Losing The Sweet Tooth

WHY SHOULD WE?

Cutting calories is not the answer because "a calorie is not a calorie". The effect of a calorie in sugar is different from the effect of a calorie in lean grass-fed beef. And added sugar is often disguised in food labelling under carbohydrates and myriad different names, from glucose to diastatic malt and dextrose. Fructose – contained in many different types of sugar – is the biggest problem, and high-fructose corn syrup, used extensively by food manufacturers in the US, is the main source of it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/mar/20/sugar-deadly-obesity-epidemic

HEALTHY OPTIONS?

An article in The Times On Sunday (05-05-13) revealed that many of the so-called healthy options sold in supermarkets contain similar amounts of sugar per serving than a can of coke! Thus includes High fiber breakfast cereals and sauces used for supposedly savory main courses. Many of these products boast a low fat and low salt content, plus no artificial x,y,or z oh and made with real fuit etc. Surely the health revolution is well underway.

Alas it is only business in the food industry that is booming, even though there's a recession on which should force people to buy less and make their own food from carefully sourced first ingredients....you would think.) thank you very much. I too am a full time working mum and am fully aware that working ours have extended to breaking oint and invaded our family lives on every level. We barely have time to dash around the supermarket for the weekly shopping once a week, let alone read the small print on the food labels! So who really controls what the average Brit is of necessity putting inside his body? They keep very quiet about the increasing amounts of sugar, in the form of glucose and fructose sugars that they have increasingly been adding to foods for which the authentic counterparts would never have called for. Should a  sweet and sour sauce not be sweetened with sugar ? Only a table spoon added of unrefined cane sugar (the pulp on this occasion is humanly indigestible  to a dish for 6 goes a long way in South East Asia so what's going on? We've demonised fats such as coconut   oil and blamed fat for being fat for so long that whatever has beed lost in mouth feel, fat soluble natural flavoring compounds and the general satified feeling at the end of the meal is now being replaced and drowned out by highly concentrated levels of sugar. It not only distracts us from the boring taste of the dish with its poor quality ingredients, but high levels of sugar also act as a preservative,, extending the shelf life of the product. A win win situation for the food industry. We have now become accustomed to that intense sugar burst and crave it when its not there. In fact in many cases  we neither care what food should taste like in the authentic sense, nor the historic sense both of which should concern us if we're to achieve the low levels of obesity and western diet related diseases shown by the populations who invented these dishes in the first place!

In the following posts I will be embarking on an adventure to rid myself of my desire for snacks and deserts made with added and refined sugar. My definition of refined excludes pure fruit juices (sans the rest of the edible fruit), all forms of non-white sugar, all syrups and honey (separated from the beeswax/honey comb).

I will attempt to rediscover suitable natural wholefood replacements and either device or find interesting recipes including ways of compensating for unavoidable bending of  rules due to time, money and social constraints. In the process I will be weaning myself from pre-prepared meals, sauces and shortcuts such as frozen pastry.When the menu is well developed, it then falls on me as a mother to reeducate my family's palate, as far as possible (without ruining their social lives), which up to now has been mainly  nurtured by the  Food Industry in more ways, both subtly and blatantly, than I ever imagined. The plan will hopefully be that the quality and impact of the food will do most of the talking for itself!

I will be interjecting with more reflections on this wholefood philosophy as they occur, and will update you not only with the Scientific evidence I find, but also with how I am coping with these changes myself.