PURE EVIL

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this blog post today, but feel the need to cover the whole topic of the dreaded SUGAR substance again.

Boring, freaky, wierdy, antisocial, mad, crazy, are just a few of the adjectives that have been used to describe.......me, yes, me! And that's by my friends. All because I took sugar out of my diet. And when I say sugar, I also mean refined carbohydrates (pasta, bread, rice) and alcohol as the body converts them to a form of sugar to be digested.

It is by far the hardest thing I have ever attempted to do in my life, no exaggeration. Therefore, in some situations I have succumbed.Sometimes I have to admit it's because I don't want to be different (although in normal circumstances I do quite like this).

Chocolate bars, chips, glasses of wine,fresh bread and butter, tortilla chips and dips, champagne, mints after a meal, a latte with friends in Starbucks, popcorn and coke in the cinema - all of these foods are now the norm in our daily lives, and are, in the main, part of sociable eating. To take all of this out(and more) is, I'll admit, damn near impossible.

I keep being told that we only get one life and we should just enjoy it! My God, I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. I love my life, I love all the opportunites we get, all the choices we have etc. etc. but shouldn't we be able to do this without eating sugar? Does it really have such a hold on us?

I read an article in a magazine the other day in which a journalist had been challenged to give up sugar for one month. Thats all. She did it eventually but with lots of false starts, and then feelings of irritablility, lethargy, spaceyness, moodiness, major cravings and more. This sounds more like someone withdrawing from cocaine, or serious alcohol intake than just plain old sugar.

Sugar is found in almost ALL processed (or CRAP) foods. Try reading some labels next time you're in those dreaded middle aisles in the supermarket and you'll be amazed. Even in what could be considered the most savoury meal, sugar will be present.

Why is this necessary? because those nasty food giants have worked out that by adding the right combinations of sugar, salt and fat to foods they can create insatiable feelings (ie. we never feel satisfied) so we crave more. The Pringles advertisement strap line 'Once you pop you can't stop, is very, very accurate for those reasons.

So, what happens in your body when you eat these foods is that, because they are nutritionally lacking, and have just the right chemical combination, your body wants more. But its more than a want - its a need. It's an overwhelming urge for more. Try eating one chip from a whole plate of them. Once you've tasted one and it activates that 'need' within you ie through your taste buds, you literally can't stop without physically removing the plate from within your grasp.

David Kessler, an Amercian who worked with Bill CLinton to take on the tobacco manufacurers has just written a book - THE END OF OVEREATING, and it's about this very topic. How the food manufactuerers are making stuff thats impossible to stop eating. Its great for their profits, but terrible for our waistlines.

Apparently from an insatiable point of view these are the top foods to be avoided at all costs :
Pringles, French Fries, Starbucks Mocha Frappucionos, Snickers, Kettle chips, Chocolate chip cookies, Flapjacks (unless home made),biscuits (especially chocolate ones). I'd add anything alcoholic to this list!!

The thing is and now this is serious. Sugar causes health problems, in excess.Apart from it making us fat, it makes us bloated - this is because glucose is stored in water in the body (short term) as glycogen in the muscles and tissues, so when you take it out of your diet you literally deflate!

It can also lead to syndrome X which is a resistance to insulin that can increase the likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes, and I think everyone knows that this is one of the biggest diseases of our time, and is rapidly rising in numbers.

So, the big food giants should be shot, in short.They are ruining the nations health, to line their own pockets. Not quite that simple I guess, as we can all say NO, but as I've just outlined it IS NOT THAT EASY. If it were we wouldn't need millions of diet books, self help books,low fat and low sugar processed foods (by the way avoid these, they're just as bad) and everything else that makes up the whole 'diet industry' - also doing well out of us thankyou very much!

This blog rambles abit today. I'm not apologising. It's my blog and I can ramble if I like!! I hope you've got something out of it, and it makes you think a little. If I could challenge you to attempt to take sugar out of your diet for one week and see what happens that would be just great. Please give me feed back. Don't resort to smoking to fill the gap however, as someone I know did. Couterproductive, big time!

Right, now back to my life; how to avoid all the available alcohol in our holiday home (particularly Pink Camel Valley Champagne), and the nibbles that will be out to go with it tonight.........aaaaaaaargh!
RX