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How Sweet It Isn’t: What happened to me when I gave up sugar – Part 2

….continued from August 25/2014

donutsWhen my girls were about four and six, I went alone one day to do my weekly grocery shop. The last thing I added to my basket was six Bismarcks.

A Bismarck is a jelly doughnut. The Co-op bakery made the best Bismarcks. The dough is light and fluffy. They are fried a deep golden-brown. They are injected with real raspberry jam and finished with a light coat of fine, not powdered sugar.

These are still warm and their aroma teases my nose as I start my car. I decide to have one before I leave the parking lot.

One must bite into a Bismarck strategically or risk wearing the filling. If you bite it at the “injection site”, you are rewarded with a burst of flavour in your first bite and you reduce the risk of it volcano-ing down your shirt.

I quickly inhale the first Bismarck.

I reason I can have another since there is no sense taking five doughnuts home for a family of four.

Number Two disappears equally fast, practically melting in my mouth.

I pull away from the parking lot but I still want more. So I reason that I can eat “my donut”. After all, of the four left, one is mine!

It too is gone in a few bites, as though made of air.

Then I think, “I can’t take home three donuts for a family of four!”

So I gobble down the last three!

I’m not quite sure what I did with the bag before I got home. Maybe I ate it too!

I don’t even remember eating those last three Bismarcks. I was likely suffering from a sugar-rush, near a diabetic coma. I do remember the overwhelming feelings of guilt, shame and failure.

What kind of mother gobbles up her own children’s treats?

Why can’t I control myself?

What am I doing to my health?

No wonder I can’t control my weight!

Typical negative talk that I now know feeds those cravings for empty calories.

Over the years I have consumed theater-size bags of Twizzlers, Nibs or other chewy candy, easily in one sitting, sometimes, before the movie started. I have inhaled a whole layer of Turtles chocolates in one ten-minute session and likely dipped into the bottom layer! I have torn through a $50 box of premium chocolates in a couple days, only because polishing it off in one sitting would be embarrassing!

I have known for at least three decades that sugar is evil, yet extricating myself from its grasp was something I didn’t consider and if I did I was certain I would never succeed. How could I possibly give up sugar? Sugar is love!

My path towards health has progressed since my peaches epiphany 35 years ago. In 2005 I discover I have gluten intolerance. Eliminating wheat results in significant weight-loss and the clearing up of the acne that plagued me from my teens to my mid-forties. I used to joke that it was insulting to have zits sprouting out of my wrinkles.

I actively seek ways to increase my health. I study health issues and learn about food. Each year I choose to do something specific to improve my health. I give up the small bit of alcohol I consumed. I feel better. One year I resolve to eat more vegetables by ensuring they occupy at least half of the real estate of my plate. I feel better. The next year it is to eat more raw foods. I notice that my wrinkles appeared to fade, (or maybe that’s just the wishful thinking of a middle-aged woman.) But I feel better!

One year I decide to eliminate dairy. I hadn’t been a huge dairy consumer as milk always tasted sour and it upset my stomach. But I did love butter, cheese, cream, and ice-cream. When I stop eating dairy I realize an unexpected benefit: I stop snoring completely. My husband had been complaining about it so it is a very happy benefit for both.

Last January, as I polish off the last of the Christmas chocolate, I decide to see what will happen if I eliminate sugar.

A fellow Toastmaster who spoke about sugar a month previous influences this change. He reveals that in 1800, the average person consumed about four pounds of sugar each year; that in 1900 it was about 45 pounds and by 2010 it was over 160 pounds per year!

Over the years I learned that sugar feeds cancer, it causes inflammation and it robs the body of nutrients. I believe that the skyrocketing rates of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease are diet related, specifically our society’s high consumption of sugar.

Yet I continued to eat it, like smokers who know lung cancer is in their future but puff away.

I eat my last sugar January 5, 2013. I do little except to be ultra aware of what I ingest. I resolve to consume no processed sugar (including any hidden in processed foods) and no dried fruit (which is high in sugar). I allow myself very small amounts of maple syrup and honey but I avoid these entirely for the first couple months.

The first thing that happens to me is a headache, not a throbber, but a dull ache, like when I don’t get enough sleep. That lasts about three days. I find it bearable if I drink lots of water.

Within 14 days I lose 14 pounds. That is amazing! But not surprising. Sugar causes inflammation, which causes water retention. I suspect the first 14 pounds were simply water, flushing away the toxins my body had sequestered.

