Category Archives: A Year of No Sugar

A Year of No Sugar: Post 28

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I had Walleye for lunch and dinner yesterday- a first for me. Apparently Walleye is very big out here in Minnesota.

But wait, you say, Minnesota? What happened to Philly? What, for that matter, happened to Vermont? Well, life moves pretty fast out here in No-Sugar Land…

So yes, Minnesota. Turns out my Dad’s back problems have reached epic proportions and it’s time for the experts to be superseded by the experts. So he and I have come to Mayo Clinic. I have been told that the Mayo Clinic employs 56,000 people in the city of Rochester, Minnesota, which leaves me speechless. (remember: I live in a thriving Vermont metropolis of around 1,000 people.)

And this also, of course, means more travel: the No Sugar Lifestyle’s no-so-best-friend. But I’m slightly better prepared this time: for one thing I had the foresight to leave the kids at home, with my husband. I have a much easier time with the concept of going hungry myself, than I do with imposing hunger on my children- especially when actual, viable food is staring them right in the face.

Also very helpful is the box of Kashi cereal I packed in my suitcase. One of the biggest lessons I learned on our trip to Philadelphia last week was that the hardest meal of the day for no-sugar is breakfast… hands down. Just take a look at it and you’ll see what I mean: there’s cereal (added sugar), toast or bagels (added sugar), juice (is sugar), waffles (added sugar, and that’s even before the syrup), muffins and danishes (oh, come on!),… Pretty much black coffee and eggs without toast and without bacon are what you get left with. Ew.

Which leads me to a confession to make on this account. Last week on our PA. trip the breakfast situation got so dire that I had to enact the “Philadelphia Breakfast Exemption” which read as follows: Don’t ask about the bread. Just don’t.

Evidently our hotel has never heard of the “complimentary breakfast” phenomenon that is sweeping the rest of the western world, so we ate almost every day at a small diner around the corner that felt very “retro”… two formica u-shaped counters were lined with swiveling chrome stools. Honestly, for the first time in our project I was too intimidated to ask about the sugar content of the menu items… I’m not sure if it was the Russian waitress with three stars tattooed behind her right ear, the two local guys who came in every morning and ordered coke with their French Toast, or the fact that there would simply be nothing left for us to eat but eggs with eggs and eggs on the side, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Instead, we stuck to the things we knew were safe: bland unsweetened oatmeal, grapefruit, and of course eggs. Okay, we had whole wheat toast and we had bagels. Judging by my experience at sugar-hunting to date, I’d say there was a really, really good chance there was some amount of sugar in those bread products. Which was why the “Philadelphia Breakfast Exemption” was key to our sanity. I was determined, however, not to let it happen again.

Having already learned my lesson the hard way, this week I felt prepared. I proudly smuggled my cereal into the complimentary breakfast bar this morning, brazenly making use of their styrofoam bowls, plastic spoons and paper napkins (evidently our hotel has never heard of the “catastrophic environmental meltdown” that’s sweeping the rest of the western world) as well as a heap of raisins which were originally betrothed to some instant sugar-containing oatmeal, before being abducted and eloping with 7 Whole Grain Nuggets at the last minute.

So I’m guilty of a shotgun wedding, I’m afraid. Well, at least they didn’t end up with the Walleye.

A Year of No Sugar: Post 27

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There is a lot of banging of pots and pans downstairs right now, which I am steadfastly going to ignore because it has been far too long since my last post. I just hope the girls aren’t burning down the kitchen… stay tuned.

The reason I haven’t posted in several days is that we took advantage of the school break to take a family trip to Philadelphia and see all the requisite tourist stuff: Liberty Bell? Check. Independence Hall? Check. Philadelphia Museum of Art? Check.

Meanwhile, we also had to eat. Oh yeah- I forgot that part. In fact, I was so much in denial about this inconvenient truth that, in our frantic rush to get out of the house on Monday, I neglected to pack any snacks at all, which is really weird, because in our family I’m The Snack Lady… if I can’t bring a Larabar or a banana I’m not going. Consequently the girls have picked up the habit of digging in my purse when I’m not looking and handing out snacks found therein to every kid in ballet class. In this way I’m kind of a healthy-snack vending machine.

Normally. But on this hungry occasion, not so much. There we were, driving all afternoon having had no lunch and no snacks. Normally under such circumstances we’d relax our healthy eating standards j-u-s-t enough to allow for a pizza lunch at one of the thruway travel plazas… but of course with the “no sugar” project in full swing, eating at any of the colorfully advertised chain restaurants which bloom at rest stops like colonies of algae would be out of the question.

But maybe, I hoped, we could at least find a suitable bag of pretzels before somebody’s arm got gnawed off. At the next travel plaza we were astonished to have those hopes far surpassed when we found fruit cups (consisting of: fruit!) and cellophane-wrapped to-go sandwiches with lists! Of ingredients! on their label stickers! Wow! After a happy, hurried survey of ingredients I selected some fruit cups (consisting of: fruit!) and three turkey sandwiches, as well as some cheese sticks (ingredients: cheese!) and bottled water.

I felt surprised and delighted- we would have lunch after all! Wow- maybe the world was coming to it’s senses, I thought. Maybe things aren’t as bad as they sometimes seem. Maybe the consumer pressure to clean up our act in the eating department has finally elicited some response in the age old capitalistic form of sellers meeting market demands, I thought. Most of all I was thinking about stopping that gnawing in my belly without having to break any project parameters.

