The Irony of Junk Food

Websites that promote apples do not disparage oranges or peaches or cherries. If you look at websites that sell whole grains, they do not disparage other healthy whole food products.

What I find interesting is that Junk Food "A" may talk very highly about their product, but have something terrible to say about Junk Food "B". The sugar people will go off about alternative sweeteners, and the alternative sweetener folks will go off about both HFCS and sugar. All the while, each company's product is touted to be quite superior. If each of the junk food companies has something legitimate to say about the other junk food company's products, isn't this a sure sign that it's all....JUNK?!

Here are some examples:

What the Sugar Association has to say: "HFCS does not exist in nature. It is a highly processed product that requires the ingenuity and efforts of man for its creation, and was unknown to the world until the 1970s. Sugar is all-natural and has been the primary sweetening ingredient worldwide for thousands of years and still is the predominate sweetener in every country, except the United States. Sugar exists naturally in almost every fruit and vegetable but most abundantly in sugar cane and sugar beets."

The Sugar Association has gone so far as to create a website called The Truth About Splenda which further disparages another competitor.

Here is what SPLENDA has to say: "SPLENDA® No Calorie Sweetener may be used as part of a healthy diet that includes a variety of nutritious foods in moderate portions. Because SPLENDA® No Calorie Sweetener tastes like sugar and can be used for cooking and baking, it helps meet consumer demand for good-tasting foods and beverages without all the empty calories of sugar."

and...

"Although sucralose (generic term for SPLENDA) is made from a process that begins with sugar, the body does not recognize it as sugar or a carbohydrate. It is not metabolized by the body for energy, so it is calorie-free.....it passes through the body without being broken down for energy, so it has no calories, and the body does not recognize it as a carbohydrate. " This is saying that SPLENDA is not recognized by the body as a food, which in my opinion means we have no business putting it in our bodies!!

The NutraSweet Company is proud of their product because of its lack of calories: "Aspartame has many benefits. Aspartame can reduce or replace the sugar and calories in foods and beverages while maintaining great taste. Thus, aspartame offers one simple step in helping people move closer to achieving a more healthful diet." That's funny.

Saccharin comes right out and says, "Although the totality of the available research indicates saccharin is safe for human consumption, there has been controversy over its safety. The basis for the controversy rests primarily on findings of bladder tumors in some male rats fed high doses of sodium saccharin." Oh, woops. Just bladder tumors. No worries. Then I wonder why convenient stores have saccharin warning signs in their store windows?

Again, healthy whole foods will never be controversial. We don't need science to tell us what our common sense leads us to believe about healthy foods....that an apple is good nutrition, for example. If there is any controversy about a food you are eating, I would suggest you consider eating something that has never been controversial.

You can't go wrong by eating whole foods, keeping in mind portion sizes. You might go wrong by eating JUNK. To me, it's not worth risking what I don't know.

Lastly, I include with the Corn Refiner's Association take on their product HFCS, because it is so funny to me: "Mention corn syrups and consumers think of the sweetness and energy they offer--outstanding characteristics--" More like mention corn syrup and watch people roll their eyes. The press, the commercials and the lobbying is just ridiculous. I can't imagine anyone going to such great lengths to lobby for steel cut oats or lima beans.

Here is an interesting article about HFCS, with quotes from the president of the Corn Refiner's Association, Audrae Erickson. HFCS or sugar? Sugar or HFCS?

The press on this right now is downright silly. We have companies responding to consumer demand by taking HFCS out of their products and going back to using sugar. Hooray? Really? To me this is the silliest battle between highly processed junk foods that we should eat less of altogether. I don't eat either one, and it's difficult to avoid because most packaged products have one or the other. I usually end up eating fruit, darnit.

My point is that no matter how ignorant we might want to feign to be, it's obvious what is healthy whole food and what is not. I don't believe that the "foods" created in the laboratories were made to improve our health, although many of the artificial sweetener producers would argue and say that they are providing a low-calorie sweetener alternative. What good does it do to put a low-calorie sweetener in a product that is loaded with junk and many other types of calories?

Man With a Craving & a Mission

What do a Harvard-trained doctor, lawyer, medical school dean, dumpster-diver and former commissioner of the FDA all have in common? One name, one man: David Kessler.

He has recently come out with a book, The end of overeating, which I read about in this fantastic Washington Post article. Why the dumpster-diving? He was on a mission to find out the ingredients of restaurant foods.

