Sugar By Any Other Name Isn’t As Sweet

Howard is a brave soul. He went to a nutritionist looking for guidance about his diet in the hope of feeling better and dropping a few unwanted pounds.  

The nutritionist asked him to go home, find every packaged food with sugar, fructose etc. listed as an ingredient and get it out of his house post haste. Our intrepid eater reports that by the end of this exercise he literally had no packaged food left!  This is a shocking but telling result and one that I suspect would be repeated over and over if many of us undertook a similar mission.

What can we learn from Howard's experiment?  First and most obvious is that we need to be vigilant about reading labels.  Second is to remember that whole foods are what our bodies know and crave and that eating a whole food diet is the only way to be sure we are getting real nutrition and not some conglomerate's impersonation of same.

Howard has shifted his diet to focus more on fruits, veggies, low fat proteins like eggs, meats and fish.  He is off sugar for the time being – except for a little brown in his morning coffee – but has been promised he will be able to work in honey, maple syrup and the like in time.  He is enjoying nuts, seeds, avacado and other healthy foods that he previously considered fattening.  He has learned that that there are fats and then there are healthy fats that are actually good for the body and have the added bonus of keeping him sated so he isn't reaching for the nearest candy bar all the time.  

Seems to be working.  The sugar purge was over 3 weeks ago and he has easily lost 12 pounds since…

Savour the fruits of your labour, Howard!  You are indeed an inspiration.  

 

 

 

 

 

Don’t be Sweet on Sugar

Most of our mother's told us the same thing:  "Sugar puts holes in your teeth".  Unfortunately sugar does more than invite the whirring of the dentist's drill.  It prevents our immune system from doing its job – a big deal, especially during flu season.

The way I understand it, when too much sugar enters the blood stream, it occupies the white blood cells so that they cannot fight bacteria properly. (I am not a chemist so by all means Google 'sugar and the immune system' for further details.)

As a hopeless sweet tooth myself, I did not greet this information warmly.  More distressing is the fact that it is not just the things we think of as 'sweets' that have this effect.  Right up there with candy, ice cream and cake are any processed carbohydrate made from refined ingredients (even organic ingredients if they are not whole grain). That's right, bread, pasta, baked chips (potato, rice or corn) and crackers.  These too break down into sugar and prevent our immune systems from functioning properly. 

(Please don't get me wrong.  I am not advocating a low carb diet.  Just a low processed carb diet.  There is a BIG difference. Veggies are carbs as are fruit, potatoes and healthful grains like brown rice and quinoa.)

Food allergies that go untreated have the same effect.  I've told you many times about our son's gluten free, cow dairy free, egg free diet.  Its a lot of work but the improvement in his immunity has been startling. 

If your child is educated anywhere other than in your home, you have seen the outbreak of H1N1 tear through the student population.  Every time I start wishing I didn't have to do all this preparing I remind myself of this success and march right back into the kitchen.

So yes, he's doing fine.  But then along comes flu season.  I want him to have every natural advantage available to him.  So without explaining this to him, I am trying to cut back on his sweet and processed carb intake by being strict about the one (low glycemic sweet per day).  This makes sense whether or not you choose to vaccinate because vaccines are not 100% effective.  Indeed, I've heard varying statistics about last year's flu shot but the highest efficacy rate I've read was 40%.  Not stellar. 

So you can label me a mean Mommy because I try to minimize my child's sugar intake.  I can handle that. I know that I do it out of love and to protect him. 

Wouldn't it be grand if children and those who care for them could learn to associate carrot sticks and hummus with love instead of a brownie????