Magpie's Nest

Fat is Not all about Fashion - It's All About Consequences and Long-term Health

I watched WIN's 'Girls on the Grill' segment this morning, a discussion about anorexia and our daughters. Two beautifully slim, well-groomed youngish women talked about how important it was to teach our girls about inner beauty. Such a mixed message!

The supreme irony of the mixed message is such a sad one. The very reason that these two gorgeous girls are up front and gracing our television screens is that they themselves fit the very slim beauty mould that they were railing against! Just being clever and articulate is not enough - they have to look the part.

By the time we see older women growing old naturally with wrinkles and grey hair as normalised television icons I think that I will be long dead!!

The visual message from the programme was in direct conflict with the intended verbal message. Now, if the discussion had focused on health and the long-term health consequences of poor food choices as it related to an individuals weight and society's medical burdens then we might have been going somewhere useful.

Combine this discussion with the food industry's inertia and reluctance to actually help us by cutting fructose from restaurant fare and packaged foods and beverages then we have a real recipe for unhealthy consequences.

Any rational person is all for building up the fragile self-esteem of young women, but we need to be very careful that we don't enable poor health choices in our young women by demonstrating poor health choices ourselves.

How many times do women pass around chain emails about the 'benefits' of chocolate indulgence. Again I ask: who are we kidding?

Perhaps it's time for a little tough love?

Whenever discussions surround anorexia and young women take place so often the emphasis is on appearance not overall health. We rush to reassure our thin AND plump children, teens and women alike that being overweight is okay and that it doesn't matter really, it's what you are inside that really counts.

Well, of course it is! But the thing we adults should be worrying about is what makes our girls think that they need to eat to the point of excess to feel good?The focus in the media seems to be way off the point.

The issue needs to be all about the long term health issues of our psychological battles with food. Reject the fat not the person.

And why do I wade into this battle with such authority? If you read my blog you'll already know. If not, then know that some of my health issues as related to excess baggage aren't pretty.

It's time we older women lead the way and stood up to be counted. As we rapidly age hordes of us are experiencing the consequences of excess weight on joints, Type 2 Diabetes, blood pressure and who knows what else. We know how hard it is to reverse the habits and poor health choices of a lifetime. Do we want our daughters to end up with our health problems? Is that what mother love is really all about?

Just stop and think! Start a blog yourself! Wade right in there and fight the fat!!

We need to help our daughters rather than reassuring them that fat is alright because it simply is not. We need to see fat as much a cry for help as we see very thin.

Come on girls, who do you think you are kidding in the long run?

Big Bad Sugar Attrition Rate Grows

It's all about 'trust'. If your nutritional advice is based on dodgy science then I won't be the only one having problems. And as a self-declared Healthy Ageing Activist I have a vested interest in walking my talk, even if I do walk with a wobble.

When I was much younger I wouldn't have waded into this debate at all in my tiny Size 8 jeans. I wouldn't have imagined a future where the very act of 8 hours sleep would have my right leg aching all night and giving me broken sleep for years. My gait is out, my feet require orthotics to walk properly even in the house, and one leg is slightly longer than the other. I got away with most of it for 55 years.

The mathematics of kilograms and pressure on joints is scary. 

My Physio - a  bright young lad who used to be in my Year 10A English class - tells me that a nerve is compromised, or is it my whole leg that is compromised, and what was that about my spine? So glad he doesn't test me on what he says! Anyway, the right leg is stuffed.

What has this all got to do with added fructose, with sugar? Quite a lot really.

When I totally cut out sugar from foods and religiously read all labels to see which ones adhered to the <3gms sugar per 100gm weight so that I could control most of my hidden sugar sources (see any of David Gillespie's 3 books), I lost weight - 14 kilos of it in 4 months. When I travelled and indulged and returned home I continued to pile it  back on again. I continued to use butter and full cream milk and olive oil. The only difference was fructose.

Thankfully, this time my palate had changed somewhat and very sweet foods now made me feel sick. But not all. So because my eating habits had changed I did not regain all the weight. Still, the weight was there.

