Sugar is certainly getting a lot of publicity these days isn’t it? Why you’d almost think the world was waking up to the fact at last that sugar is our enemy when we’re trying to be healthy and/or lose weight. Sugar. Not fat.
As trailed here on Friday, Channel 4 did a Dispatches programme last night all about sugar. And how the sugar industry is fighting back to make sure we keep taking the sugar cubes. Even when we don’t know they’re in our food. There is of course a very easy way to avoid added hidden sugars in food. Can you guess what it is yet?
Sugar pushers
Don’t buy processed or prepared food and you’ll avoid most added sugar, save for that which is added by nature, ie in fruit and vegetables. The problem with the Dispatches programme for me, aside from the perhaps inevitable start with a fat freak show, is that it assumes most of us buy ready-made meals. Well maybe most families do but why? It’s not how I was brought up. It’s not how we lived for centuries and yes yes yes, I know, we’re all so very very busy we can’t possibly cook from fresh. So we buy the food the sugar pushers want us to.
Supermarket sweep
But have you ever stopped to consider that going to a supermarket, usually now an out-of-town one, loading up the trolley then the car, queuing, buying petrol etc takes up more time than buying fresh locally and cooking from scratch? It’s not a penance to cook from scratch. Not a punishment nor an ordeal. It’s enormously enjoyable. If kids are brought up to expect fresh food cooked from scratch they won’t scream for pizzas nor insist, as one child did last night that, “I can’t possibly live without HP sauce!” What a strange outburst! When I were a lad, it was surely tomato sauce we couldn’t live without?
Back on track
I’m now finally back on my Paleo regime proper – I refuse to call it a diet! Diets don’t work as we’ve seen endlessly. But new ways of eating do. If you diet till you lose weight then go off the diet once you hit your goal, you’ll put all the weight back on. There is only one way to lose weight and most essentially of all keep it off. And that’s to change your eating habits forever. It’s tough. Won’t say it isn’t. But it’s doable. I was particularly gratified to learn last night that The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends we have no more than 12 teaspoons of sugar a day, equivalent to that is, so including all the hidden added sugar in your food if you eat pre-prepared stuff. WHO would like us to go down to 7 teaspoons a day. I reckon I’m imbibing half that amount, if that.
Feelgood factor
So the programme did produce a bit of a feelgood in me though not, I hope, smugness. I DO find it hard to cut back on my sugar intake. Very hard. But it can be done. I get a sugar hit from berry fruits which have the lowest amount of sugar in fruit and I team them up with very thick Jersey cream. I assure you it’s MUCH nicer than those pale, thin low-fat yoghurts that are full of sugar. Far more filling and satisfying and keeps you going. And I will occasionally eat cake or have a biscuit. So long as the majority of my food comes from protein and fat not carbs and sugar, I’ll continue to lose weight and feel healthy.
Anyway watch the programme if you haven’t already and see what you think. It’s available on catch-up for a month. It asks is sugar addictive and never really answered the question. But those of who love sweet food already know don’t we?
Have a good Tuesday and see you later in the week.
