Taming The Sugar Beast

"Mom, can I have dessert, can I have more candy, can I have more juice, can I have more......SUGAR?"

How many of us deal with this question from our kids daily?  I suppose more often than we'd care to admit.

How do we begin to tame the sugar beast in our children...and to be honest, in ourselves?  After all, deep down we know it's not good for us, but maybe a little won't hurt, right?  We surely don't want our little boo-boo to feel deprived (or us deprived, right?) isn't that what we are really thinking?

Believe me, I wouldn't be making issue of this unless I was trying to get my own house in order first.  In fact, I don't think any family is immune to sugar issues unless they live in a cave in Afghanistan somewhere.  Even with homeschooling and keeping the children away from the constant mainstream bombardment of treats from schools and friends isn't 100% full proof.  There's still the bank teller, church, homeschool co-op, colorful grocery store candy isles, restaurants, well-meaning relatives and poor planning on my part for impromptu outings, with no healthy alternatives.  It happens.

Unfortunately, it becomes so easy to rationalize the bad effects of regular sugar consumption.  We get lazy reading our labels or worse have been fooled via the work of labeling lobbyist who change names of ingredients so we can't recognize them if we wanted to.  Either way, this lack of due-diligence doesn't change the everyday reality...sugar makes us sick.  So, in driving home the point... we must face the devil head on.  You know the saying  "the devil's in the details"...well it's true...especially with sugar.

In a health lecture I spoke on sugar and outlined many of  it's deleterious effects.  I brought in a jar of sugar with the amount of teaspoons scooped out to demonstrate the average amount contained in a can of soda.  This part of the country is huge on soda...so I had hoped to really shock the listeners with the visual.  This illustration speaking a thousand words was just the beginning.  Sugar needed a one, two, punch...so I also listed the HOW it hurts us.  This is what we must constantly be reminded of (myself included) otherwise it is so easy to be drawn back into the craving-rationalizing-over consuming-vicious cycle.

Below is an excerpt from a site that I use for magnesium research.  It has a great write up on how sugar interferes with magnesium absorption and many other nutrients.  I encourage you to take the time to meditate on these details, thinking of ways you can go about reducing the sugar beast in your families.  Keeping in mind what the research says as to why we often crave sugar.  Magnesium, chromium and vitamin B deficiencies are rampant in our population and a major culprit of these cravings.  Supplementing with whole food vitamins and eating foods rich in these essential nutrients can help reduce sugar cravings (spinach, nuts, dark chocolate, whole milled grains, eggs, raw milk...).  However, this has to be a vigilant and FOREVER effort.

Also, learning to say NO more often.  Not only to yourself but to your children and well-meaning influences.  When we go to family gatherings or restaurants our children are not allowed to drink soda.  PERIOD.  We do allot them a treat, but soda (and most juice) is where we have drawn the line consistently.  Also, don't keep sugary snacks in your home.  Buy unrefined sugar in bags and bake if you need a sweet snack.  Baking takes more time (which may dissuade you from doing it at that moment anyway), plus you have the control in the amount of sugar in the foods.  Just because a recipe calls for two cups doesn't mean you have to use it.  Begin learning about healthier sugar alternatives.  Most people can't and won't eat a ton of honey, maple syrup or stevia.  By the nature of their composition they reduce total sweet consumption.

Lastly, eat more fat.  A lesson for another post hopefully, but the low-fat diet is a BIG-FAT-MYTH.

In fact, this disinformation has done more harm to peoples' health in the last fifty years than any other food faux pas.  Fueling the pockets of BIG sugar industries and creating new diseases the only real benefit.  This doesn't mean running out for a bag of greasy french fries...but incorporating healthy fats in the way of butter, coconut oil, peanut butter (no sugar added), nuts, olive oil, raw milk, eggs and avocados.  A little fat on foods goes a long way to stave off hunger and reduce sugar cravings.

Did you ever notice that when they removed fat from foods they increased the sugar content?  Yes, manufacturers had to do this otherwise no one would eat the product.  It would taste like cardboard...bitter cardboard.  This trend caused massive weight gain, not loss.  Increased triglycerides and lowered good cholesterol.  It is one of the major causes of all the worn out pancreases we see today and the explosion of diabetes.  Folks want to blame fat for making us fat...when it was really sweet little sugar.  The irony!

While you are reading up on the naughtiness of sugar...you might find this excerpt especially helpful when keeping track of your daily consumption.

Is there such a thing as a safe amount of sugar?

"Ideally, you should eliminate all refined sugar from your diet. I do realize that such a feat may not be realistic for everyone, particularly since a large number of the foods you find at the grocery store have been made with refined sugars (plus the fact that nutrition labels don't have to list the amount of added sugars a product contains). 

Hoffer, MD, a doctor in British Columbia who has been studying the effects of sugar on health for more than 40 years, says that it takes roughly 15- 20 years of steady consumption of refined sugar and junk food before an individual develops a chronic illness like diabetes. And it doesn't take a lot of sugar to put you at risk. Hoffer's statistics show that once intake exceeds 20 teaspoons daily, the risk of chronic disease increases exponentially. 

If you can't completely cut sugar from your diet, due to eating out and not being in control of ingredients, try not to ingest more than two or three teaspoons a day. That way you will stay well below 70 pounds annually (20 teaspoons daily) which is the cut off point for sugar-induced chronic disease. At the level we're eating sugar now (20 teaspoons per person daily), it is only a matter of time before we're facing an epidemic of sugar-induced diseases. In fact, the epidemics may have already begun-according to the Centers for Disease control in Atlanta, the incidence of adult-onset diabetes, has increased by 70 percent among people in their 30s in the past 10 years. "

http://www.nutritionalmagnesium.org/blog/358-the-scary-truth-about-sugar.html