Within three weeks I notice something else: I had had a root canal five years before that always bothered me. No dentist could figure out the problem. I had resolved to live with it, chew on the other side of my mouth. After three weeks of no sugar, my root canal tooth no longer bothers me and I can chew on that side. Over a year later, I am still chewing without pain.

After two months, I am down 22 pounds. My clothes are hanging off me. I have to buy a new wardrobe. That was fun! It sure felt good to explain to the sales clerks that my shopping spree was because I had gone from size 12 to size 6! All because I stopped eating sugar.

I think it was at about two months that I stop using toothpaste. I can’t stand the taste of the sugar in it. (Yes, toothpaste has sugar in it!) I begin using baking soda and essential oils (peppermint, spearmint, or wintergreen) and my teeth are whiter than they’ve been for years. I’m not sure if that’s because of my no sugar diet or no toothpaste but I’m happy not to have spent hundreds on teeth whitening.

I also save money on teeth cleaning. A recent visit to the dentist reveals no cavities and no tartar or plaque so no need for cleaning.

….continued next week

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Chickpeas: Many reasons to include these little legumes in your diet

chickpeasCultivated for as many as 7500 years, chickpeas or garbanzo beans are a staple in Mediterranean diets. In the past few decades they have become widely known in North Americans’ diets, invading 17% of kitchens.

Chickpeas are prized for their high protein content, having nearly 9% protein. They are good sources of calcium, zinc, magnesium, and several B vitamins. In fact a 100 gram serving contains 43% of the RDA of folate, a precursor to folic acid, vital for many functions, including fetal development.

Chickpeas can be cooked and eaten cold in salads, ground into flour, cooked in stews, ground, formed into balls and deep fried as falafel. Chickpeas are prevalent in Indian cuisine where the leaves are also eaten as green salads.

Hummus is the Arabic word for chickpeas, which are cooked, ground and mixed with tahini (ground sesame seeds) to form hummus, the dip/spread. Chickpeas are also roasted, spiced and eaten as snacks. Some varieties can even be popped like popcorn.

Chickpeas are high in fibre, low in fat and have very little taste of their own, making them ideal for “carrying” other flavours. Their high protein content makes them ideal for vegans, vegetarians, and even omnivores.

Recent studies have shown that garbanzo bean fiber can be metabolized by bacteria in the colon to produce relatively large amounts of short chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which provide fuel to the cells that line the intestinal wall.

Chickpeas contain antioxidants and are known to support the digestive system, reduce cardiovascular risks, regulate blood sugar, (preventing diabetes), and increase satiety and reduce overeating.

In short, finding ways to incorporate chickpeas into your diet is a smart way to bolster your health.

 

Here is my recipe for Hummus

Here is a recipe for Roasted Chickpeas: http://www.steamykitchen.com/10725-crispy-roasted-chickpeas-garbanzo-beans.html

Other chickpea recipes:

http://www.canadianliving.com/recipe-directory/main_ingredient/chickpeas.php

 

Sources for this article include:

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=58

Wikipedia

Natural News

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Garlic is Grand: 11 Reasons to Eat Garlic Everyday

garlicMany years ago a doctor on TV declared that the single easiest action we could all take for our health is to eat more garlic. If everybody ate it, he reasoned, the notorious garlic odor would be a non-issue and we would enjoy myriad health benefits.

The health benefits of garlic (Allium sativum), a member of the lily family, have been known for millennia. From the Egyptians to Hippocrates, from the battlefields of the American Civil War to the First World War, garlic holds an important place in health history. Even Western medicine acknowledges garlic’s ability to lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of further heart attacks.

Here are just some of the health benefits of garlic.

1. Control Blood pressure: Garlic is rich in sulfur compounds that give garlic its odor but also many of its health enhancing benefits. Garlic sulfides create hydrogen sulfide gas (H2S), which helps to dilate blood vessels. This dilation helps to keep blood pressure under control. Garlic normalizes high and low blood pressure but does not disturb normal blood pressure.

2. Safely lower cholesterol: studies have found garlic effective for lowering cholesterol levels. In one German experiment, volunteers taking an 800-mg garlic tablet saw their cholesterol levels drop an average of 12 percent over four months, as effective as cholesterol medications, without the deadly side effects.

3. Prevent/treat heart disease: controlling blood pressure and cholesterol are just two ways garlic works to prevent/treat heart disease. Raw, dried, aged, and macerated garlic as well as garlic oil have all demonstrated anti-platelet effects, further enhancing garlic’s heart protection.