However. After we got back on the road I did that thing which by now I should know not to do: I double-checked. (Note to self: if you want to eat? DO NOT DOUBLE-CHECK.) You can guess what I found I’m sure: sugar. Plain old sugar- not even some tricky euphemism hiding it and I still missed it in my hungry hurry: ingredient number five in the sandwich bun. Sure, there was a panoply of other ingredients which ordinarily would’ve worried me much more, and most of which probably should have seemed more like chemistry class experiments to me than “lunch” but remember: I was starving.

So I ate around the problem. I ignored the sandwiches and enjoyed a nice lunch of cheese, fresh fruit and strong coffee- I felt very European.

And by European, I mean hungry. About a half-hour later I broke down. I ate half of the thousand-ingredient sandwich. It left an icky chemically taste in my mouth, metallic tasting, as if I’d been sucking on a lead pencil. My punishment I suppose. (Maybe it was those four different kinds of sodium in the turkey meat?)

Meanwhile, back at home I was now mentally picturing all of the no-sugar food I should have thought to bring. I was suddenly worried: what would we do for no-sugar food in Philadelphia? Would we be forced to pick through our meals like scientists? Would we just starve? Worse, would my family revolt, abandoning our lofty no-sugar project for the satisfaction of a decent meal?

All I can say is, so much for The Snack Lady.

A Year of No Sugar: Post 26

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Well, we finally had our Valentine’s Day chocolate mousse and I thought that was what I was going to write about today. Until I saw a smoking gun this morning, in the form of the March school breakfast menu.

Now, before I go any further, let me reiterate how much I love our elementary school. I adore it. I want to marry it. We’ve had nothing but fabulous teachers in every grade and have enjoyed every minute of the warm, welcoming community of learning it provides- no kidding. I wish I had gone to a school this good as a kid. In the past they have even done great things on the healthy food front such as plant a school garden and invite parents to contribute their favorite soup recipes for lunch. Currently there’s even a grant-funded healthy snack program that gives the kids fruits and vegetables in between meals.

Now the bad part: the school food, the day-to-day menu, is packed with added sugar. Even I, who have been focusing on the added-sugar issue with a myopic vengance since the turn of the year, was shocked when I sat down to really look at the breakfast menu laid forth for the month of March. In the picture you can see I’ve highlighted every breakfast item that contains added sugar. And we’re not just talking a teaspoon on our grapefruit here… when they say “Assorted whole grain cereal” read: Frosted Flakes. When they say “Nutri-grain fruit bar” read: high fructose corn syrup. When they say “graham crackers” read: crystalline fructose, (or “lab fructose”- the sweetest ingredient our food scientists have managed to come up with to date.)

To look at it another way, I count a total of 30 possible options on the breakfast menu including condiments and syrup; out of those 30 items, 18 have added sugar… more than half. But it gets worse.

Looking closer, the school menu advertises “Milk Variety is Served with Every Meal!” What does this mean? This means chocolate milk. Okay, so if we assume a child chooses chocolate milk with his or her breakfast every morning, we are now up to 24 items out of 30 possible breakfast choices, or eighty percent of breakfast items containing added sugar.

One more thing: every day children having breakfast are given a piece of fresh fruit. In fact, the fruit has fructose in it too- the only kind of fructose our kids should really be having if you follow the logic of pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Robert Lustig. Lustig’s contention, as I’ve mentioned, is that fructose acts as a poison in our bodies, (unlike glucose, dextrose, lactose, etc.) and that the preferable way to take in this “poison” is the way nature has neatly worked it out: by ingesting the “antidote” with it, which is to say the fiber and micronutrients found in the flesh and pulp of the fruit. This not only ensures we get the good stuff that outweighs the bad, but also that we consume the fructose in appropriately small amounts.

So if we are looking at the number of items containing fructose (read: poison) in our breakfast menu for March 2011, and assuming a choice of chocolate milk every day? We can now bring our total of items containing sugar/fructose to 29 out of 30, or roughly 97 percent.What is the one item left not containing fructose? Cream cheese for our bagel on Tuesday.

Now, my understanding is that the way the breakfast and lunch programs work in most public schools is that they are substantially subsidized by the USDA which lays out the nutritional guidelines and “approved brands.” The potentially good news is that over the last year first lady Michelle Obama has taken on nutrition-awareness in the nation, in which effort she is assisted by the white house chef Sam Kass, a huge proponent of local, fresh, and sustainable foods.

This morning I came across a heartening article quoting Kass as being highly critical of the state of our school meals.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/new-white-house-chef-skewers-school-lunches/

Then again, these remarks were made in 2008, before Kass was hired by the White House. Would he still speak so frankly today? Of course, everything I uncovered in my cursory search found him focusing on the positive: emphasizing the benefits of recently passed legislation (the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010) regarding the USDA’s oversight of food in schools. In terms of specifics, the proposed “before” and “after” school menus posted on the USDA website are encouraging. And hey, he reassured Elmo, so that has to count for something. (youtube video)

Meanwhile, on the recent one year anniversary of her “Let’s Move” initiative, Michelle Obama posted a website message saying that over the last year there has been “a real shift in our national conversation.” Really?

I’d like to think so- I really, really would. But so far my youngest still brings home all the wrappers from her school breakfasts that say otherwise.