Breaking a Habit

Start small. A habit is hard to change but it is possible! 

Start off by replacing sugary snacks with fruits or veggies or even home-made fruit leathers (kids will love this!) 

Start slow and wane off sugar bit by bit, don't go full cold turkey, you could set yourself up for failure. 

Drink lot's of water and eat food that is fibre rich! Both will help you feel full, the fibre will make you feel fuller longer.

Keep processed food out of the home. Cook meals from wholesome food. It's quick and easy and only requires a little bit of planning. 

Set an example for your children and for others! Kids love to play grown up and copy what you do. If they see you eating more fruits and veggies, they might try and copy your habits.

If in doubt, use the gylcemtic index to see which foods are low in sugar.

Cut down on store bought juices. You never know how much of it has added sugars. If you love juice, invest in a juicer! You can drink the juice and bake/cook with the left over pulp! The pulp freezes nicely too so you don't have to stress about using it right away.

Also, cut down on the soft drinks, if not, completely cut them out. 

Remember, you must keep a good, positive mindset. If you are thinking I can't do this, just revise those words to, I can do this, I will do this, I will eventually get this.

Exercise helps release dopamine! Go for an evening walk with the children or dogs or enjoy a family outing or activities. 

Make sure to have good support. Nothing like having good morale support to help you through!

Reach out to the community. If resources are scare and you have some good ideas, reach out, get people involved. Trade recipes, plans, ideas! Sharing idea's go a long way! :)

It's all about progress, not about how quickly you can break that habit. You want a long term relationship with your new lifestyle. Slow and steady wins the race (or breaks a habit). 

A Sick Society

We can see for ourselves that we are getting bigger in the waistline and the rise of diseases is also getting bigger. Why is this? Well, since this is about sugar, it must be sugar!

I have said it numerous times, we are consuming a staggering amount of sugar daily, weekly, yearly that is over exceeding hundreds of pounds. Diabetes, Non-alcoholic fatty liver, hypertension, cancer, metabolic syndrome, and even alzheimer's have been linked to sugar consumption. 

HFructoseCS is digested by the liver. The liver can digest up to 25 grams of fructose in one sitting but anything more will result in being turned into fat. Fructose doesn't stimulate insulin or leptin. Basically insulin suppresses ghrelin (appetite hormone) and leptin made by your fat cells to tell your brain you had enough. Fructose blocks these receptors, making your body think it's starving and in turn increases your appetite, thus you eat more.  

Obesity rates have sky-rocketed in the last few decades and it's steadily climbing to an epidemic scale. So we know fructose messes about with our brain, making us think we are starving when we aren't and so we eat more but never feel really satisfied. "Ever let a kid loose on a buffet after downing a sugary drink? Do they eat less or more? They eat more." 

There is a scary rise in childhood obesity and even in babies who are just born are getting a little more chubbier. Ever heard the the obese 6 month old baby? It's happening and it's not stopping. 

Obese people aren't the only people who are becoming sick. Everyone is at risk, skinny, short, young, old. If you consume fructose on a daily basis, you are at risk of becoming sick. Even if you aren't obese on the outside, you could be fat on the inside. They even have a word for it called TOFI (thin outside,fat inside).

Hopefully we can stop this before permanent damage is done and this becomes normal. 

Bad Boy Fructose

Ah,  fructose. So much confusion surrounds fructose and how scary it really. Well first off, High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is indeed the big bad wolf of sugars. It's nasty and it's blowing your insides apart, slowly and lethally. 

Okay, so fructose that comes from fruits and vegetables are okay! You have no reason to fear eating an apple or munching on carrots because honestly, the amounts of fructose in fruits and veggies are so minimal, it would take a lot (and I mean a lot) for it do a lot of damage. Not to mention it has minerals, vitamins and plant compounds accompanied by the fructose that it's beneficial to eat your fruits and veggies. HFCS has none of that.

HFCS is refined corn syrup from corn starch, table sugar's cheaper, evil twin. It's used to replace sugar (fat free/low-fat), a browning agent,and extends shelf life (usually fibre is taken out). HFCS is disguised in many names such as glucose-fructose, Isoglucose, glucose-fructose syrup. and high fructose maize syrup. 