4. Prevent/treat cancer: Epidemiological studies find that the ingestion of garlic reduces cancer risk. In a study of 40,000 postmenopausal women, those who had a consistent intake of garlic had almost a 50% reduction in colon cancer risk. Cancer cells are vulnerable to the allyl sulfur compounds present in garlic, which slows and even prevents the growth of tumors. Animal studies conducted at Penn State University concluded that garlic helps stop the growth of tumors and contains substances that actually destroy tumor cells and promote the invasion of immune cells such as lymphocytes and macrophages to the tumor site.

5. Garlic is a powerful, natural antibiotic: Garlic has very strong antibacterial, antifungal, anti-parasitic, and antiviral properties. The antibacterial action of garlic makes it an ideal substitute for dangerous antibiotics. Garlic helps to fight such illness as colds, flu, bronchitis, chicken pox, and urinary tract infections.

6. Garlic has micronutrients: Garlic is also an excellent source of micronutrients including manganese, vitamin B6 and vitamin C. It is also a very good source of protein and thiamin (vitamin B1), as well as phosphorus, selenium, calcium, potassium, and copper.

7. Garlic kills parasites: Soldiers used garlic as an antiseptic during World War I and also as an aid to kill parasites (worms). Hookworms, pinworms, roundworms and tapeworms perish in the presence of garlic.

8. Prevent and treat colds: Garlic’s antiviral properties make it a natural cold remedy.

9. Even more: Garlic is helpful for conditions including diabetes, allergies, toothaches, impotence, and MRSA.

  1. Save money: a one-month supply is a few dollars at your local organic market, a pittance compared with a prescription for blood pressure or cholesterol pills. Or grow* your own.

 

For garlic to be effective as a healing agent and general antibiotic, it needs to be raw. Crushing or chopping activates an enzymatic process that converts alliin into allicin, which is the component responsible for most of the health benefits of garlic. For maximum allicin activation, allow the crushed or chopped garlic to sit for ten minutes to complete the enzymatic process. If cooking, do not expose to heat for longer than five minutes.

 

When I make my own salad dressings I often include a crushed garlic clove. It’s an easy way to include garlic in my diet. I also make garlic butter to put on fresh steamed veggies or a slice of fresh-baked whole-grain bread, my favourite way to eat raw garlic.

 

I also cook with it. Garlic imparts such wonderful flavour and aroma to food, it’s a staple in my kitchen.

 

Whenever possible, I eat garlic with or followed by parsley. The chlorophyll in parsley combats the sulfur of the garlic. Cilantro works too, but I don’t care for it. We give our dog a clove of garlic everyday in her food, along with a few sprigs of parsley. She doesn’t have garlic breath.

 

I encourage you to add more garlic into your diet. It’s a small step you can take to leap into better health.

 

Sources:

Natural News

Wikipedia

Wake-Up World

Easy Health Options

Mother Earth News

 

*How to grow your own garlic:

http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/growing-garlic-zbcz1309.aspx?newsletters=1&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=HE%20eNews&utm_campaign=09.23.13%20HE#axzz2fjGqUFRE

http://wakeup-world.com/2013/10/08/garlic-beats-best-selling-blood-pressure-drug-in-new-study/

http://wakeup-world.com/2013/10/18/how-garlic-can-save-your-life/

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Rah! Rah! RAW! Updated July 2013

rawfoodRaw Food, that is.

Incorporating more raw food into your diet is one of the best moves you can make towards optimum health. It’s not necessary to toss out your stove to enjoy the benefits of eating raw foods, simply add more of them to each meal.

Why raw?

Raw food is “living food”. As opposed to dead foods, (anything that is processed and/or cooked), living foods still have their enzymes intact. Enzymes are catalysts for every function of the body from blinking to breathing.

Cooking also destroys food’s naturally occurring vitamins and strips away most antioxidants. (One exception is that cooked tomatoes have more lycopene, a nutrient known to prevent prostate cancer, than raw tomatoes). Our bodies were designed to eat primarily raw foods and many of our modern diseases can be controlled or eliminated with a raw food diet.

I first became aware of the benefits of eating living foods about 30 years ago. When planning the “real estate” of my plate, I strive to ensure at least 2/3 is plant based and of that, at least half is raw. Lately I’ve worked at increasing the ratio of raw to cooked foods based on the miracles eating raw has brought to others.