So, I am back trying harder this time. It's not easy and it so easy to be sabotaged by friends who use the word 'moderation'. It's such an elastic term that word. Unfortunately moderation gets out of hand with me.

Last year I blogged about the so-called 'Australian Paradox' here. I applied my skills and experience as an English teacher on an article that incensed me for its very obvious use of blarney to persuade. I couldn't do the maths, but I knew that something stank.

Michael Pascoe's article on an economist's unbiased analysis of the suspect statistics used by some nutritionists to propose a national paradox for a so-called decline in sugar consumption with a corresponding rise in obesity rates, makes for illuminating reading.

The link between fructose consumption and obesity rates and general health out comes is growing and growing, and sadly it is being lead by a lawyer and an economist who have wanted to better their own health outcomes. The saddest thing is that when a layperson consults a nutritionist they are generally at their wit's end. If the nutritionist is being informed by dodgy science then where does that leave the ordinary Baby Boomer lying flat on her face in the street?

 

 

Chewing the 'Fat Yak'

or the Semiotics in the naming of Beer.

    'Big, Hairy, But Nice'. Is it entirely possible that I should be found seduced into beery exploration by the poetically articulate and nuanced verbal meanderings of quirky beer-style Namers? I suspect that I may well succumb not to a man carrying on about wine, women and song, but to men offering humour, resistance and the blokey reduction of flowery descriptions to the quintessential 'thingness' of things. 'Big, Hairy But Nice' says it all really. As my own 30 year old male says, "It is what it is Mum."

    This beery, bloggy communique concerns men in my life, past and present, some bigger than others, some hairier than others. All most definitely 'nice'. Interesting that it is beer that connects them. Or should that read 'not surprising'.Stay with me here and chew the Fat Yak. It's a beer. It's a Pale Ale. Matilda Bay Brewing Fat Yak.

    You'll probably guess that beer's not my usual thing although I am open to persuasion. In my mind the drinking of beer was associated with terrifying glimpses past odiferous urine stained tiled walls, through swinging glass doors to smoke-filled rooms full of the loud voices of big hairy men in work boots and shorts, crowded around the Public bar from which I was banned. As a possessor of X chromosomes I was confined to the 'Ladies Lounge', wherein I shuddered at the thought that one day, I too, may have been caught staring quizzically into my midi of beer like those old ladies you used to see in the faded, smelly old Lounges of public bars, their plastic bags of shopping on the floor beside them? Or worse, caught drinking a shandy!

    The Australian status of the drinking of beer appears to have been vastly elevated in the forty years since I was allowed inside a pub. It was my father-in-law that introduced me to the sweet possibilities of beer one long, hot summer. His first beer making episode a couple of decades ago involved the use of a large honey tin to brew a home production that captivated me and at the same time knocked my socks off. I am convinced that all that residual honey created the veritable champagne of beers. Alas, it is all gone, remains nameless, but not forgotten.

    My father's Christmas Wish List always includes "just give me some beer". I revel in a challenge so each year I go on a mission for son, for father, for father-in-law, tracking down the quirky yet drinkable. Beers with names like 'The Beez kneez'. They obviously employ a Poet Beeralaureate at the Matilda Bay Brewing Company, or a bloke or a shelia with a sense of humour and a finger on the pulse of beer pumping through the veins of many an Australian bloke.

    It's the language of beer that I love, the naming of things. It's not the slightly pretentious possibilities inherent in language twisted to elevate or decimate the status of a vinous or hoppy drop. It's the creative impulse that sees the poetry in taking the mickey out of a drinker and that in fact announces that this is an okay drop of whatever if you're into that kind of thing. 'Little Creatures'. 'Badlands'. 'Fat Yak'. 'Red Back'.

    Prove it for yourself! Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to wander down the beer aisles of a large liquor outlet such as 'Dan Murphy's', with note pad and pen in hand copying down the poetry in the naming of beers. View a grog shop as you would a museum - look for the relics of humour, the artefacts of a simple vice, and work your way through a few Christmas' worth of Australian semiotics wherein beer labelling is often blokey, often alluding to the mythical tough outback life on the land that few contemporary Australian males actually experience, but in their mind's eye that's what beer is all about, and it's always refreshing.