Below is an excellent video with Dr. Kessler as he discusses the topics in his book. It helps answer the questions-Why can't I resist eating those chocolate brownies or that hot fudge sundae? Why don't I feel satisfied after eating? What is it about certain foods that trump my willpower? The end of overeating sounds like a fascinating read. Just when I began to think I might have an eating disorder (I'm perfectly healthy until I smell cookie dough!) after watching this video I feel like we ALL might have a common eating disorder--loss of control over foods that have just the right ingredients: fat, sugar, more fat and more sugar. Layers and layers of fat and sugar. Dr. Kessler asks, in essence, how the food industry is going to take responsibility for the problems they have created.

Check out this video, it might just make your day. If you feel powerless against certain foods, learn why and know that you are not alone. Enjoy!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/mEWVSEWYGEKK1

The Real Threat to Americans

Sometimes it's really good to see things in perspective.

Especially for those of you who tend to internalize information you see on the news. The media does not give a balanced perspective of what is going on in the world. If it did aim for perspective, it would perhaps show the following chart, night after night.

The fact is, information in this chart is not very entertaining and it certainly isn't what most people want to think about. It's much more exciting to talk about rare or unrealistic events because then we don't have to hold ourselves accountable for events that affect us daily. Well, here's to not passing the buck. Here's to facing reality and holding ourselves accountable:

Eating Healthy is Cheaper than Eating Junk

Despite what you might be inclined to believe, it's cheaper to eat healthful foods than junk foods.

Take McDonald's. Okay, so a burger is $1, let's say, and the fries $1.50 and a drink for $1. (I have no idea what these items cost. I am just guessing and being conservative.) That's a total of $3.50. What nutrients will your body derive from these foods? You have a little slab of beef, (lettuce, tomato, pickle, cheese?) the bun, greasy, deep-fried french fries (sauce?) and who-knows-what to drink. Soda? Milkshake? I'll just call those unnecessary sugar/beverage calories.

The nutrients your body gets from ingesting the above are questionable. You get some protein, a lot of empty calories and carbohydrates from the bun, possibly trans fat with your french fries and a lot of starch from those fries and empty calories from that soda that your body's insulin will have to deal with to regulate your blood sugar. The hamburger bun, as I talked about in an earlier post, offers nothing but sugar to the body. Its carbohydrates are almost immediately digested in the stomach, leaving you feeling hungry.



For $3.50 I could buy kale or red chard on sale, and a loaf of tempeh or some bulk quinoa to boil, and maybe an apple or orange for dessert. The nutrients I get from this healthy variety of colorful foods greatly outweighs the poor nutrients offered in the McDonald's scenario above. Nutrient per cent spent on food equals this: you get more nutrients from a few healthy foods than you do from 10 hamburgers or 30 french fries.

If we were to compare the contents of two different grocery carts at a grocery store, it may reveal something like this:

Cart A: Bottles of soda, frozen pizzas/meals, bags of chips, crackers, ice cream, boxed cereals, white rice, etc.

Cart B: Cabbage, blueberries, apples, cherries, turnips, carrots, beets, spinach, kale, chard, bulk quinoa and steel-cut oats, olive oil, almonds, walnuts, sunflower seeds, almond milk, etc.

It would take you a tremendous amount of calories from the foods in Cart A to get nutrients for your body. Even then, you are not eating foods that your doctor would ever recommend. (If you do have a doctor recommending these items, you may want to consider switching doctors.) However, if you ate from Cart B's list of foods, you would get more nutrients, and quicker so that you feel full and are apt to eat less.

I can almost hear some of you ho-hum right now--preparing foods like those in Cart B can be so overwhelming and time-consuming. I'll just mention priorities this once. It comes down to not wanting to prepare all of these fruits and vegetables. It is not convenient and we are living in a culture of "convenience is best." We want more time at our computer, or being on the phone, in the car, working, etc. We spend more time doing the very things that end up being very stressful to us and eventually killing us.

Have you tried telling yourself that it is okay to spend more than 15 minutes in the kitchen? Have you told your partner/family member that it is a priority to eat healthy and might require more time in the kitchen? Don't forget to tell them that you also saved money on your groceries because you bought healthy foods instead of expensive cereals, crackers, chips and drinks. Everyone can still munch on snacks, but they will be different. Out goes the Cheetos and Oreos and Ben & Jerry's (admittedly, some of my old favorites) and in comes the fresh, crispy carrot sticks and slices of cucumber and tomato and trail mix, to name a few.

Eating healthy is tough these days. There are so many options and gimmicks that we fall prey to, especially when our stomach begins to get hungry.

