Let’s Talk About Sugar Ok. So it’s a few days before Halloween here in America and the purpose of this article is not to throw every well intended parent into a tizzy. The hope of this article is to simply simplify simple sugars so that we can better understand them, how they act on our bodies and use this information to improve upon our food consumption choices, thus initiating a process towards optimal health. My own Halloween experience, and so a large part of my first parlay into sugar overdose, was marked by Trick or Treating in our Manhattan apartment building circa 1960’s. The good news for us kids? Building was 20 stories high. Probably 10 -20 apartments on each floor. No long walks door to door through a chilly suburban neighborhood for us. We just grabbed our shopping bags and off we went. If you can imagine it, I think we actually filled the bags, unloaded at home and went back to the 10th floor to work our way up to the top. It was Trick or Treating on steroids. Enter the 1970’s. Two important turning points for our Halloween experience. 1) We moved from NYC to the suburbs of Philadelphia and 2) my mother read a book called “Sugar Blues”. Halloween Interrupted! Big time. Mom, being the educator believing in Experiential Learning, enhanced the “clinical Pearls” she passed onto us from the book by revamping Halloween at the Flanagan community on Calendar Lane. First off, there was gonna be NO CANDY. That’s right you heard it. NO sweet stuff. Forget it, that stuff is poison. No snickers and mars Bars for us. We are going to hand out -Wait for it- Fresh Baked Hot Potatoes slit down the middle with melted butter inside, wrapped in tin foil, and topped with a plastic fork. Yep, every kid in our neighborhood rang our door bell and just about died in disbelief. I can still see the potatoes, and honestly, the warmth they provided my freezing hands on the way out to that suburban, out in the cold, walking for miles, Halloween, was frankly, quite welcome. I like to think other kids might have thought so too. Smiley Face. It was a gallant attempt. It has, obviously stayed in my memory bank for the last 57 years. It made an impression. A statement. “This is important enough, that we are going to Change Halloween”. Back to the 21st century and sure enough, it was important. Our nation was to go on to develop a diabetes epidemic within a few short decades. We also got record numbers of folks with heart disease. How do we turn it around? Education, tools, implementation. Stay tuned for part Two “simplifying Simple Sugars- A Guide To curbing the craving”
26 Thursday Oct 2017
Posted in Uncategorized
Life with Dad and Everything Else 