Long Ago, In a Kitchen Far Away

It’s been over a year. Apologies, dear reader.

I don’t know if I’m making an actual comeback here, but my food world is going through a sea change and I just had to write about it.

Remember when I waxed poetic about Coke? Remember my dignity post about Twinkies? And my visceral hatred for all things Pop T*rt? All of these thoughts are rambling around in my head and I have to pair them with some compelling information.

A long while ago, husband and I watched “Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead” and were like, right on! Let’s buy a juicer!

We also watched a documentary about corn. King Corn? I’m not sure of the title. It went in great detail about high fructose corn syrup AKA the devil’s brew.

Fast forward a few years. DH had some health problems. Nothing drastically serious, but bad enough to destroy being comfortable in his own skin. A Dr. recommended the book “Dropping Acid” and DH did it whole hog, with my help of course. Turns out dropping acid from your diet means dropping mostly processed foods. Also, he had to drop pop and juice and Gatorade and chocolate. Being the kind of woman I am, that meant basically our whole family dropped those things as well. It wouldn’t be nice to drink orange juice in front of him. We have milk and water.

Continue on one more year. Most of DH’s health issues were resolved but another came up, and he speculated sugar might be the culprit. We stopped baking cookies every week. We stopped buying fruit snacks and fruit leather for the kids. We stopped buying Pop T*rts and high sugared cereals.

I’m more or less on board with all these changes; I know they’re good for me. Good for all of us, really. But sometimes I just gotta have a chocolate chip cookie. Or a peppermint patty. So I’m having a hard time letting go of sugar. Then we watched “That Sugar Film” and the next day I threw out an entire brand new bag of candy I’d bought to eat in the car on the way places. I was on board! Then a few weeks later, I was jonesing for a candy bar really bad. And I still order Coke when I’m on dates with DH. (We don’t go that often, but still.)

So last night DH came home with a book called “Salt, Sugar, Fat” by Michael Moss. He’s a Pulitzer Prize winner, in case that sort of thing impresses you. I’m reading this book and realizing how deeply entrenched my brain is with sugar. I need some professional help! And I don’t even eat processed cookies/cakes/candies that much. But I would like to get rid of the craving for it, which I think means getting rid of it entirely. Anyway, I wanted to write about it, because it’s all compelling information and research, and it’s all available to the general public. The general public just doesn’t want to hear about it. Possibly why this book was at the dollar store! I highly recommend watching or reading these titles and evaluating your own family’s pantry. It’s eye-opening. If I write again, I’ll write about my radish cure. Or is it a curse?

Fresh everything is probably always going to be the best choice. But it’s also the hardest.