Think of it this way: 15 extra minutes in the kitchen (simply to wash and slice and store veggies/fruits in the fridge as snacks) may save you 15 days in the hospital down the road if you don't watch what you eat. Heart disease, obesity and diabetes are leading health concerns in our country. People are not having these problems because they ate their vegetables. Although these health issues have many variables and can have complicated relationships with lifestyles, no one ever regrets eating more fruits and vegetables than junk foods. No doctor is going to point his/her finger at you and say, "The problem here is that you just eat too damn healthy."

*

Just in case you did not know, and in case you were wondering if there is some sort of conspiracy to get us to eat junk food, there is. It's called the.....no, wait. You are not going to believe this. I was shocked that there was such an organization. Why haven't I heard of this before? Why didn't we ever talk about it in school? It's called the Snack Food Assocation. No kidding.

Here is a brief introduction: "The Snack Food Association (SFA) is the international trade association of the snack food industry representing snack manufacturers and suppliers. SFA represents over 400 companies worldwide....SFA business membership includes, but is not limited to, manufacturers of potato chips, tortilla chips, cereal snacks, pretzels, popcorn, cheese snacks, snack crackers, meat snacks, pork rinds,snack nuts,party mix, corn snacks, pellet snacks, fruit snacks, snack bars, granola, snack cakes, cookies and various other snacks."

I'm surprised they don't just come out and call themselves the Junk Food Assocation. "Snack" bars? Oh, and we're just in time to participate in SNAXPO, which "will draw thousands of industry professionals from more than 60 countries around the world looking for the latest products and developments, face-to-face meetings with suppliers, networking, outstanding speakers and educational seminars."

I have this little fantasy that I dress in sharp, career-woman clothes and join in the SNAXPO event, talking to people and hearing what goes on in such an event. I can't imagine. Bottom line, though, is that even the Snack Food Association isn't trying to make us fat. All they care about is making money. The demand (for junk food OR for organics and healthier foods) helps initiate what companies will supply. They do not do it for conspiracy reasons or out of the kindness of their hearts. A corporation's goal first and foremost is to make their shareholders happy. They are about money.

The bottom line is what I love to say most: EAT HEALTHY. Make those tough decisions to just "SAY NO" to the bright cereal boxes that beckon, the chips that call your name and to the ice cream that does not have your name written all over it. Try your best to see past fancy packaging (think of multi-millionares mingling at the snack expo and talking about how they can get someone just like you to buy their junk-food product to increase their wealth.) and make the effort to break bad habits. It's worth the time, it's less expensive and it is something in life you won't regret. Be a leader in your family, your social network and your community.

Small steps towards this goal work great!

Would You Like a McDonald's in YOUR Hospital?

For those of you who weren't horrified enough by the hospital nutritionists feeding my mom and the other 5th floor, post-surgery patients green Jell-O, I bring you Texas Children's Hospital. Maybe I'm naive. Maybe it's common for hospitals to have fast food restaurants inside, but I've never seen it until now. The Texas Children's Hospital has a McDonald's on the first floor. Here is their list of food choices inside their hospital:

"Where you can eat:

• Breakfast - 3rd floor, Clinical Care Center
• Cafeteria- Basement, Abercrombie Building
• ChickFilA - 3rd floor, Clinical Care Center
• McDonald's - 1st floor, Abercrombie Building
• Pizza - 3rd floor, Clinical Care Center
• Snack bar - 16th floor, West Tower
• Starbucks - 3rd floor, Clinical Care Center
• Subway - 3rd floor, Clinical Care Center"

They advertise this on their website and doctors are quite happy about having McDonald's in house. Some of the children who are dying of cancer will not eat anything, but when they are offered food from McDonald's, they eat it. I think this is a very unfair argument to justify fast food in a building of health and healing. I do think it's wonderful that children are eating something, even fast food, if they are dying. But why not bring in fast food from the outside and offer it to them? Why let a fast food chain set up shop in a hospital? Personally, if I had a child in this hospital and I set foot in the door for the first time and saw the Mickey D's on the main floor, I would not trust the doctors working there.

-http://www.texaschildrens.org/kids/default.aspx

"Don't Eat This Book" by Morgan Spurlock

I just purchased a fantastically fun, easy read from Powell's books yesterday. The cover caught my attention, "DON'T EAT THIS BOOK, Fast Food and the Supersizing of America," by Morgan Spurlock who brought us the outsanding documentary, "Super-Size Me."

In quickly scanning the first chapter, I knew that I would buy the book when I read this paragraph at the end of chapter one:

"Like this book, the epidemic of overconsumption that's plaguing the nation begins with the things we put in our mouths. Since the 1960's, everyone has known that smoking kills, but it's only been in the last few years that we've become hip to a new killer, one that now rivals smoking as the leading cause of preventable deaths in America and, if current trends continue, will soon be the leading cause: overeating.

