar (戒糖),” “sugar control (控糖),” and “sugar reduction (减糖),” show tens to hundreds of thousands of results. On social media platform Douban, also popular among the under-35 population, forums for users wanting to quit sugar can host thousands of members. One, the “Quit Sugar Commune” established in July 2018, has over 5,000 members who “check in” each day to record their low-sugar milestones and progress toward health goals.

Celebrities have also taken up the craze. In April 2018, 36-year-old Chinese singer and actress Zhang Shaohan told her over 15 million followers on Weibo that her “secret” to staying young is a zero-sugar diet: “Highly processed sugar…is probably one of the most harmful inventions in human history,” she wrote, earning 190,000 likes and 50,000 forwards on the platform.