    Essential reading preparation for your adventure should include this fabulous prize-winning article by a former student of mine: 'A Beer Lovers Journey Goes Sour'. If only I had had the courage, wit and wisdom to allow him to choose his own topic in Year 10A English! Yet, what a privilege and a joy to be educated in the ways of beer culture by him now. I hope he continues to record and annotate the beery quest on behalf of us all. I like to think that there is a beery equivalent of Eldorado's Gold out there. Or perhaps, as Sam's article alludes to, there are many amber paths to Nirvana.

    As for me, I shall be found choosing my beers by the poetry in their labelling and propping up a small outdoor table in a boutique pub somewhere down the South coast of NSW, with a plate of cheese and pickles beside me. And a spouse.

Jellicious!

Better get this off my chest right now. I made plump little breasts of pink and white 'Ispahan' jelly for our guests for dessert tonight. They're used to me being a tad strange so after I gave the complete lecture that you're about to read below, they tucked in, pouring  creamy white trickles from their individual little jugs all over the globular wobbles, and a jelly jolly good time was had by all. Jellicious in fact!

Billy’s ‘Jelly Breast’ Challenge

Married for almost 36 years, I don’t call myself a ‘brilliant’ cook, but I can do some things quite well, especially if I concentrate and turn off the computer first.

With guests coming for dinner I thought it would be fun to follow up on another blogger’s inspiration and learn while having fun.

Billy Law, MasterChef 2011 Top 10 contestant, is the quixotically delightful author of the website and blog called ‘A Table for Two’. His Posts ooze creativity in topics, recipes and visuals, and I enjoy following him on Twitter and  Facebook. He has a refreshingly thoughtful approach to recipes and many appear within the stretched and challenged capabilities of Would-Be-if-She-could-Be cooks like myself.

This month is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and Billy has a signed Royal Selangor pewter jelly mould on offer as a prize for an extremely lucky Commenter, in association with his challenge to produce a jelly a day. Nick Munro, the British designer of the mould, has designed a truly beautiful piece that is a sculptural thing of beauty in itself. Apparently funds from the sale of these particular moulds will be donated by the Royal Selangor company to a breast cancer charity. I’ve left Comments, but I’m seriously tempted to indulge and splurge on a jelly mould anyway. Sounds the height of decadence, but mindful of Gretchen Rubins’ happiness suggestions, a splurge such as this could have exponential repercussions and ripples of happiness for lots of my future guests for years to come! Have I talked myself into one yet? Do I wrap one up for myself to put under the Christmas tree with love from our dogs? "How thoughtful!", I'll say. "Just what I wanted!"

Yes, I did say that Billy is making a series of jelly mould ‘breasts’ and for a dinner party tomorrow night I’ll be attempting the Day 6 ‘Ispahan Jelly’ with raspberry, rosewater and lychees. This is to follow the Karen Martini ‘Turkish Chicken with Apricots’ recipe, and to precede the Rose Turkish Delight pieces that I’ll serve with coffee.

Billy’s recipe is lovely and clear, but asking my husband to locate titanium gelatine ‘sheets’ on his way home from work, has already created somewhat of a tense situation. He was happy with the Rosewater idea and felt confident that the supermarket would have that. Lychees he could do. I may yet have to use powdered gelatine, and proffer a glass of wine as husband struggles in the door sans titanium anything. Australian supermarkets in rural NSW have improved mightily in the last decade, but this may prove a real test!

I don't have one lovely pewter jelly mould so I've used 4 metal dessert moulds that I do have instead. I layered it as Billy directed. I added an individual little jug of fresh pouring cream for each guest to use as they chose.

10.44 pm - After dinner: the guests have departed with grateful murmurs  for our hospitality, and we did have a lovely time. No, I didn't get to use titanium gelatine sheets. It still worked. Before I would let the guests at their desserts, I styled and photographed the jellies!

