Tag Archives: no sugar kids

A Year of No Sugar: Postscript 2

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I’ve had a little time to reflect now on the Year of No Sugar and the effect it has had on me, so here it is: It’s made me a sugar junkie.

Well, sort of. This is why: like never before, I now really notice what sugar does after I eat it. When I eat a cookie, or have a piece of chocolate, here is what happens: I enjoy it. Then I realize my mouth feels… funny: cloying and overly sweet like I just drank maple syrup- yuck. A few minutes pass and I feel a small headachey feeling creeping around the base of my brain, followed by a weird energized feeling… a sugar “buzz” if you will. After a while, of course, it passes.

Sometimes I don’t care a bit about whatever dessert option might be around, while other times I find myself wondering if, perhaps, there’s one more piece of that hazelnut bar we bought back at Christmas time… (no, there isn’t.) And then I think, well, maybe just one of those three remaining mini-pastries from the Lebanese shop… Yesterday was a moment when I gave in and had one mini-pastry after lunch (a particularly weak time of day for me) and, yup. there it was again: enjoy, yuck, headache, buzz. All from basically two bites worth of honey, pastry and nuts.

But I’m glad January is over and with it the aftermath of not just all that leftover holiday sugar which came cascading home with us, but also the remains of the many celebrations in our house that also follow Christmas- not just New Years, but my mother’s birthday followed by my younger daughter’s as well. You might recall that last year we skated by the sugar issue by concocting a banana split that had everything- whipped cream, cherries, banana, homemade ice cream- everything except added sugar. Would they hate it? Would Ilsa feel deprived on her birthday of all things? Oh, the parental horror! It wasn’t until the kids exclaimed happily over the first few bites, that I relaxed a bit- we just might make it through this year after all.

2012, however, has already been markedly different. I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what I do and do not actually want to eat, sugar-wise. But if you aren’t not eating sugar, how DO you know when to stop? Do you refuse to have dessert to celebrate your own mother’s birthday at the restaurant that has the best bread pudding you’ve ever had? Do you not have a piece of the special peanut butter and chocolate pie your daughter requested for her seventh birthday, even though that’s your Achilles-heel of desserts? Do you not join in and have a slice of the mint ice cream cake you labored over for all the kids at your daughter’s clown party? Oh, and of course there are all those leftovers… After all my work to make them, do I simply throw the rest away?

I’m not being rhetorical here, I really don’t know. No, not even now.

Although Sweet Poison author David Gillespie had told me that after a while you “just don’t want” the taste of sugar anymore, during our entire Year of No Sugar I found I kept wanting things: the croissants at our favorite bakery, an ice cream cone on a hot day, ketchup on our french fries. Sure, we got used to skipping, substituting, going without, but did we ever stop wanting?

Then the other night my husband and I had a babysitter night, so we went out to try a new restaurant. At the end of a nice meal Steve became convinced I wanted dessert. A year ago I wouldn’t have even considered it a proper meal out without that final sweet component- like fireworks being intrinsic to the fourth of July- but this time I demurred. I was full. I didn’t want any. Still, he kept encouraging me to pick something from the menu. There was no convincing him that I didn’t, in my heart of hearts, want the chocolate chip cookie sundae but- much to my astonishment- I didn’t. I mean, I really didn’t!

All this month I’ve been playing guilty catch-up from a year of denial, with my kids, with my husband, with myself: it’s pretty hard to say “no” now, after my family gave sugar up for a year, on my say-so. Because I thought it was a good idea. Because I thought it would make us healthier. Because I wanted to write about it.

So I don’t say no as much as I want to right now. Selfishly, I don’t want my kids to think I’ve become the Scrooge of the food universe, or my husband to think he’s lost his fun wife who used to get all giddy at the thought of combining chocolate and peanut butter. I still do, after all. I’m still fun. Right?

Right?

So did we order the ridiculously sinful chocolate chip cookie in a cast iron pan with ice-cream and whipped cream on top? Sure we did, because I’m still fun, damn it. I was almost embarrassed by the conspicous decadence of the thing when it arrived- I felt as if we had a circus elephant sitting on our table. I had a few bites and of course it was very good- in the way that only a warm cookie with cold ice cream on it can be. Very good. But then I put my fork down. I was happy to see that really, really, I could take it or leave it.

And if that’s the ultimate legacy of our year, I’ll take it.

A Year Of No Sugar: Post 93

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My six year old is soon to be seven, but she still uses a handful of words she hasn’t realized yet that she herself made up. One of them is “gladfully,” which she uses to mean “thank goodness,” as in: “We arrived just in time for the movie, gladfully.”

Pastry Smorgasbord

There’s something inspiring about that to me, about the fact that she assembled that word one day, out of necessity to express a particular emotion, and drawing from all her previous experiences… and it worked, so here she is still using it. When we’re kids we’re much more used to figuring stuff out, to winging it. By necessity, kids are improvising all the time. As Indiana Jones once famously said, “I’m just making it up as I go along.”

