How Sweet It Isn’t: What happened to me when I gave up sugar – Part 1

“For my daughter’s recent cookbook, I wrote my sugar story.

 I promised not to share it with my readers until her book was released.
Buy it here
rachelscookbook
Now here is my story. (It’s long so we’ve broken it into 3 segments.)
I would love to hear about your struggles/victories over sugar!”

 

 

My Year Without Sugar and How my Body Reacted

Truly, it’s not surprising that I have a sugar addiction.

It is surprising to me that I refer to it now as an addiction. Like any addict I lived in denial for years.

From a very young age, my loving paternal grandmother showered me with sugar. She entered puberty at the onset of the Great Depression, with its scarcity of sugar. The greatest gift she could give was food, especially sugar.

The only sweetener she had regular access to growing up was honey and that was reserved for medicinal purposes. My great-grandmother was a closet alcoholic so any sugar that came into the house was diverted to a crock in her bedroom for fermenting fruit.

Then came World War II and the rationing of sugar. By then Grandma was married, poor, and homesteading. Grandpa demonstrated his love by keeping bees, which ensured an extra large sugar ration (for the bees) and abundant honey (for Grandma).

By the time I was born, my immediate ancestors were as well off as they had ever been. And that meant abundant food. Not fancy food. Mostly homegrown food. But the one thing that was prevalent was sugar.

Do you know how easy it is to shower (grand)children with sugar love?

Grandma always served three desserts. Desserts were planned and prepared long before the main meal. She might serve chocolate cake, vanilla ice cream and raspberry Jello. Or she would offer a choice of two kinds of pie, always apple, and sometimes raisin, cherry, or saskatoon (or a slice of each) with ice cream. She may also have had homemade cookies in case you didn’t get enough sugar. And there was nothing like a cup of hot chocolate to soothe the soul!

Sunday after church we would stop at the North Hill Store where we each got to spend one of our two dimes; the first dime had already fallen dutifully into the collection plate. We often chose a bag of penny candy painstakingly selected and ceremoniously placed into the tiny paper bag by Mr. LaBarre. He had a soft spot for us as we were purportedly well-behaved for children, and he would sneak in an extra piece or two of our favourites. Sometimes we would spend our money on a cream soda, orange or grape crush and a bag of chips or a chocolate bar.

Looking back it’s not at all surprising that I associate sugar with pleasure. Grandma was devoted to me and she showered me with love and sugar. Love and sugar go together. Pleasure!

Much of my energy as a child went into securing sugar. Within moments I spent all found-money at the corner store. I invariably inhaled my portions; my brother would slowly savour his sweets or even hoard them for later, which meant that I had to concentrate on how I might manipulate the treasure from his greedy grip. Occasionally that would result in his sharing or even surrendering entirely. (Not likely).

I was a sugar pig.

Processed food became mainstream when I was a child. Like other 60’s mothers, my mother bought into their promise of convenience, although her limited budget prohibited her from completely stocking our shelves with junk. Kool-aid, Tang, and cereal (with toys inside the boxes) were all part of our diet, at least sporadically.

Luckily we were poor and we grew our own vegetables, raised our own eggs, picked and put-up wild berries, and supplemented our homegrown chicken diet with meat from the odd deer that Dad would bag in the fall.

I developed a taste for fresh vegetables from the garden. A favorite activity was playing hide and seek in a pea patch on a hot afternoon. I would munch on peas while I hid or even as seeker, (one can become quite famished playing hide and seek!)

I liked the raspberry patch even more. As sweet as fresh peas can be, there’s nothing like ripe raspberries picked while the dew still clings like blobs of transparent mercury on the knobby surface of the berry. They’re especially good when they’ve been sun-warmed for a couple hours. Heaven is gumming a handful of raspberries (not chewing to avoid lodging their tiny seeds into your teeth) and letting the sweet syrup trickle down your throat.

My infatuation for sugar led to my childhood dream for the future: that I would live in Calgary (check), that I would have my own car (check) and the back seat would be filled with cinnamon buns and chocolate bars! I’ve likely eaten enough chocolate bars to fill many backseats!

By the time I turn 21, I am married, pregnant with my second daughter. I’m in Safeway with my toddler in the cart. In the produce department I admire the fresh peaches. But alas! They are expensive. I begin to push away.

I look into my cart.

I see doughnuts. I see cookies.

Like a bolt of lightning I am struck by the notion that if I put back the junk, I can afford the peaches.

That epiphany changes the course of my shopping forever. I begin allocating more of my grocery budget to fresh whole food. I bake our treats, usually substituting some whole grain flour for the white flour and cutting the sugar at least in half. Nobody ever notices. If they do they don’t say anything or stop eating what I make.