A few years ago a friend of mine lost his sister to cancer. A cleaner in the hospital where his sister breathed her last breathe had gotten acquainted with the family over the course of her illness and suggested that her cancer could have been prevented with a raw food diet. My friend was intrigued and bought the book the woman had recommended. He began eating raw and within about two weeks he noticed his asthma was gone. He no longer needed medication that he had taken nearly his entire life, over 50 years.

There are many cases of diabetes retreating from a raw food diet. Drew Carey of the Price is Right has reportedly cured his diabetes and lost significant pounds by eating raw.  Mike Adams, founder of the web site Natural News (which has over 100 raw food articles) cured his pre-diabetic condition by eating a diet that is 60 to 90% raw. Unfortunately, most doctors believe diabetes is incurable and must be treated with expensive medications.

One of my daughters has struggled with her weight since she was a teenager, despite working out religiously and eating “healthy”. When she began eating a primarily raw food diet she miraculously went from a size 12 to a six and for the first time in years, her stomach doesn’t hurt whenever she eats. She reports having more energy and even though it takes some extra effort to seek raw food, she vows she will never go back.

The main benefits of eating raw include:

#1 More energy. The body spends less energy digesting food and the aforementioned enzymes are not destroyed, adding to one’s vitality.

#2 Elimination is drastically improved on a raw diet. A properly functioning digestive system is vital to maintaining optimal health.

#3 More time: it takes less time to prepare raw food (once you know some of the tricks) and people on raw food diets often report that they require less sleep.

#4 Weight loss: 82.5% of people who switched to raw food diets reported losing weight.

#5 Mental Health: 87.5% of raw “foodies” report improved mental health in areas such as optimism, memory, focus, patience, and even creativity, without the dreadful side effects of anti-depressants

#6 Lowered cardiovascular disease, including lowered cholesterol and triglycerides.  C-reactive protein, an inflammatory molecule linked to heart disease, diabetes and other chronic disease is also lowered with raw food.

#7 Improved menstrual cycles; stress reduction, reduced breast and prostate cancers.

Studies show that cooked foods increase our white blood cell activity, essentially meaning our bodies see cooked food as invaders. This explains why many “dis-eases” can be treated by switching to a raw food diet.

It’s not difficult to increase your raw food consumption. An easy way is to eat fruit for breakfast.  My favourite breakfast is a sliced banana or two with some berries and/or a sliced peach with a splash of coconut milk. If you eat enough fruit, it will get you through the morning. Fruit is also a good snack anytime of day.

Another great way to increase your raw food intake is to eat salads. They don’t have to be the standard lettuce and tomato salad. You can literally turn any veggies into a satisfying meal. I invented a salad a couple years ago that is a summer favourite of mine and it has no lettuce in it at all.  See Nasturtium Salad.

Raw foods can also be added to cooked foods. A baked potato can be topped with any number of chopped raw veggies, including cabbage, broccoli, onions, and/or tomatoes.

I have attended a number of raw food workshops given by Afke Zonderland and sponsored by a local health food store, Amaranth Whole Foods Market. Afke is a marvelous woman who showed us how to make Walnut-Zucchini Crackers and some fabulous dairy-free dips.

She made a sweet potato and celery soup with cooked sweet potatoes and served it warm. I liked that she wasn’t a raw food “purist”: she argued that after a day on the ski hill she didn’t want to eat something cold and that the idea is to eat as many raw foods as possible but not be militant about it.

Afke is all about spreading the message of healthy eating. She has dozens of recipes on her website at www.foodsalive.ca. Not all her recipes are completely raw but they all incorporate some raw elements, which is really the point. She also recommended David Wolfe’s book Superfoods. His web site is www.DavidWolfe.com. I have included more resources below.

I encourage you to take small steps towards incorporating more living food into your diet. By eating less dead food, you are sure to enjoy some of the benefits without having to diet (aka, “suffer”!

Rah! Rah! Raw!

Sources:

www.NaturalNews.com has dozens of Articles on raw food including: http://www.NaturalNews.com/z030137_lifestyle_health.html

http://altmedicine.about.com/od/pop…

http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content…

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/diabetes/…

http://www.iowasource.com/food/lenk…

http://www.google.com search Raw Food for tons more resources.

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Book Review: In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

indefenceoffoodRevised July 2013

This New York Times best seller is a book that everybody should read but most probably won’t.  So as a public service, I decided to write a summary of it.  Here are some of the most profound ideas in the book.

 

Pollan starts by sharing this mantra: “Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants”.