This year, we’ve been making it up as we go along too. Looking back to this time last year I realize how awfully clueless we were about what A Year of No Sugar would entail: we had yet to fully understand what fructose was, its many, many aliases, and what the deal was with omnipresent “no sugar” ingredients like sugar substitutes and sugar alcohols. I had yet to go through my banana, date, coconut, oligofructose, and “what do you mean I can’t have carob?” phases. I had yet to read David Gillespie’s Sweet Poison, and through it to discover dextrose as a non-fructose sweetener. All I knew was that Dr. Robert Lustig’s YouTube lecture had convinced me: sugar was a toxin.

Now, as we sit on the doorstep of being done with our No Sugar Year, I feel a crazy mix of emotions: relief, delight, surprise, apprehension. What happens next? What was it all for? Have we changed our lifestyle for the better, or have we merely stubbornly proved a point? I took offense when a friend termed our project an “intellectual exercise,” as if that characterization somehow minimized our effort, but does it? And is it? Perhaps the answers to those questions will be slowly revealed to us as we progress forward into 2012: the Year of Figuring Out What to do Now.

Ilsa At 12:01

Recently, we’ve had a whole series of family conversations about this what-happens-next business, and a lot of talk has centered around looking forward to things we haven’t been able to enjoy this year. This morning I took a breakfast table poll and found out that Greta misses BLTs as much as anything, and that Steve misses restaurant condiments perhaps even more than dessert: ketchup on his french fries, salad dressing on his salad, mayo on his sandwiches. After careful consideration, Ilsa decided that, in addition to maple syrup, she was looking forward to having Jell-O, (which is kind of funny since we never make Jell-O.)

Me? I miss a good chocolate chip cookie, for which we never did find a suitable fructose-free replacement. If we ever make it back to Italy, even if it’s in February, I intend to have more than one gelato. I look forward to being able to eat out without giving our waitress the Spanish Inquisition.

It’s safe to say that Steve is especially excited about the end of our No Sugar Year. I know this because during our Christmas travels he bought a handful of Dutch chocolate bars and a 64 piece Lebanese pastry sampler for us to enjoy “after the first.” I’m trying not to be alarmed about this mild case of gourmet sugar hoarding- after all, how many husbands would’ve been supportive of a family project like this one? Then, the other night when I expressed a lack of interest in a sugared dessert, Steve made the comment, “Hey- I want my wife back.” I must admit, this kind of freaked me out. Back? Had I gone somewhere? Was I no longer the person who loved a good Reese’s Peanut Butter cup? Have I become a permanent killjoy?

I don’t think so, at least I hope not. The way I see it, it’s quite the opposite: my appreciation for food and where it comes from, what it’s made of, and what is required for its preparation has gone up manyfold. More than anything this year has taught me how much I love food, how important it is, and how little attention our culture collectively pays to it. Food is the stuff of life- we are what we eat- feeding yourself well is caring for yourself- choose your favorite slogan. It’s all more true than we could ever fully realize.

This year has taught me that, just like anything toxic- alcohol, nicotine- we need as a society to start handling sugar (fructose) with care, as potentially addictive, potentially dangerous. I wonder, can we even do that? Do we have the self-possession to realize that “moderation” does not mean “whatever the amount I eat is”?

I’ve come to understand that sugar, while fun, is nutritionally “expensive.” Why would I want to waste my allotment of it on vending machine cookies or breakfast cereal? Why not save it for that truly something special? Americans instead simply decide to have it all: the good, the bad and the ugly… and then are tragically surprised when health ramifications ensue. No one ever told them sugar could be really, truly harmful.

Steve likes to cite the fact that the ice cream Sunday got it’s name from the fact that the soda shop that invented it only served it on Sundays. Just think of that. Can you imagine Friendly’s only serving ice cream one day per week? Consequently, my 2012 proposal to my family is to have dessert with actual sugar in it once per week. After this year, that sounds to me like a whole lot, but then again after our adventures at Christmas visiting relatives and friends, watching how much sugar is involved in their everyday lives, I think it will be a reasonable compromise.

Likewise, after tonight we’ll return to eating bacon and ketchup without fear. We’ll buy Hellman’s Mayonnaise again for our tuna fish sandwiches. I won’t blanch at restaurant bread that has a teaspoon of sugar in the ingredients. Heck, I may even stop taking pictures of my food.

Some things, however, will stay permanently changed. Juice is off the table; soda always was. I almost never bought cookies or other store-bought desserts before, moving forward those will remain promoted to the “never-never” list. I will continue to check my crackers and other products, avoiding anything with sugar as a filler ingredient. Fast food restaurants are still entirely out. Chain restaurants will be in the category of “in case of extreme emergency.” Instead of them, we’ll stubbornly continue to seek out good restaurants, local restaurants, places where they actually make the food they serve. At home, I will continue to make my own pizza, yeasted breads and quick breads. Perhaps most significantly, I will continue use dextrose for everyday baking and cooking.

My Frist Piece Of Candy In A Year

Am I worried about going forward with the rules changing in this fashion? Nervous we’ll go overboard like an alcoholic who thinks he’s got his act together and can “handle” it? I am. But Steve likens our No Sugar Year to what he experienced in the Marines. “You go through an experience that changes you,” he says, “and you get out and you say, “’Now what?’ But still, you really aren’t the same. That conditioning is always there. That’s how I feel.”