Americans are eating themselves to death."

The titles of the following chapters are hilarious. "Girth of a Nation" "McD-Day" "Sex, Fries and Videotape" "McFree at Last" "Vote with your Fork" to name a few.

The bulk of the book includes startling statistics (we rarely, if ever, exercise anymore, meanwhile our caloric intake has steadily increased) fast food, marketing, politics and consumption. "Consume. Consume. Still not happy? Then you obviously haven't consumed enough."

If you're in denial about how little you exercise and how much crap you eat, do not read this book.

Sugar is Dead

It sits in your cupboard, quietly. It silently lines the shelves at grocery food stores. It is not sugar's fault that you are eating it. Sugar does not care. Sugar is not a living, sentient thing. Sugar is not evil.

Marketers, advertisers, food companies, agri-business: people, are who you must focus on the next time you are blind-sided by a craving. The next time you can't stop yourself from pulling boxes of cookies and sugary cereals from the shelves of a grocery store, think of the people who have orchestrated this very experience. A lot of money, time and creativity was aimed at key variables in your decision-making.

Sorry, but your personal health is of little concern compared to the money you spend. Of utmost importance to the people responsible for providing sugary foods, is their bottom line. Gross profits. No one, and I mean absolutely no one cares what you do with a product when you bring it home. No one cares if you sit at home and eat an entire box of cookies. No one cares if you eat one or two or five Snicker's bars. Your family might be the only people who care. Those responsible for providing the product in the first place DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU. If they did, things would be very different. Unhealthy products wouldn't be sold in the first place. Secondly, if they were sold, and people cared, you would get frequent phone calls checking up on you to see if you ate too much, or how you felt after you ate such-and-such product.

The ugly, political/money-driven truth is that if you support an industry of unhealthy products, you've made the people behind these products extremely happy. They count on you feigning ignorance. They count on you feeling peer pressure in social situations. They count on you not being able to see through their tricky advertising. They count on you to be persuaded by the pictures of fruit on a cereal box, with a catch phrase like, "Enriched with B Vitamins!" and they hope you purchase the cereal without looking into their product further. Gerber is being sued currently for these tactics.

It is our fault, as consumers, that companies have gotten away with this. We have chosen to believe the false advertising because we want it to be true. I have found this to be especially true at health food stores. There are still outrageously unhealthy products sold at health food stores. Sodas.....organic. Cookies......with organic cane juice. Non-dairy milk products.....with sugars, corn/palm oils and vitamins. Since when did food-manufacturers begin enriching our food? (In the 1940's.) If we were eating healthy foods to begin with, vitamin-enriched foods would be arbitrary. However, Wonder Bread was a big hit when it came out because it was enriched with essential vitamins. Do the enriched food products really cause us to turn a blind eye to the other ingredients in the product, like white flour, added sugars, or undisclosed "flavors"? If you are interested in enriched food products, please click on this.

So, let me repeat: Sugar is dead. You are not. You are a living, thinking, breathing organism. It is easy for me to rant about the "sugar pushers" and it is easy for you to sit and read this. The problem is, we all seem to get zealously inspired when we read something empowering, but out there in the real world we tend to go with the flow. At restaurants you convince yourself, "This is a special occasion," and at the grocery store you think, "I'll get this for ___," but you know you'll rip open the bag as soon as you get in the car.

Even some of the healthiest people I know will throw their ideals out the window in an effort to "not offend" someone else. I try my best not to offend people when it comes to politics, religion and philosophy, (in fact, I live for friendly, provocative discussions/debates) but when we are talking about something that is potentially going to go into my body, I speak up. It is always my choice and I would rather speak up right away than feel secretly resentful for eating something I didn't want to. Trust me, this is much easier to do if people know ahead of time what your dietary "restrictions" are. (For lack of a better word....)

Try soaking up the inspiring, healthy topics you read about and practice them out there when you leave your home. Ask a store clerk for a suggestion card. Special order a healthy item if it is not on the shelf. Ask your server specific questions about menu items. These questions are often relayed back to the chef/cook. If enough people speak up and demand healthier food, healthier food we will get. Write to food/beverage companies. Tell them how you feel. Tell them what you want. Right now we are demanding junk food and fast food, thus the overabundant supply.

Sugar is dead, but the people counting on you indulging in their products are very much alive and well.

Desensitized to the Junk Food You're Eating?

My parents' garage is full of soda. Kitchen drawers hide candy bars and giant, Costco-sized bags of M&M's.

