I always thought we were pretty good with sugar. I read labels and where-ever possible buy products without sugar on the labelling, I make our bread, we don’t do juices for the kids or fizzy drinks (only fairly recent for me I have to say and of course himself has his homebrew) and I make most stuff at home either omitting sugar, like my pikelets, or reducing the sugar by 1/3 to 1/2 the recipe amounts. Sure the kids had the odd treat but not everyday or every week so all and all I was feeling not too shabby about the whole sugar thing.
Well I was until I came a across an interview with Sarah Wilson of ‘I quit sugar’ fame in which she was describing how she thought she was good too. She ate fruit, don’t we all? She used honey for sweeter, just as we do, and she dried fruit as snacks. Then the big shocker came as she talked about how this was still sugar and the amounts of sugar they each contained and that she was actually addicted to sugar. It really must of hit something somewhere as I kept thinking about it, over and over. Could I really give up sugar? Honey maybe but fruit? Surely I wasn’t addicted! We need fruit and dried fruit is just all that goodness condensed isn’t it? Somewhere inside I was panicking a little in the knowledge that actually maybe, just maybe, I was a little hooked on sugar too. Not the white stuff but sugar never the less.
I had read many other times about the addictive nature of sugar and not really thought that much about it due to the fact that I didn’t really use sugar anymore, aside from a wee bit in baking. I had even heard about addiction and how the addicts brain was actually wired to work normally with the toxin and abnormally without it, once again I didn’t make any links. I had even thought that I needed to reduce my honey intake in a bid to improve health but that is about as far as I got and that maybe that wee bit of baking was actually growing since we begun home-educating. Truth was that I was enjoying my sweet treats too much to want to take the information and action it. Sarah’s interview stuck with me though and I decided to get her book from the library, still doubting that I would need to give up honey and fruit. As the library didn’t have in stock I reserved it and began to browse. Low and behold what should I come across but ‘The sweet poison quit plan’ by David Gillespie. Hmmmm…. I thought maybe the universe is trying to tell me something?
One of our Monday baking sessions.
I got it out and soon realised that this was the guy that started it all. Sarah had used his research and advice to quit her sugar habit and it seemed that he was now going to be guiding our family of four through the same process. The evidence in the book, along with information I already knew about food and me was enough for me to see that I was indeed hooked on the stuff – honey and fruit being my big staples and chocolate or bread being my cravings. In brief David Gillespie explains how it is the fructose portion of sugar which is the big problem. Not only is it making us fat, it is also making us addicted and causing major health issues to boot. Yes we need sugar and yes we actually convert much of our food into sugar however this is glucose. We need glucose not fructose. In fact our body doesn’t even know what to do with a whole heap of fructose apart from store it directly as fat and as a lovely aside make us addicted to the ‘high’ it gives us each time we indulge. The scariest thing is that is it is so so much that is everyday food.
So with that very brief and incomplete background I have decided to quit sugar as I’m not that into being addicted to anything let alone being poisoned by it! If you want the facts then check out David’s book ‘The Sweet Poison Quit plan’ or others of his books. Needless to say that I will keep you updated how everything goes for me and the family. So far the kids have only had fruit with fructose in it over the last two days and already I am noticing a difference in their appetite, as in they are eating more real food that I present, and that all that honey I have been feeding them certainly has had them hankering for sweet stuff too much. Herself jnr and myself have both had a bit of a clearing as far as sinus go yesterday and today – not sure if it is related or a big old coincidence – and she also went on the search for sweet things in the cupboard this afternoon, just as I too was feeling the sugar crave hit. We managed with some nuts and popcorn instead thankfully.
It is actually nice knowing that I’m not feeding them up with sugar, or myself for that matter, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how this whole thing pans out.
Arohanui
Y
Becoming Healthy 