I honestly don’t expect us to plow through those Lebanese pastries in the fashion we would’ve a year ago. Rather, I imagine we’ll have a bite or two- as we each did with our allotment of one of Grandma Sharon’s famous Christmas sugar cookies- and then say “That’s good. And sweet!!”

Only time will tell. Gladfully.

A Year Of No Sugar: Post 90

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I spend a lot of time making food these days. Pretty much, I divide my time between making food, and writing about food… and if there’s any time leftover I do trivial stuff like pay bills, shower, brush teeth. At times it feels like I’m emerging from being under the surface of a lake full of cultural assumptions about food. My head just above the surface of that water, I am only now opening my eyes and looking around- it’s amazing to me to begin to realize how very much time real food can take, and how good and satisfying that can feel.

For example, last night I was making spaghetti and meatballs, which sounds like a pretty simple thing. Once upon a time, I would’ve bought meatballs and sauce at the supermarket, and such a dinner would’ve taken about half-an-hour. Yesterday, however, it took up a not-insignificant portion of my day: in the morning I made bread- not only for our toast and sandwiches, but also as a meatball ingredient. I poured boiling water over oatmeal and let it sit an hour, then added more ingredients before kneading the dough and setting it in a bowl to rise. An hour later I came back to it, divided it into two loaf pans and let it rise some more. Half an hour after that I put them in the oven, and half an hour after that the bread emerged from the oven smelling like God.

Later in the day, after picking the kids up from school it was time to make the sauce. After putting cans of diced and crushed tomatoes to stew in a pot with oil and garlic, I got out meatball ingredients- defrosted beef, grated Parmesan, measured spices… then mixed all together with a paste made from the cut-up bread slices and water. After the sauce was finished reducing it was time to form the mixture into meatballs and gently place them into the hot oil for frying. Each batch cooks about ten minutes and I fuss over them like a mother hen, trying to ensure they don’t burn on one side or undercook on another- and most of all that they stay in one piece. Meanwhile I put the water on to heat up for the spaghetti.

All this time my six year old Ilsa was “helping” by making a fruit concoction composed of cut-up Clementine and bananas. She had a name for it- I can’t recall it exactly, but something like “Super-happy-loveliness”- and after an extremely long process of peeling and squeezing and sampling and mixing, was inordinately proud of the end result that she put on the dinner table. I knew exactly how she felt.

Is it crazy to feel this way about food? Having a Year of No Sugar is a tremendous part of it- it’s the reason for making my own bread and sauce after all- but that isn’t all of it. It’s more than that.

Recently I read “Into the Wild,” the true story of Chris (Alex) McCandless’ journey to Alaska to attempt to be free from the trappings of society and live off the land, and his eventual death by starvation. Why was I reading this, I wondered, when I still have a stack of “homework” books left dealing with sugar and nutrition? What did this have to do with A Year of No Sugar?

The answer came on page 167. Author – Krakauer relates that Alex had underlined passages in Thoreau’s Walden concerning “the morality of eating.”

“It is hard to provide and cook so simple and clean a diet as will not offend the imagination; but this, I think, is to be fed when we feed the body; they should both sit down at the same table. Yet perhaps this may be done. The fruits eaten temperately need not make us ashamed of our appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But put an extra condiment on your dish, and it will poison you.”

Whoa. I stopped cold when I got to the “extra condiment” part. It jumped off the page at me as if it were printed in neon ink. Sure, he may be speaking metaphorically about that extra condiment being “poison”… but still. Didn’t that sound like he was talking about sugar? I was fascinated by this passage just as Alex was- Alex had written in the margins of his copy: “YES. Consciousness of food. Eat and cook with concentration… Holy Food.”

Fast forward to this morning: I was reading a magazine interview with spiritual philosopher Jacob Needleman, who talks about the practice of “self-remembering” and “Conscious, willful attention to oneself…” So much of what we concern ourselves with in life is meaningless, he argues, whereas what most cultures describe as “God” has to do with what he calls “deep feeling.” I wondered, was Alex looking for that “deep feeling” in the Alaskan wilderness? Is it possible- or am I just crazy here- to relate our search for God or “deep feeling” or whatever you want to call it, to the practice of meaningful sustenance… what Alex called “Holy Food”?

Maybe I’m way out on a limb here, but we’re within spitting distance of meeting our goal of a Year of No Sugar, and I’m feeling philosophical. It somehow makes sense to me to draw big, sweeping analogies between our modern avoidance of real social contact in favor of reasonable facsimiles thereof -Facebook, Twitter, interactive video games- and our modern avoidance of real, fulfilling nourishment in favor of reasonable facsimiles thereof- fast food, processed food, convenience food.

Is modern society based on our collective desire to run away from consciousness/deep feeling/God? Is it possible that a practice of what Alex called “Holy Food” could represent the fledgling beginnings of a way back to… what? Spirituality?

“…the imagination… I think, is to be fed when we feed the body; they should both sit down at the same table.”

Yes, folks, it’s been nearly a year into this journey and perhaps I’ve finally cracked: I’ve discovered the meaning of life in a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs.