Category Archives: A Year of No Sugar

A Year of No Sugar: Post 4

A Year of No Sugar, ,

It’s pretty amazing the number of times sugar can come up in a day. Today I got blind sided when I least expected it: at school I was asked to buy Girl Scouts cookies by the same friend who asks me every year. Ordinarily I would’ve responded with a sizable order, heavy on the Tagalongs and Thin Mints, please. Hey- it’s a good cause! Instead, I surprised my friend- and me too, really- by declining.

Now normally I’m a big supporter of, well, just about everything. That’s because I remember being a kid and selling things, and how hard it was: flower seeds and greeting cards and glass jars of popcorn and Florida oranges.. you name it. Sometimes it was just to benefit the very deserving Eve Would Like to Have Some Cash Fund, but just as often it was for German Club or the Methodist Youth Group’s upcoming trip to Somewhere-or-Other. And then there were those big yellow cartons of M&Ms which benefitted… what? Band I think. Of course those sold themselves: all you had to do was place the big box on top of your books as you walked down the hall and kids would practically throw themselves off the stairway landing to buy a pack or two, scrounging coins and crumpled bills from the bottom of their pockets.

I remember even then feeling like: this is weird. Why is this so easy compared to selling everything else? And maybe, just maybe, there was something a little wrong with selling candy to a captive teenage audience… were they paying with bus money, I wondered? Or lunch money? Another less ethical but more immediate dilemma came in the fact that I was my own best customer and often had to quickly come up with my “cash drawer” shortfall. Whoops!

So today the sugar project has me wondering: how many things do we justify in the name of a good cause, that we ordinarily would object to? How hard would it be to find alternative ways to express our support?

Hmmm. I think… I think I’ll ask my friend about making a donation, instead.

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PS- Yesterday for the first time I asked a waitress if there was any sugar in the meal I was ordering. I’ve been toying with all kinds of plausible justifications from “I’m allergic” to “It’s for religious reasons,” but in the end simply asked her if she could check.

“You don’t want it in there?” she asked, without too much interest.

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A Year of No Sugar: Post 3

A Year of No Sugar, , ,

I am quickly coming to the realization that prepared foods are going to be pretty much off the table. I deduced this last night when I got out some of our favorite canned chicken chili to have over brown rice for dinner and gueeeeessss whaaaat. Yup- ingredient number seven, right between onion and tomato paste. Who knows how much that ingredient-number-seven sugar that really amounts to? A teaspoon? A tablespoon? Does it matter?

So, once again, we were having sugar with our dinner without really intending to. Greta, our ten year old, who got teary only the night before when we talked about starting the “family project,” was incensed.

“I can not be-LIEVE we’re having sugar for dinner,” she proclaimed loudly, with the conviction of a truly gifted proto-teenager. I found myself in the very odd position of pleading with her: “It’s just for tonight…” I rationalized, “It isn’t very much.” I promised we would do better as we got more acclimated to the new way of eating… which is to say I ‘ll be cooking more meals from scratch than ever before.

Part of me loves this idea- after all, I love to cook and bake. Then again, one of my favorite things to cook and bake is dessert. Huh. Also- the planning involved with so many home-made meals, not to mention the dirty pots and pans that result, is my not so favorite part. So a re-tooling is definitely in the cards for my meal methods.

Meanwhile, I had my first cup of tea with no honey in it this morning- cue the shrieks and screams. Oh, the horror. For me, altering one of my beloved little morning rituals, this was a HUGE step. My mind keeps waiting for that sweet kick at the end of every sip, and- alas- it never comes. Still, the caffeine was reliable, and a little milk helped too. Hey, I thought, I can do this. M-m-m-m-maybe.

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Information About The No Sugar Project

 

A Year of No Sugar: Post 2

A Year of No Sugar, , ,

Day two of the project and the going is s-l-o-w… which is to say that we are finding sugar everywhere besides on top of the door frames, and if we suddenly found it there too I imagine we’d hardly be surprised.

At breakfast we avoided sugar with success, (hooray!) until afterwards when the kids wanted to open the “Make Your Own Gummis!” kit they got for Christmas… (awww!). That’s right: we didn’t even make it to lunch. I have decided that, by necessity, this coming week will be a “clearing” week, devoted to shedding our sugar like layers of an onion- unlike many households we have no high-fructose corn syrup to get rid of, but cane sugar? Powdered sugar? Brown sugar? Just plain sugar? And I hate wasting perfectly good, perfectly expensive, and in some cases, perfectly labor-intensive food. This doesn’t mean we’ll be consuming the leftover Christmas candy canes- those are going in the freezer- but the last of my homemade bread with maple syrup in it? We’re eating it.

At the same time I have high hopes of not traumatizing the kids too much with this admittedly way-way-outside-the-mainstream plan… Gradually eliminating the sugar in a gentle, phasing manner seems somewhat more appropriate than one day tossing half our pantry into the garbage. Which, despite our label-reading ways, we could very easily do.

So we’ll finish the last of our Bunny Grahams with cane sugar. We’ll make the Gummis today and eat them. When we go to have our grilled cheese sandwich lunch we’ll wince after realizing the organic ketchup, of course, has sugar as it’s third ingredient. Sigh. Sigh. Sigh. And yet, I’m hopeful because it’s progress. After mulling this project over for so long in my head, it’s finally begun to inch forward.

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Information About The No Sugar Project