 

He then describes “Nutritionism”: our idea of food broken down as individual nutrients and why that has become a problem for modern eaters.  We have begun to think of food as its parts: carbs, fats and proteins, totally missing the completeness of food and even its social implications.

 

Scientists typically study the individual components of food and are constantly baffled (or happy to report, depending on who is funding the study), that these parts are rather insignificant on their own.  Studies often totally miss the wonderful things that nutrients can do because they insist on studying them as if they exist in a vacuum.  Furthermore, when industry funds nutritional research, conclusions find favourable results for their products.

 

Some interesting facts:

 

  • ¼ of Americans suffer from metabolic syndrome (a combination of medical disorders that increase the risk of developing cardiovascular disease and diabetes).
  • 2/3 of Americans are overweight and diet-related diseases kill most people.
  • The more we worry about nutrition the less healthy we have become.
  • Despite our poor eating habits, western medicine is keeping us alive.  We haven’t reduced heart disease; we’re just surviving it because of the progress we’ve made in emergency rooms and developing certain drugs and surgeries that prolong our lives, but not necessarily the quality of life.
  • An estimated 80% of diabetes can be prevented by diet and exercise.
  • There is little will to prevent diabetes because tons of money is made selling diabetes gadgets and drugs and eventually, heart surgery; 80% of diabetics get heart disease.
  • When people from around the world come to North America and adopt our diet they begin to suffer from the same diseases that kill us: diabetes, cancer and heart disease.

 

The overriding message is to stop eating a western diet. Pollan offers this advice:

 

  • In general, avoid foods that make health claims.  (No matter how you look at them Froot Loops are NOT part of a healthy diet!)
  • Don’t eat anything your grandma or great-grandma would not recognize as food.
  • Don’t eat anything incapable of rotting.
  • Avoid food with ingredients that are unfamiliar, unpronounceable, more than five in number and contain High Fructose Corn Syrup.
  • Shop the peripheries of the supermarket; stay out of the middle.
  • More radically, stay out of supermarkets, whenever possible. Shop at farmer’s markets or CSA’s (community supported agriculture).
  • Shake the hand that feeds you. Seek shorter food chains. It is most desirable to have direct links between growers and eaters. More middlemen equal more problems. Shopping this way takes more time, money, and effort, but provides more nutrition.
  • Eat food in season for more taste and nutrition.
  • Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.  Pollan describes how the proliferation of grains in our diet is killing us.
  • You are what you eat and what you eat eats.  Pay attention to the diets of the animals you eat and the way the soil is fed. Eat well-grown food from healthy soils. Pollan quotes Wendell Berry regarding the problem of monoculture, which dominates modern agriculture: “…as scale increases, diversity declines, as diversity declines, so does health, as health declines, the dependence on drugs and chemicals necessarily increases.”
  • We are omnivores. We need variety. Try new things for biodiversity.  The author claims that one of the problems we suffer in our modern society is lack of diversity. There are 80,000 or more edible foods on earth. Of those, 3000 are widely used to provide us with the roughly 100 chemicals we need to survive and thrive.
  • The average North American derives 66% of calories from just four foods: corn, soy, wheat and rice. Sugar is also significant in the diet, leaving little room for other foods. Billions of dollars are spent subsidizing corn, soy, wheat and sugar and billions more are spent on advertising products made primarily from those products.

 

More of Pollan’s advice:

 

  • Eat wild foods when you can, like lambs quarters and purslane, common “weeds”.
  • Be the kind of person who takes supplements. These people are more health conscious, better educated, they exercise and take multivitamins and fish oil after age 50.
  • Eat traditional, ethnic diets. Beware of non-traditional foods. For example: the way North Americans eat soy is not healthy. We eat too much and we eat it unfermented. Soy is also fed to cattle; they re incapable of properly digesting it.

 

How to eat:

 

  • Eat slowly. Stop before you’re full. Use a smaller plate.
  • Spend more; eat less. Americans spend a smaller percent of income on food than any industrialized society.  (Canadians are not far behind them).  Pollan says it is no coincidence that as spending on food drops, spending on health care soars.
  • Eat at a table.
  • Have a glass of wine with dinner.
  • Don’t get your fuel from the same place as fuel for your car (at a gas station). The same fuel (corn) is used in bio-fuels and most packaged foods.

 

There is no magic bullet.

 

If you never get the chance to read In Defense of Food, you now know the basics.  I hope you’ve found this information as interesting and useful as I have.

 

Eat well!