Fragrant. Decadently light. Refreshing. Just the thing to follow Karen Martini's spicey 'Turkish Chicken with Apricots and Pistachios'. A dessert to talk about and try and explain.

And just in case you missed the reference, here it is with a viola.

So there you are - some intergenerational bloggy learning, jellies infused with love and sociological significance. Living the sweet life in the fast lane!

Getting Sentimental over the Walnuts and Dates, or The Getting of Wisdom?

Being middle-aged has given me some much needed patience and perspective on life, and allowed me to feel much happier about issues that incensed me in my thirties. I appear to have mellowed and chilled out somewhat.

My relationship with my mother-in-law over the years has had its uncomfortable moments, and I have often railed against the differences in our philosophies on life. Her youngest son takes after his father largely, but is probably the family 'sport' in the scientific sense of that word.

However, now that she is firmly ensconced in the aged care facility and a little world often all her own, and I have mellowed and matured over the years into a calmer acceptance of our differing outlooks on life, I find myself mourning the passing of our shared lifestyle of loving our mutual family, and I think of all the ways that I have enjoyed her strengths - fiercely going into battle to right perceived wrongs against any member of the family, entertaining our children at the beach and spending endless amounts of time helping them share the world of fishing and beach holidays, and washing off sandy little legs, and making the best baked dinners that I have ever tasted, and a sublime walnut torte for one of the kid's birthday parties.

I know how she would react in a certain situation, especially when it comes to do with anything in the house proud area after years of encountering it, so in a strange way of paying homage and honouring a keen memory, at the family beach house last week, I thoroughly scrubbed the aluminium foil guards that go under the electric stove top hot plates. I knew what Grandma would want, and so I did it. With pleasure. Although her son did catch me weeping at the stove because the house was full of family holiday ghosts and it was just he and I filling the lonely family space.

So what has this to do with walnuts and dates? Everything of course! Her son grew up on her fabulous home cooking, and is partial to biscuits and slices, and as daughters-in-law the world over have tended to do over time, I've asked her for a recipe or 20. I have a range of recipes written out in her hand with annotations depending on what had worked or not, some sent to me when we lived for 3 years in the tropics of Indonesia and I was looking for some home cooking for homesick family. I've pasted them all into a book and I wish I'd asked for more in anticipation of this time when I wouldn't take them for granted.

I baked the Date and Walnut Slice recipe today and this time I did exactly as directed - didn't double or substitute anything - and they worked beautifully.

For years and years dozens of slices like these came along to the extended family weekly Sunday tennis afternoons, to be eaten in the old shed all ranged around the table and slurping cups of strong hot tea in between sets, the little ones out on the court while it was free, with Papa, learning to hit a ball.

So,  is this what it feels like to be becoming the next generation, the older generation, morphing into it while being vaguely aware that this is what is happening? No wonder so many older people talk about the need to be in the moment.

Do you also have memories embedded in recipes or household practices that you catch yourself carrying out in the same way as an elder? Is this just a woman thing, the tracing of the ghosts of women past in routine household chores?

4 Ingredients + D.Gillespie - A Winner on the 'Sunrise' Show

 

The best thing this week about watching the 'Sunrise' programme personnel deal with the implications of living a sugar or fructose free life, has been to watch their change from  Monday's initial scepticism and use of that very hazy elastic term 'moderation' to their dawning realisation that added sugar infiltrates our lives and does untold damage. It's not just about the fat it adds. The retired teacher that I am is metaphorically leaping with joy at the obvious results of 'education'. 'Education' is what this programme segment has been all about.

David Gillespie has a great range of dextrose recipes thanks to the hard work of his wife, and I was thrilled to see the '4 Ingredients' muffin making demonstration this morning. I'll be baking those this weekend. Just need to pick up cream - note to self.

