Sugar

I've gradually weaned myself off of a number of things with added sugars (like applesauce with added sugar for example). I've noticed that I feel better as a result. I'm fine with regular sugars in food - like fruit sugars in juice, and unsweetened applesauce. In the U.S. there's just way too much sugary stuff to begin with and I noticed that something like bottled iced tea that I used to really like as recently as 2-3 years ago, I cannot stand anymore because it's too sweet. So this is something that I'm currently observing and working with. There is one exception - and that is things with very low sugar per serving. I drink Kevita 'kefir water' drinks (the ones in the clear bottles), and that has very little added sugar per serving. I've been ok with things like that. It's a work in progress right now, but definitely feel better.

 

Speaking as someone who is not a dietician, or a doctor, or even a hospital porter, a problem is 'free sugars', which all added sugar tends to be.

But....an awful lot of things these days that do not have added sugar also contain high amounts of 'free sugar', like fruit juices.

These are, for the most part, not desirable in diets, at least not in the quantities people tend to consume them.

 

I stopped eating sugar in 2018. Fruit juice and dried fruit were banned. Fresh fruit was allowed. Processed foods were banned if they contained sugar, honey, molasses, or anything suffixed -ose. Bread and pasta was required to be wholemeal. Rules were relaxed slightly for restaurants and other hospitality settings, but puddings were still ruled out, unless they were a mandatory component of a tasting menu with at least one Michelin star. I like rules, and I liked forming judgements after appeals to precedent from hypothetical advocates of banning and permission in any specific case.


I didn’t feel any healthier, particularly, although I lost three stone and looked much better for it. But then last November, a few months into getting ill and being housebound, most sources of pleasure curtailed and no reason to care whether I could still fit into sports jackets bought to look the part at conferences, I thought “fuck it” and started to eat sugar again. And, goodness, sugar may be addictive and it may be poisonous but sweets and biscuits and cakes really are a massive compensation when life is shit.