It Was the Sugar, Stupid
For many years I paid the price for drinking coffee in the morning but not eating anything. I just knew it had to be the caffeine or something else in the coffee that caused the heartburn. Imagine my surprise when I started drinking coffee without sugar. There were no after effects like heartburn. Instead, the next morning after a day with no sugar I had a sugar withdrawal headache. It happened again the next two mornings, but the pain was reduced each subsequent morning.
I should have known. I know all about sugar in any form being a poison that causes innumerable health problems. But I always used sugar in my coffee and didn't give it another thought. I also used it in iced tea because that is the way I learned to drink it. With hot tea, though, I never used sugar, because that is the way I learned to drink it.
So now I am on a quest to eliminate sugar from my life. That isn't easy to do; they hide it in most everything we eat. Sure, they give it many names, but if you look hard enough you can find it. It is like looking for all the ways they hide trans fats. But what good is a food that has a large "No Trans Fats" sign on it when it is loaded up with sugar? And the "No Sugar" sign is just a warning that the food contains an artificial sweetener that is even more dangerous than the sugar. That is like replacing butter with margarine and saying it is better for your health.
Don't lose weight, Ping told me this morning when we talked about this. Cici and I like you just the way you are now, she said. But she agrees about losing the sugar. Now if I could just convince her that honey is just as bad for you as sugar ...
I should have known. I know all about sugar in any form being a poison that causes innumerable health problems. But I always used sugar in my coffee and didn't give it another thought. I also used it in iced tea because that is the way I learned to drink it. With hot tea, though, I never used sugar, because that is the way I learned to drink it.
So now I am on a quest to eliminate sugar from my life. That isn't easy to do; they hide it in most everything we eat. Sure, they give it many names, but if you look hard enough you can find it. It is like looking for all the ways they hide trans fats. But what good is a food that has a large "No Trans Fats" sign on it when it is loaded up with sugar? And the "No Sugar" sign is just a warning that the food contains an artificial sweetener that is even more dangerous than the sugar. That is like replacing butter with margarine and saying it is better for your health.
Don't lose weight, Ping told me this morning when we talked about this. Cici and I like you just the way you are now, she said. But she agrees about losing the sugar. Now if I could just convince her that honey is just as bad for you as sugar ...
OK, I am going to have to chime in on this one too. It isn't sugar that is bad for you, it is REFINED sugar that is bad for you. One of the healthiest snacks you can have is a chunk of fresh sugar cane (widely available in southern China). It is when we fractionalize whole foods into refined that we get in trouble. Whole foods have a balance of nutrients that support each other to make a food healthy to eat. The same goes for fats. In many cultures, they still use lard and animal fats instead of refined vegetable oils, and they are healthier than Americans. Processing changes something good into a poison. It is amazing how much better we feel when we eat whole foods from the garden.
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On whole foods I readily agree, Craig. Ping and Cici know that I am a brown rice fanatic, for example, shunning their preferred white rice, so we buy 25 pound bags of each type of rice. My bag gets used up more quickly because I eat brown rice daily. As another example, my favorite bread is Ezekiel Bread, and you can't find a bread more whole foods than that one. I eat it as a snack.
On the sugar question, I haven't studied sugar cane specifically, but I am sure the "Soup Nazi" of the health world would disagree with your analysis of it. If you recall the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld, you will be able to relate to the person of whom I speak. I know that one of his pet peeves is that people kid themselves about sugar by using honey, for example, and his mantra is that sugar is sugar is sugar, whatever its form.
When I was a kid my grandfather would make molasses that he sold in silver buckets. We would grab pieces of the sugar cane from the wagon and chew on it to get the flavor out. He had a machine into which he fed the long sticks of harvested sugar cane. The machine pressed it so tightly as it fed through the machine that all the sugary juices were squeezed out. When it came out the other end the pulp was spit out into a pile while the juice, the molasses, flowed into the waiting containers in a thick oozing stream.
We also cooked with lard and bacon grease when I was growing up, but I know the Soup Nazi would disagree here as well. Animal fats of any kind, he would say, are killers. If you must have meat or animal fats, and limit it to 10% or less of your diet, then you can still be healthy, in his view. He would also cite China and Vietnam as examples of healthy eating because they traditionally have eaten only small amount of meat and animal fats.
I actually do a lot of reading on this subject, and don't just look to just this one person for information. He is a research chemist, though, and uses clinical studies that are done and recognized from all over the world to support his points of view, so I tend to give his opinions more credence than usual.
If you are interested, you can find him at www.youngagain.org. His books on health can be downloaded and printed for free, and he has some 300 articles on health that can also be read or printed for free.
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Interesting. My experience where I was visiting my wife's relatives was they had meat with every meal, the majority of which was fat (lean cuts were very expensive). And it did not seem to be just for my benefit they ate this way, but they all seem to be slender and healthy.
I go to a Naturopath for my checkups. He pointed me to a website that shows there are things worse than sugar. A slice of white bread can be converted to glucose faster than a tablespoon of granulated sugar. Which once again points out the evils of processed food. If you need to sweeten your cereal, use fresh fruit (my wife has discovered blueberries, which are in season here, she never saw them in China).
Of course, I tend not to eat cereal for the most part, and when I do, it is organic whole rolled oats. I am also on brown rice, and our white rice consumption as a household has dropped dramatically.
I personally consume very small amounts of sugar, a lot of this stems from my mother not allowing us sweets except rarely, soda was a big no-no. I got to the point where I couldn't stomach most of the pre-sweetened cereals, and cringed when I saw friends heap spoonfuls of sugar on their cereal.
Hmmm, on a completely different subject, I wonder what it would take to grow ginger in our garden? I guess it must be difficult, as all the ginger at our local stores comes from China...
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Yep, we are on the same page. White bread and refined flour go straight to glucose. Most cereals are loaded with sugar, though Whole Foods has some that are made of whole grains and flax seed that aren't full of sugar. Those whole rolled oats are very healthy and can even be added to soups as a thickener.
The girls discovered cherries and blueberries. They love the cherries but don't care for the blueberries. They don't care much for blackberries either.
A lot of the Chinese vegetables in this area are grown in Texas, but I don't know about the ginger. I think it might need cooler weather.
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I found the Health Nazi's comments on sugar, Craig. He says:
It doesn't matter whether it's white sugar, raw sugar, brown sugar, fruit juice, dried fruit, con syrup, honey, maple syrup, fructose, cane syrup, agave, molasses, or any other simple sugar, they are all basically the same. They all have the same negative effect on our health. Sugar substitutes, even stevia, are just as bad or worse. Sugar is sugar is sugar.
He cites clinical studies from around the world including Italy, Japan, England, Taiwan, Poland, Nepal, America, and China for the ill effects of sugar on the body.
I would offer up the sweet potato as a healthy snack that is sweet, but might slip in a taste of the sugar cane that you mentioned as well.
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