How did this come about? I grew up eating healthy and soda was off limits. Not only has soda made its way into their house, it has now become a daily way of life. I do not mean to pick on my parents. I merely use my story as an example of what has changed in society.

My main concern is that the high standards we had growing up have changed dramatically over the years.

Why is it that the standards used to raise us have become lower, instead of higher, as we get older? Over the years, beginning sometime in junior high, junk food was introduced in our home on more and more of a regular basis. By high school, we had cupboards of Oreos and other miscellaneous junk food snacks. We were no longer told to not drink soda. (Perhaps they laid off the "no soda" rhetoric in hopes that we would drink soda instead of alcohol in high school.)

During my college years, I would come home intermittently to visit, and find the garage refrigerator full of soda. Both diet and regular. What?!? Was it because my brother and I had moved out and mom and dad were free to do as they please? Or, more probable, was the fact that soda had become more prevalent in all households. A social evolution, due in part to marketing and desensitization. Being fun party hosts, my parents were sure to have all of the popular, choice sodas that people had learned from fancy television ads, would enrich their lives.

But, I did not grow up with this. We all knew back in the 70's and 80's that soda wasn't healthy. How did soda manage to infiltrate my parents' house after all this time? I guess I have always believed that as we got older, our standards would get higher, not the other way around.

I had an experience ten years ago that sparked my interest in such matters. At the time, I was working at a consulting firm and taking public transportation to get there. One morning, I grabbed my umbrella because the sky looked like it was going to rain. I got on the light rail and enjoyed a book for the 30 minutes or so it took to get to my stop. I jumped off and began walking my beat. Suddenly, I felt empty-handed. I stopped and realized that I had left my umbrella on the light rail. There was nothing I could do. Someone had surely found themselves a new umbrella by now.

Let me back up. This was no ordinary umbrella. I had a bit of an umbrella fetish back then and I had recently spent all of my Christmas money on a ridiculously expensive, wooden handled, plaid umbrella. It was gorgeous and I loved carrying it around with me.

As the realisation hit me that I would probably never see my red plaid umbrella again, my eyes filled with tears. I tried to fight the tears because I did not want to smudge my make-up and I was walking in a very busy part of town. I walked on towards work and suddenly, I had a revelation that changed my world-view.

That morning I had seen on the news how an earthquake had destroyed a city on the other side of the planet, and killed thousands of people. I didn't cry then. I cried over losing a material item, while not feeling much of anything watching the news earlier in the morning. People had lost their lives and their homes and their loved ones and I had not dropped a tear or given it much more than a subconcious, "That's too bad..." while getting ready for work.

I remember being shocked at myself and angry for crying over my umbrella but not giving a second thought to the lives lost in the earthquake. Thus began my search for why and how we have become desensitized over time and why our standards have lowered. It was in those few moments on my walk to work, that I realized I wanted to change. I did not want to be desensitized by the world around me. This eventually led me to question society's standards of health (or lack thereof) and our desensitization to the junk food we continue to buy in enormous quantities.

Coke Sued for Fraudulent Claims

"Coke Sued for Fraudulent Claims on Obesity-Promoting VitaminWater"--To read the entire article about this class action lawsuit, click here.

This is very important information. I highly recommend that you read this. I will give you a brief synopsis of what this is about, but reading the entire article will shed more light on what is happening.

Basically, Coke has been promoting their product, VitaminWater, to be a healthy source of vitamins, using words like "defense" and "rescue" and "energy" and "endurance". The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has called Coke out for making deceptive claims. In case this is your favorite drink, check this out: there are 33 grams of sugar in each bottle, and between zero and one percent of actual juice, despite the yummy juice flavors labeled on the bottles like "grape" "kiwi strawberry" etc. You have been buying sugar water!

This is just one example of why it is so important to check the ingredients of products that you are buying.

ALWAYS CHECK THE INGREDIENTS!

Do not be fooled by a healthy label implied on the front of a product. The truth is, the label might be deceptive, but no matter what, the label has been created to sell you a product. Companies selling packaged foods are in the business of making money. Many of these companies could care less about your health. Grocery stores sell products that make themselves money, so even your local grocery store does not necessarily have your health in mind. If you are not sure, just walk through a grocery store and look at the products on the shelves. When it comes to the end of the month sales, the products that are high in demand (we as consumers have control over this by what we choose to buy and not buy!) will be stocked on the shelves again.

If in doubt as to what companies to buy from, which products are healthiest--buy fresh produce and/or ingredients to make your own food. If you do not have enough time to do this or to check ingredients in foods, consider re-examining your priorities. What we ultimately care about is what we end up doing. In my opinion, it is never a sacrifice to be sure that I am eating the right foods. If you know a health-nut, ask that person their opinion to save you some time.