It's used in about anything processed. From bread to children's vitamin's, nothing is safe. 80% of products in grocery stores have fructose or added sugar in them. Again, wowzers! 

Meme Break!

Sugar Addiction

Are you addicted to sugar? 

We would probably answer no as we guiltily take a bite of a sugary snack or a sip of soda. Don't worry, most people don't even know they are addicted until you take it out of their diet and let me tell you, it's pretty nasty.

I did a sugar dextox last year. Cut all processed food out of my diet (yes this included sugar for my coffee) and ate clean. It was a rough experience. I cut out a lot of soft drinks over the years and fast food however, I still wanted to lose more weight. Well, the first week was pure Hell. I was moody, had constant migraines, shakes, and even sweats. This was something I thought I would never experience, it was like I was detoxing off of a drug. 

So why is it so addicting?

Sugar is in a lot of things, especially processed food. A study showed that about 80% of food in our grocery stores has added sugar in it. 80%! Wowzers! It's not wonder it's hard to get away from that temptation. 

Sugar also makes you happy. It releases the feel good chemical dopamine (similar to cocaine), so we feel good but then we feel bad after the "high" is gone and we crash, unless we get more sugar into us. Caught in a bad romance indeed. 

If you feel the need for a sugar fix why not munch on an apple, drink some water (sometimes we are just dehydrated), snack on some natural peanut butter. There are always better, healthier, alternatives to go to when you need that fix. ;)

Sugar Culture

In the age of convenience, shopping is easier than ever to get what you need and even what you don't. Hidden away in drinks and processed food is a little demon lurking and that demon is called, “Sugar.” With the growing rate in diabetes and obesity in such a short time, something is obviously up. So how come obesity and diabetes are rising at an alarming rate? You guessed it, sugar! Sugar is being used in processed food and to sweeten drinks. Even healthy products that proclaim they are healthy or fat-free are riddled with a form of sugar. So to say sugar is always around us in some shape or form isn't too far from the truth.

We have become a sugar culture. We love the sweet stuff, there is no denying that. From our added sugar in our coffee, to cereal and sweet treats, we love it! We don't even bat an eye when someone tempts us with a coke or a piece of cake, unless you are on a diet (but you know you want it!). Our taste buds have become to well adjusted to the taste receptor of sweetness that it seems anything else tastes almost foreign without that little underlying of sweet. As Emeril Lagasse's trademark “BAM” and kick it up a notch, companies are certainly kicking it up a notch in adding sugar to our food and our waistline!

This is the sugar culture age where the companies spike our food with sugar and we consume it by the pounds yearly, addicted and it's making us ill.

Sugar: An Overdose Introduction

I'm here to discuss sugar.

Sugar.

What do you feel and think when you hear the word, sugar?

 Does it entice images of your childhood? Having your favourite sugary cereal or having that piece of cake on your birthday? Does images of polar bears cracking open a nice cold, Coke flash before you? I bet you can taste that Coke right about now.

There are a few words I can associate sugar with such as sugar rush, hyperglycaemia, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, epidemic...

Sugar is all around us. It's added into your coffee, in soft drinks, so called healthy foods, bread, meats, processed food. It's in items you wouldn't think sugar would be in or even a lot of it.

We have this love affair with sugar, which is turning quickly into an addiction. An addiction we are passing down to children even before they are born. We are influencing children's taste buds just like how our taste buds have been changed and we barely even notice they have been changed.

I say epidemic because in such a short time we have become bigger in size, in appetite, and in our sugar consumption. Sugar has become part of our lives. It has become a hidden food group. Sugar has been underwhelmed by food companies and people for quite a while. A problem that is growing into a devastating lifestyle where children are said to not outlast their parents due to the rising number in obesity and diabetes. 

This is a problem. Companies have been deceiving us for too long about how "safe" their products are. They market to children with a package of colour characters and flashy imagery, pushing their sugar drug into their lives and exploiting parents to make sure that their child is happy. 

It's time we become more aware of this growing sugar culture. How it is impacting our lives, society, and our future. Change can happen but it starts with us as individuals to become more knowledgeable of these concerns and to a smarter consumer. Let us rise from this sugar pit the companies placed us into and take control of our food, our future.

"Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family." - Kofi Annan