And as I revelled in the sunshine of the Central Tableland's Orange today - the home town of Kate, the 2011 MasterChef and the home town high school (his and mine) of Waz - The Block's very own, I felt very blessed EXCEPT for the fact that sourcing dextrose here is hard. I'm hoping that after this week's feature that the local supermarkets and the health food shop will be getting some in. Either that or I'll have to start gently lobbying. Vocabulary and jargon education is also what is needed. I've asked for dextrose in a variety of ways and been greeted with very confused looks. I'm hoping that it will get easier to source now.

I've also been doing some academic reading on aspects of healthy ageing, hence my deep and abiding interest in living fructose free. To my son's amusement ( he thinks that ordinary citizens participating in government debates is a marvellous sign of democracy) I ordered my own hefty copy of the Productivity Commission's 2 volume Inquiry Report (No.53, 28 June 2011) entitled 'Caring for Older Australians'. I have labelled myself as a 'Healthy Old Age Activist' and I like the quirky cache in using that nomenclature. I've covered the Overview today and already I like the emphasis on keeping older Australians out of 'care', and I quote:

"Older Australians generally want to remain independent and in control of how and where they live; to stay connected and relevant to their families and communities; and to be able to exercise some measure of choice over their care." (Vol.1.Overview XXIII)

I do find it a little ironic that I should be spending my middle age focused on a healthy old age, but that's the point about social activism - if I make that my mission then hopefully 'we' older Australians will be contributing energetically and wisely in sync with other generations to other worthy social issues for many, many years.

Life can still be sweet as!

Kochie Does his Sums!

Today on 'Sunrise' Kochie revealed that he had done his sugar maths and was more than a little startled.

You don't have to be in the stock market game yourself. Just start reading the nutrition panels on the sides of everything you buy. David Gillespie recommends less than 3 gms of sugar per 100 gm weight of the product. 'Low fat' usually equals high sugar, and that much sugar isn't good for you.

For goodness sakes people, it's not rocket science!  White sugar/ any manufactured sugar is an additive! What's wrong with the foods we produce that makes you want to keep on adulterating them?

Well done Kochie!!!

Complex Sugar(s) - It's Harder than You Think!

Fructose is not all about the weight gain. It's about depression. It's about liver damage. It's way more complex than obesity, and that's complex enough already!

I'm thrilled that the Sunrise Show on Prime television has the guts to air David Gillespie's message about fructose all this week. But I was distressed this morning when I heard Mel and Kochie use that deadly word 'moderation'. It's a nice escape clause that people use that indicates to me that they want to be 'nice' and not offend a diverse viewing audience, and especially indicative of the fact that they really have not done the reading on fructose research. It cloaks ignorance, no matter how well-intentioned. Hidden sugar is what it's all about and that makes a mockery of anyone who wants to use the word 'moderation'.

If you eat out at cafes and restaurants, and at the homes of friends then you have no real idea or control over how much fructose they are using that's going into your system.

Added fructose is hidden. It's hidden in the amazing sauces you buy at speciality delis, let alone in the manufactured foods and cans and drink containers in the supermarket. Low fat usually equals high fructose added by companies trying to comply with nutritional social change in a culture trained to crave sweetness and unable to appreciate raw food grown under optimum conditions.

If you think you don't have a sweet tooth and you crave Asian-style foods then you too are probably hooked on sugar. Check out that sweet chilli sauce label. Thank goodness Australia insists on nutritional labels!

I dined at a high end restaurant recently and was talking to them about food chains having to deal with coming legislation about nutritional disclosure. The owner commented that restaurants such as his couldn't cope with that, that changing menus and proportions meant that accurate nutritional analyses were impossible. So no, I wouldn't be able to know how much fructose was in my food.

TV celebrity chefs seem to add just a little bit of sugar to lots of savoury dishes. In Canberra recently I went to buy caramelised garlic at a speciality deli thinking that garlic had lots of natural sugars. Thankfully I read the label and was knocked out to see 57 gms of sugar per 100 gms of the product! Gillespie advises nothing over 3 gms per 100 gm weight!

I see it all the time. Young mothers of little children training their taste buds to crave fructose; offering them fructose laden tomato sauce; giving them a choice between a donut and a chocolate as a treat; teaching them to value treats that are laden in sugar; role modelling reaching for a chocolate biscuit when stressed; psychologically forging the links in their tiny brains between fructose and a good time. Feel sad? Load them up with choccie. It can't hurt? WHAT?