I love what the Executive Director of CSPI says, "My advice to consumers is to get your vitamins from real food. If you have reason to believe you have a shortcoming of one vitamin or another, perhaps take an inexpensive supplement. But don't seek out your vitamins in sugary soft drinks like Coke’s VitaminWater."
(-http://cspinet.org/new/200901151.html)

Tips on How to Quit Sugar

Here are tips for those of you who would like to quit sugar for a month, a year, or forever. I find it hard to make forever plans, so I take things one year at a time. I'll probably do this forever.

So, you want to quit white, refined sugar. Maybe you've tried before, maybe you think it's impossible. Maybe you don't want to quit, but you are still curious what the process of quitting looks like. Maybe you need a year to think about quitting. For me it's cold turkey or I won't do it. I realize this isn't the tactic for everyone, but even if you quit sugar slowly, weaning yourself from the addiction day by day, I think these pointers will work for you, as well. If you have any pointers of your own or suggestions or comments, please let me know, as I will most likely re-post on New Year's Eve. What works for you? Do share!

* * * How to Quit Sugar * * *

• Make a grocery list and visit a local health food store. If you don't have a health food store in the area, try to find these items anyway, or do some online ordering.
  
• Stock your kitchen with all kinds of naturally sweetened goodies. Here are some examples for when that sweet tooth comes a'callin:
• 100% fruit juice (I'm not a wine snob, I'm a grape juice snob. I drink R.W. Knudsen)
• Dried fruit, fresh fruit, frozen fruit (smoothies)
• Naturally sweetened cookies and ice cream
• Ingredients to bake with: natural sweeteners, grain-sweetened chocolate chips, pure cocoa, unsweetened almond or rice milk, honey, molasses, agave, brown rice syrup, etc.
  
• Buy some flavored tea that you wouldn't normally get. Get cream and make sure you have honey. You won't believe how wonderful some of those hot teas are with a drop of cream and a spoonful of honey. My favorites are the spicy flavors and the vanilla/nut flavors. Buy plenty. Treat yourself. Spend more money than you normally would on tea. This may be what it takes to keep off of sugar. It sure beats the price of hypnosis.
• Make sure you buy naturally sweetened breads, chips, crackers, salad dressings, etc. These normally have hidden sugars and you don't want to cheat just because all of your salad dressings have sugar, do you? Also, remember to get cereals and other snacky foods that are naturally sweetened. If you don't have a health food store, there is one huge commercial brand of cereal that consistently keeps sugar out of its ingredients: Post Grape Nuts.
  
• Double-check your kitchen. Is it stocked? Make sure it's full of naturally sweetened goodies.
  
• Keep junk food in your kitchen. Yes, you read that right. It's good practice to have junk food available, because then you can practice turning it down and choosing something healthier. I was going to throw out all of our junk food last year, but not only was that not fair to Jeff, but if I didn't see junk food on a daily basis, how would I react when I did see it? You'll have to think about this. Even if you live alone, you want to have junk food available to your guests, right? You still want to have visitors, and they certainly want their junk food. They don't want to go on your sugar-free diet! However, if you are an excellent cook, it is possible to make naturally sweetened goodies for your guests, but keep in mind that it usually takes white sugar to satisfy the sweet tooth of those on a white sugar diet. Honey will not satisfy. It takes a couple of months to change your palate and train your sweet tooth to like natural sweeteners. If you know yourself well enough to know that you will sneak treats if they're around, then by all means, clean out your kitchen. Just ask guests to bring their own goodies.
  
• Do not buy "Sugar Free!" labeled goodies. These are tricky gimmicks usually found in the regular cookie aisle, and they are sweetened with a laxative otherwise known as Maltitol. It's the worst sugar substitute I've ever experienced. If you read the fine print on the label, there will be a disclosure statement warning against eating too many. Well, I don't want to worry about a laxative affect. Sometimes I just want to eat the whole box of cookies, thank you very much. Anyway, name brands like Oreos will have a "Sugar Free" variety of their product right next to the original variety. Beware, I have checked the labels and they contain maltitol.
  
• Do buy "naturally sweetened" and "No Sugar Added", as these terms usually mean what they say. Read the label to be safe, but these are terms that usually identify good products.
  
• Check for "Sucralose" which is a generic term for Splenda. You can make your own decision about Splenda. I don't touch it.
• Decide how dedicated you are to eating sugar free--are you focused mainly on quitting desserts? Drinks with sugar? Breads and cereals? If you are just trying to stay away from "sweets", that's one thing. It is another issue to go without white sugar entirely, because it is included in so many ingredients. Now, before you start, is a good time to decide how far you are going to take this. Keep in mind that sugar is in just about everything packaged and hidden in foods at restaurants. If taking your goal to this extreme seems too hard, don't give up. Start with sweets/cookies/obvious no-nos. Consider going 100% sugar free later. You have to find your starting point. Something that is realistic. For me, because I had practiced going weeks at a time without sugar, it wasn't a huge deal to do it again for a year.
• Set a realistic starting point/goal for yourself!

The Horrible Thing That Happened on Thanksgiving!

Here is the horrible thing that happened on Thanksgiving:

First of all, I was having a wonderful day with family. Talking. Grazing the platter of sliced vegetables and black olives. Catching up with cousins. Waiting in anticipation, along with everyone else, for the big dinner event. It came and went very traditionally and plentiful. Right before we eat, we gather into a circle and take turns sharing what we are thankful for. I used to hate it as a kid. Sometime in my growing up, I went from hating it to crying at everything people said. I still cry. No matter what people say.

To my surprise, my dinner choices were extremely slim, while everyone else enjoyed sweet rolls, cream berry jell-O, yams heaped with brown sugar, stuffing (my favorite!!), and even my other favorite, the green bean casserole which is made with cream of mushroom sauce. Sugar. I gravitated towards the open container of those little crunchy-fried onions that top the green bean casserole and glanced at the ingredients and even those were off limits! I enjoyed a sugarless cheesy crab dip, more sliced vegetables and some plain mashed potatoes, for my meal. I missed out on a lot of my favorite, once-a-year dishes. I was able to stick to the right portion sizes, however, and felt light when I stood up from the table, something I don't ever remember feeling on Thanksgiving.

We spent the late afternoon playing games, talking, reminiscing and drinking coffee. I was bracing myself for the moment when all of the desserts would be set out. That moment came and went pretty uneventfully. The desserts all looked wonderful, but I felt strong and proud to be sugarless.

Later in the evening I decided to indulge in a root beer that I had bought earlier in the week, thinking of this day. I guessed ahead of time that I would need a dessert substitute and root beer seemed above and beyond as far as my sweet needs were concerned. This week I discovered a 4-pack of root beer in the health food section of my local grocery store, and was shocked to see that the ingredients listed on the side of the bottle did not have sugar. Molasses seemed to be the sweetener and the other "gourmet" ingredients looked too intriguing to pass up. To back up, I have been craving a good root beer for the past several months. Perhaps it was all the root beer that was passed under my nose all summer long.

I was so excited to drink my root beer and made a point of announcing to everyone that I had found a sugar-free root beer. I took a sip and was overwhelmed by sweetness. It tasted almost too sweet, but had that delicious, ice cold root beer flavor that is intoxicating to me. I had my husband taste it and he seemed to think it wasn't sweet enough.

As the evening wore on, I sipped on my root beer, wanting to savor it. Not too long after I had been sipping it, I began to feel bloated but blamed it on all of the black olives that I had eaten throughout the day. Next, however, I found myself nodding off and unable to continue the game that all of my family were participating in. I actually lost on purpose just so that I could go into my room for a little nap. I had become deliriously tired. Once in my room, I glanced at the computer and figured it wouldn't hurt to go to the website of the root beer company to see what else they put in it that would cause me to dose on and off like this. It was easy to find their website and in a matter of seconds, I had the root beer ingredient list in front of me.

To my horror, shock, anger and surprise, SUGAR was listed as an ingredient! How could this be? Had I missed something on the label of the bottle? I double-checked just to be sure, and then had someone else look, too. There is no sugar listed as an ingredient on the bottle's ingredient list. I even went so far as to read the box label that the four bottles came in.

I wanted to hit somebody. Throw something heavy. Scream at the root beer people for tricking me like this! I would have done anything to avoid a mistake like this! I was so angry I wrote a letter to the company and am anxiously awaiting their reply.

Here is a copy of the letter I wrote:

Busted for Stealing Sugar

How to Establish a Healthy Relationship with Your Kitchen

It's 7:00 am and you find yourself stumbling into the kitchen, eyes still sleepy and stingy, your stomach growling angrily--you must eat. Your brain is still fuzzy and it's hard to decide what to make for breakfast so you open your cupboards one by one, your refrigerator, and even your freezer. Nothing in particular jumps out at you except the Oreos in the cupboard and the Ben & Jerry's in the freezer. "Just one cookie while I figure out what to eat for breakfast," you say to yourself. Before you have swallowed the remains of the Oreo, the entire package is completely opened and you lean against the counter having a great morning stare out the window, devouring one cookie after another. At some point your stomach starts to feel funny or you realize that the row of cookies is gone and now is a good time to stop. Because you are not very hungry anymore, you grab a banana or a glass of juice and that's breakfast.

