I have had a wonderful week this week with my favorite cousins coming to visit me here from Arizona. They are all healthy eaters. They have been on the road for over a month and eating the way they generally eat was a bit of a challenge for them as they stayed with lots of friends and relatives who eat quite differently than they do. My cousins eat mainly raw, but they also are careful not to eat much meat or any refined products. While our family eats a lot of raw foods, we are not "raw foodist." We do try to avoid as much sugar as we can and most specifically white refined sugars. This is a hard trick with 7 of our eight children living at home, and they are all involved in scouts, soccer, church activities and more. We cannot even go to the bank without being offered a sugary sucker to eat. I wanted to address today the subject of eating refined sugar(s) and give you some helpful hints that our family has found to be quite effective.
First of all, as with anything we change, there is a process and there are not too many folks out there who can just walk away from refined sugars and never eat another grain of it the rest of our lives. If you feel that your culture here in the United States is not in support of eating healthy, then you would be correct, they are not. Sugar in in everything it seems, but you can make a huge difference in the amount of sugar you and your family ingest by educating yourself about what sugar does to your body, by limiting the times per week you or your family will serve it or eat it. In our family I have instituted what we call "Sugar Days." We started off with two days per week that our children could have sugar. The children took out their calendars and they literally marked on it what days they would eat something sweet. They know their schedules and for example one our our sons has scouts and he knows they will more than likely serve some sort of a treat on Wednesday afternoons, so he marks this day as his Sugar Day. We don't eat sugar all day long on our Sugar Day, we limit it to that treat we know we might be served or that we might make. I have been pleasantly surprised that my kids really do manage themselves with this "rule" very well and they don't eat much sugar at all compared to other children I see in our neighborhood. It is great. Another thing we don't do much is bake sweets. We are not cookie bakers around our house much. We find it just way too tempting. We bake cookies maybe three times per year and I am not kidding. I just don't think anyone can resist home-made cookies much.
We don't buy too many sweets and when we do, like I mentioned in my previous blog about ice-cream, we only purchase enough for what we might eat at one sitting. For a family of ten purchasing a package of cookies means everyone gets two or maybe three and then the package is gone. I don't recommend purchasing multiple packages of cookies even if they are on sale. Sugar is addictive and it is just too easy to keep getting into it.
So why is sugar so bad for us anyway? Refined sugar has been stripped of all its nutritional value during the processing, resulting with an end product that more resembles a pharmaceutical drug than a food source. When refined sugar is ingested it breaks down very quickly, entering the blood stream much too rapidly (sugar highs) which then signals the pancreas to overproduce insulin, which then results in a drop in blood sugar levels (the crash!).
The author of Lick the Sugar Habit, Nancy Appleton Ph.D writes "When a person eats sugar continually the body becomes inefficient at manufacturing glucose from complex carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. The mechanisms in the body which perform this task shut down from disuse, causing the blood glucose level to drop. The cravings, perspiration, shakes, and depression that follow send the sugarholic running for the nearest candy bar or cookie jar, and the vicious cycle continues. These sweets may bring the blood sugar back to normal for the moment, but the body chemistry is being upset. When the individual gets to a point where body chemistry cannot re-balance, health breaks down." Nancy Appleton uses the word "sugarholic" in her book frequently. Sugar is addictive and the more we eat it, the more we understand this.
Some of the dangers and side effects of ingesting refined sugar frequently are: Food allergies, joint pain, fatigue, tooth decay, hypoglycemia, cancer, impaired immune system, candida, headaches, gas pain, bloating, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, gall stones, and premenstrual syndrome. That is a general and short list.
Refined sugar is simple just empty calories. There are much better and way more healthy choices if we do have a sweet tooth. Some of these choices include: Sucanat, date sugar, raw unfiltered honey, 100% unsweetened fruit juices, unsweetened applesauce, blackstrap molasses, stevia extract, brown rice syrup, barley malt, and agave. You may know of other sources too. Fruit in general when you are not eating refined sugar is sweet and can be used in place of sugars and fats in baking. Realize that the list above is a better choice than white sugar because these items enter the bloodstream at a slower pace thereby lessening the detrimental physical effects. Of course the best way to eat is completely natural, that is a lofty and wonderful goal. It can be done, but we are all human and there are times when it is appropriate to celebrate with cake or other items. Choosing these sweeteners helps lessen negatives in our eating.
Our oldest son took avoiding refined sugars very seriously in his life. When he was getting ready to serve a mission for our church he had to have a dental check up. He did not have one cavity and it had been five years since he had had one. This is mainly about internal health, not brushing because in truth, all of us moms are busy and we may not do a perfect job at brushing our kids teeth all the time as we should. Internal health is much more effective with teeth than outward care, while outward care is very important I admit.
Besides the physical issues that refined sugar effects us with, there are those of us who find that when we avoid ingesting white refined sugar we do much better emotionally. I am one such soul. I did not know this about myself until I took a personal challenge and eliminated sugar from my diet. The first week I felt like I had the flu. About five days into my new way of eating I felt a lot better. This was several years ago and I had been experiencing some slight depression. One of the benefits I experience when I avoid white sugars is that emotionally I feel better. Inters tingly this week while my cousins were here we ate some junk that had sugar in it. Within one day my cousin's wife started getting headaches and my cousin was experiencing some slight depression. Hmmmm is there a connection. Probably so.
Limiting the days we eat or even serve sugar, limiting the portion sizes we eat when we do eat it, and using new healthier choices of sweetener all add health to our lives. There are times that it is appropriate to celebrate. Be happy and healthy by living with less sugar. Find other ways to add sweetness to your life other than sugar. Watch a fun movie, read a great book, eat an apple, or kiss your spouse! I know it is hard to avoid sugar, it is a battle I deal with all the time with my big family and I find the more I work at this the better I do at it. I wish you the best at fighting for your families health. Hang in there it is worth it!
Sweet luck to you all!