I battle with it all the time. As a post-menopausal Baby Boomer I am finding it hard to keep on losing the weight. And feeling psychologically deprived all the time in social settings is an horrendous battle. Cafe Coffee with friends means that they can eat and I can't because there is nothing on offer! Not even a savoury scone or muffin, which is possible to knock up quickly! Dinner at friends-ditto. Lunch with hubby who is away all this week-ditto-even although I shared the treat. And sometimes I succumb and find that I've succumbed to more than I realised. Feeling unaccountably depressed all last week I put down to my feeling of helplessness in being able to help my mother-in-law in a nursing home in Sydney. She doesn't want to open my chatty letters, which she used to love. Then I counted up the 'odd treat' I'd nibbled on and realised that my fructose  was potentially a problem there.

So, post-menopause and psychological fructose priming of the social celebratory environment. No wonder it's a daily struggle!

David Gillespie is not the lone voice in the wilderness. He may be the lone voice in Australia, but other people 'get' this as well. I have Google Alerts set up for 'sugar AND obesity' and every day there is something more. A reputable journalist in the US who has been following this story for over 10 years is Gary Taubes. Here Taubes is interviewed about medical research and what he has found out, Like Gillespie he's not a doctor. Like Gillespie he is an intelligent member of the public capable of sifting through the evidence and demanding that it be as objective as possible so that the ultimate beneficiaries, the public, can use the information to maximise their health.

For a Baby Boomer like me it's not about the money. It's about learning as much as we can to make sure that healthy ageing is a real possibility. With maximum health an individual is able to maximise their contribution to society whether its taking care of loved ones, young and old, or continuing to pursue a vocation past the paid work barrier.

Sadly the person who emailed Mel and Kochie about "the poor old Australian sugar industry" has my deep sympathy for the plight of workers and families unable to cope with the restructuring of the workplace in the context of social change in eating behaviours. But thinking about  white granulated substances that people become dependent on, I couldn't help linking it to the argument about heroin and the poppy growers of Thailand. Stopping heroin places untold pressure on poor Asian farmers, but no one is suggesting that we should keep encouraging the poppy farms! Instead, people have tried to substitute another crop. I really hope that some innovative thinking and excitingly creative entrepreneurial responses can be done in industries where some skills sets can be retained, and some new skill sets learned. Especially so that the rest of us don't have to feel guilty for wanting to actively pursue maximum health outcomes.

Walking the Talk

I'm trying to keep it real here, conscious that I bombard you with good health studies garnered on my daily 'scientific' research sweep of the internet. I am really trying to do what I say, walk the talk, and this blog and the internet inspire me daily to keep on keeping on.

As I've said on a number of occasions, I regret that I wasn't open to really heeding the healthy life message as a younger woman and as a younger mother. I was intelligent. I thought I could find a medium line between healthy and occasional treats. I probably thought that I could find balance. Instead I found addiction.

Life is so full of stresses in raising young families, working, and making ends meet. Just life itself. I comforted myself and the family with treats either loving bought or lovingly made. I connected the dots for the family - when we feel bad/sad/mad, a sugary treat will give us a small oasis of pleasure, or a big one if you eat the whole packet! Instead of doling out hugs, and spending focused quality time with the kids, I fobbed them off with food and the telly. It's a wonder that they grew up to be as lovely as they did!

Every time that I see my children reach for a biscuit I blame myself and my neglect in teaching them to link with sugar with love. Is that what I taught them? I'm sure I did. I don't doubt that I deluged them with millions of subliminal messages about the 'rewards' of high fat/high sugar/high salt food and the associations with affection and relaxation and celebration.

That message is sooooooo hard to turn around. I'm using my own body as the message, trying to demonstrate that it is possible to revise a lifetime of learning and to finally get the message.