I actively guard my children from too much sugar. It‘s not always easy in the face of my Grandma (whose sugar showering continues with my children) and my in-laws, who are of the same generation as my grandma. I am often accused of being a mean mom when I forbid sugar or even when I simply limit it.

“Awww!” The guilty (great-)grandparent whines when I declare “no sugar to be sent home!”

“I just made these lovely squares.” (to child) “You like the mocha balls, don’t you?”

I remember once getting into the car after visiting Grandma and my girls are giggling in the back seat. What’s so funny? Despite my orders that the girls are not to have candy, Grandma has sneaked them each a chocolate bar as we slipped out the door.

I grouse but inside I smile because I know exactly how those girls feel. I know the feeling of being in cahoots with Grandma. I know that a loving heart committed the crime. I know the rush of pleasure: love in a sweet package!

Even if sugar is poison, is it really a sin when it comes from such great love?

At their dad’s parents’ house, cookies, cakes, and squares are served up to five times per day. (Mid-morning coffee, dessert at noon, mid-afternoon snack, dessert at supper, and bedtime snack!) Only breakfast doesn’t include them but sugar is well-represented with toast and jam, pancakes and syrup, and/or porridge with brown sugar.

I remember stuffing myself so full at their Sunday dinners my stomach would protest painfully. My sister-in-law would hold her abdomen and cry in agony, “I am so full!” Our gluttony often struck me as hypocritical in this evangelical Christian home. But I didn’t stop.

My girls’ grandpa thought bonding time with his granddaughters was a trip to the Co-op coffee shop for a long john (a huge block of a donut covered in chocolate or maple icing). They did too.

I saw them developing the same addiction to sugar that afflicted me. One long john contained more than their full day’s allowance of sugar, fat and calories and contributed almost no nutrition.

But I couldn’t really blame them for their attraction to doughnuts…

…..continued next week

Seasonal Eating

summereating
Photo owned by www.shelleygoldbeck.com

A healthy way to live is to eat “in season”.

That means eating foods that are at their peak of flavour and nutrients. This often happens only once per year, for a very short time, especially if eating locally is the goal.

Eating in season is also economical. Whatever is in season is usually cheaper than it will be any other time of the year.

In my opinion, food eaten in season tastes better. It’s usually fresher and more nutritious.

The best season of our food year is imminent. It starts with spring baby lettuce, baby spinach leaves, green onions and crisp, tangy radishes. All these are easy to grow at home. They like cool weather and can be seeded in Calgary anytime after mid-April.

If you’re really lucky, you have an asparagus patch. Their tender shoots magically appear overnight. Raw, they remind me of fresh raw peas. Lightly steamed until al dente and brushed with a teaspoon of butter or olive oil, they have their own unique flavour. Very yummy!

I get really excited about spring fruits. Early rhubarb always reminds me of my grandma, who made rhubarb “pudding”, a yellow cake batter poured over a pan of chopped rhubarb, baked and served warm with ice-cream.

Strawberries in June embody the spirit of summer! A touch of honey. A bit of cream. Fit for a queen!

The first cherries arrive in June. When their skins are crunchy and their flesh, sweet and juicy, I can eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and I often do!

Picking berries was an integral part of my childhood summers. My siblings and I would mount our bikes or horses with our ice-cream pails and larger buckets. We headed home when the buckets were full. It could take all day: we spent more than half our time cramming berries into our mouths!

When the first peas are ready, I am at peace in the garden, splitting the warm pods to discover the sweet treasures inside. The best carrots are the true babies, (not the peeled to shape varieties) pulled, wiped on my pants, and crunched, soil granules and all, right there in the garden.

And potatoes! New potatoes stolen from the periphery of the plant are creamy and sweet. If I never ate another mature potato I wouldn’t care but new potatoes are a completely different animal!

In the old neighbourhood where I live many yards have raspberry patches. Kids love to stick a berry on each of their ten little fingers, wiggle them around, and then devour them one by one.

As summer wanes plums and peaches come into season. More feasting on fruit. And what to do with all that zucchini? (I like them baby so I don’t have that problem).

Alas! Our season is short! By fall, some vegetables are just coming into their prime. The brassicas like cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, all like cool weather. Turnips and parsnips are sweeter if they’ve experienced frost.

Eating in season will bolster the total nutrients you take in, reduce your carbon footprint since it’s easier to eat locally, and likely give your pocketbook a break. I highly recommend it.

The Dirty Dozen 2013 Edition

DirtyDozenHave you heard of the Dirty Dozen? It’s the 1967 movie starring Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, and Charles Bronson, where a World War II US Army Major is assigned a dozen convicted murderers to train and lead into a mass assassination mission of German officers.