The sugar digests quickly, you all of a sudden have a lot of energy, but all too soon you start to feel hungry again and perhaps a little tired. After brewing some coffee you decide to have a morning snack. After all, it's nowhere near lunchtime. You peruse your cupboards a little more carefully this time and decide to have a piece of toast with jelly and one bite of ice cream.

When it's finally time for lunch, you resort to spaghetti or frozen pizza because it's quick, filling and really tasty. In no time you've eaten lunch, snacked on some chips while you were waiting, and then had a chocolate covered protein bar at the end because you want to make sure you are eating enough protein. When that's gone, you find yourself still lingering in the kitchen. To solve that problem you grab a soda and finally leave the kitchen.

In less than an hour, you take a break from what you are doing and return to the kitchen. You couldn't concentrate because you really wanted two more bites of ice cream. You eat that and then return to what you were doing with a large glass of juice.

Within the next hour, you start to wonder what to make for dinner. Again, you can't concentrate on what you are doing until you solve the dinner problem. You decide to take another break and look through your cupboards again. It's all still there: crackers, several bags of chips, cereal boxes, packaged rice, bags of store-bought cookies, bread, muffins, trail mix, unopened jars of pasta sauce, cans of spaghetti, soups, and fruits. While you try to decide what to put together for dinner, you open a new package of crackers to try them, and grab a little handful of chips before wandering over to the refrigerator....

Did you know that almost all of the foods mentioned above have sugar in them? How is it possible to eat healthy, balanced meals when you have "junk food" lying around? Of course Oreos are more appealing than oatmeal in the morning! There is only one way to kick the sugar addiction happening in kitchens nationwide. Call your friends or a family member and tell them that you have a bunch of food that you don't want anymore and would they like to come and take it before you throw it away? If no one comes to take away your sugar-laden foods, throw it away yourself! You will be making a big statement to yourself by doing this, and are more likely to stay away from junk food because of it.

Most importantly, replace your foods with healthier varieties that don't contain all that sugar. Buy plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables and prepare them for eating ahead of time. (Trust me, if you don't, you will pass over your celery and carrots again and again.) Buy or make healthy dips for your raw vegetables if that will help you eat them. Hummus, yogurt dips and freshly blended nut dips are perfect for vegetables. Also, when you shop to replace your old foods, try a local health food store or ask your grocery if they have a health food section. Read labels and be determined to be picky and not buy foods with sugar. There are so many wonderful alternatives! Juices, jams, breads, dry cereals, peanut butters, pasta sauces and crackers, to name a few, are all very tasty without added sugars! Try several brands and varieties until you find something you really like. Also, alternative milk products like soy, almond, rice, hemp, and oat milks usually have unsweetened varieties. It may take a little bit of extra time to shop, and you might actually decide to bake more foods yourself, but it is very worth it and rewarding to eat right.

It is possible to have a healthy relationship with your kitchen. Once your kitchen is stocked with more fruits and vegetables, and healthy snacks, you probably won't find yourself lingering in your kitchen wondering how to satisfy your sweet tooth. You might grab a bunch of grapes, or fresh strawberries, or a trail mix with dried fruit and feel more satisfied in your snacking and a lot less guilty. Once you kick the sugar addiction, you may even find yourself needing clothes in smaller sizes.

Have fun with this!

I'm Having a Sugar Craving!

I can't believe that there is sugar in trail mix! All I want are the wonderfully salty nuts and dried cranberries and raisins! Tonight, I was having a sugar craving and I would have gone to the ends of the earth for a piece of dried fruit. All the dried fruit had sugar coating over each piece.
As I sit here in the San Diego hospital, I am amused at all the junk food that is promoted and sold down in the cafeteria. There are 6 vending machines standing shoulder to shoulder in the cafeteria, here. Three of those machines sell soda!
My mother had to have a sudden surgery while on vacation here, so I flew down to keep her company. I was hoping that travelling would help quell my sugar cravings, but instead, I am finding that my sugar cravings have increased. I need to find out where the nearest health food store is. It is so easy to eat "bad", especially when travelling. I did manage to find unsweetened chocolate almond milk, at a Safeway grocery store called "VONS" and I have really been enjoying that. Daily dips in the hot tub have also motivated me to drink more water, which is what I really crave when a sugar craving strikes.