On Friday I hosted book club. We were discussing Franklin and Eleanor by Hazel Rowley. I cooked up a big batch of potato and leek soup, leaving it chunky, I was interested to see how the leek just dissolved away into a kind of glutinous support for the potato chunks. It was more delicious than that sounds! I used a commercial chicken stock cube base, probably making it more salty than I should have. But I really want to crow about my home made bread.

Once again I used Jim Lahey's recipe from Sullivan Street Bakery. I'd bought Protein Enriched Flour from Manildra. The minimum bag size was 12.5 kgs so there's plenty left. I added half a packet of linseeds and half a packet of sunflower kernels.  The crust was light, but pleasingly chewy. I took leftovers down to Sydney to a family reunion and now have requests to bring loaves on the next visit. The recipe is really as easy as Lahey says, and I'm eager to try more ideas from his book.

It struck me that these home baked loaves are almost the shape of cakes! They slice like cake. They can be buttered like cake. I propose baking one of these loaves full of seeds and walnutty goodness and cut in slices slathered in butter for my next celebratory 'do'. No, really. It would work, especially if you kept the artisan focus on shape, texture, and luxurious contents like Chia seeds and delicious nuts. A candle and some decorative frippery and there's the love without the pain!

For dessert on Friday, I served David Gillespie's wife's 'Strawberry Clafoutis' with whipped cream. The recipe is in the Member's section of his site. It used strawberries and 60 gms dextrose. It was delicious and was easy to make and bake.

 It seems to have browned a little on one side, but it was yummy nevertheless.

Unfortunately, I was baking for my 96 1/2 year old Father-in-law, now living at home alone since his wife went into a Nursing Home. My Sugar Politics don't stretch to denying a dear old man the comfort of home baked slices like grandma used to make. I just put up with the horror of following my old baking recipes loaded with so much sugar, and shared some with my book friends for morning tea. Thankfully, I'm not at all tempted now. I know too much.

Soooo, after sharing my reality with you, it's 2,12 pm and I want to fit in an hour's flute practice and a 30 minute walk before dark and a read and start knitting a second sock in front of MasterChef tonight. Oh, and hang the washing out. I forgot that.

I truly thought that I'd have ooodles of time when I retired. It seems that having a very full life takes some organising.

How do you walk your talk?

Is Organic Sugar Healthy? | LIVESTRONG.COM

Is Organic Sugar Healthy? | LIVESTRONG.COM.

Sugar is still sugar whether you slap a highly emotive label on it such as 'organic' or not! This article on the Livestrong Blog references an academic paper on the psychology of judgement and decision making to outline the emotive associations of 'organic' labelling that lead people to think that an additive such as sugar is rendered harmless. The same thinking apparently applies to salt when people think that sea salt is somehow healthier because it comes from the sea.

Big Sugar and Big Salt have kidnapped our taste buds so that our palate is confused when unadulterated food is presented instead. We just don't get it, that fueling our bodies is the same as fueling cars with dirty petrol. The same problems occur in terms of performance and longevity. That psychological factor of culturally learned taste is a real stumbling block. Discovering the complexity of taste sensations available in fresh food cooked with minimal interference is nothing short of amazing.

Our emotional lives are so dependent on sugar and salt that we can't think straight - literally. Just think of all the ways and times that you comfort yourself with food or think that in accepting that sweet biscuit loaded with sugar, that you are accepting 'love' from the hand of the giver. What a cruel twist of reality. That 'love' will surely affect your body in ways that would horrify the giver.

Is there love in a world without sugar? Of course there is and you know it! There are so many other ways of expressing and receiving love and joy in this life without coating it in a deceptive layer of deadly sweetness. There is no 'balance' in giving your children or loved ones a lifelong addiction. Whenever you teach children to associate high sugar-high fat food and cookie baking with loving times with Mum, you are letting them in for a lifetime of sugar's deadly influence. Of course you can teach them to cook!!! You'll love it when your teenager can turn out a meal for the family beautifully cooked and full of unadulterated goodness. Better still, get those little ones out into the sunshine and grow a vegie garden together! Exercise and your own fresh organic food!  Set them up for life - literally!