The modern mass assassination is even more insidious than in that old film, largely because the target is the most innocent among us: people who eat whole, real food in the form of fruits and vegetables. We know they’re good for us. Our grandmothers told us they were and the produce our grandmothers fed us WAS good for us. Usually it was grown in soils teeming with life and vital nutrients and bereft of toxic substances.

Modern agriculture has changed all that and rendered many of our most nutritious foods into enemies, largely through the application of chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. Unfortunately not all the pesticides used to kill bugs, grubs, or fungus on the factory farm wash off under the tap at home. Government tests show that many fruits and vegetables have a pesticide residue, even after washing.

Some pesticides are bred into the plant. An example is the insecticide Bt, which works by irritating insects’ stomachs. Bt is now bred into corn and there is evidence that humans may suffer from stomach ailments after eating Bt corn. A study of pigs fed GMO corn found they all suffered excess inflammation in their stomachs.

One alternative is to seek and eat organic foods but they are often appreciably more expensive than conventional produce. A good solution is to avoid the worst offenders or select organic and then buy regular versions of other produce.

Exposure to pesticides can be reduced by as much as 80% by avoiding the most contaminated foods in the grocery store, the modern Dirty Dozen, as revealed by the Environmental Working Group. Since 1995, the organization has identified which produce items have the most chemicals.

The EWG couldn’t pick just 12 so the Dirty “Dozen” is 14 for 2013.

1. Apples: In 2013, apples take the number one spot. In Michael Pollan’s book, The Botany of Desire, he explains that because we’ve lost much of the genetic diversity of apples they are disease and pest prone so the use of chemicals on them is deemed necessary. Up to 42 different chemicals are found in apples.

2. Celery: with up to 64 chemicals. Organic celery is often no more expensive than conventionally grown celery and in my experience it is far more flavourful. When I can get it on sale, I buy extra, chop it up and store it in bags in the freezer and use it in recipes where I would cook it anyway, like soups and casseroles.

3. Cherry Tomatoes: these are new on the list. It’s so unnecessary to spray tomatoes. They are among the easiest crops to grow in most climates.

4. Cucumbers: also new on the list. Also easy to grow without chemicals.

5. Grapes: 
Imported grapes (grown outside USA and Canada) make the 2013 Dirty Dozen list. Vineyards can be sprayed with pesticides during different growth periods and no amount of washing or peeling will eliminate contamination. Remember, wine is made from grapes, which testing shows can harbor as many as 34 different pesticides.

6. Hot peppers: Peppers have thin skins that don’t offer much of a barrier to pesticides.

7. Nectarines (imported): Up to 33 different chemicals are found on soft-skinned nectarines, making them among the dirtiest tree fruit.

8. Peaches: up to 62 chemicals. Their soft skins make them susceptible to chemical penetration.

9. Potatoes: The Botany of Desire exposes the growing methods of potatoes and reveals that our demand for the perfectly elongated French fry is largely responsible for the monoculture that leads to the poisonous growing condition of potatoes.  Potatoes can easily be grown in your home garden without chemicals.

10. Spinach: Spinach can be laced with as many as 48 different pesticides, making it one of the most contaminated green leafy vegetables.

11. Strawberries: up to 59 chemicals, especially out of season, when they’re most likely imported from countries that have less-stringent regulations for pesticide use. When organic strawberries are in season, they are often as cheap as the chemical-laden ones and their flavour is far superior.

12: Sweet Bell Peppers: May contain up to 49 different chemicals. Also thin-skinned and susceptible to absorbing chemicals.

+ Kale /collard Greens: Traditionally, kale is known as a hardier vegetable that rarely suffers from pests and disease, but it was found to have residues of organophosphates and other risky pesticides. That’s why they are on the Plus list for 2013.

+ Summer squash, domestically grown: tests found that some domestically-grown summer squash – zucchini and yellow crookneck squash — contained residues of harmful organochlorine pesticides that were phased out of agriculture in the 1970s and 1980s but that linger on some farm fields.

Incidentally, the Clean 15TM, according to the Environmental Working Group, the least contaminated produce items are Asparagus, Avocado, Cabbage, Cantaloupe, Sweet Corn, eggplant, grapefruit, Kiwi Fruit, Mango, Mushrooms, Onions, Papaya, Pineapples, Sweet Peas (Frozen), sweet potatoes.

 

Sources for this article include:

Environmental Working Group: http://www.ewg.org

Dirty Dozen Methodology: http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/methodology.php

http://www.NaturalNews.com

http://www.Organic.org

The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan