Sugar: I've cut it out.

People have asked me how I've done it & what they can do to reduce sugar in their diets as well. It's really not that hard.

The first thing to do is to read labels. Did you know that a 6-oz. carton of Yoplait piña colada yogurt (Bear's favorite) has 21 grams of sugar? Naturally, six ounces of yogurt (in this case, Cascade Fresh fat-free plain yogurt) will contain about 10 grams of sugar. This is due to the presence of the milk sugar, lactose (see http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/whattoeat/a/yogurtcarbs.htm, and esp. info on how the live cultures break down the lactose). The additional sugars in the Yoplait yogurt (and other regular brands) are from two sources: the fruit and, yes, added sugar.

What about that fruit? Fruit is a natural source of sugar, so I've had to watch the types of fruit I eat as well, and what I combine them with. An apple a day is fine, as long as I pair it with some cheese or a few almonds. A banana is better with some peanut butter. According to a dietician I saw when I began this change (in reaction to learning that I am hypoglycemic), the best fruits are those with lots of seeds: raspberries, strawberries, and so forth.

Plain yogurt is so, well, plain... How can you stand to eat it? First, once you cut the sugar in your diet, things that seemed too bitter before aren't and, on the other hand, things that seemed fine before taste way too sweet. But that doesn't mean I like plain yogurt. I dress it up. Take six ounces of plain yogurt, add half a cup or more of those nice seeded berries, toss in some chopped walnuts, and, for added sweetness and texture, some UNSWEETENED coconut. Forget ice cream; this stuff is good!

How could you possibly give up chocolate? Who says I gave up chocolate? Here's another reason to read your labels. Did you know that a 43-gram Hershey's bar (regular size bar; see http://www.hersheys.com/products/details/hersheysbar.asp) contains 24 grams of sugar? Ouch! While I really, really love milk chocolate, it's something I've had to steer away from. Instead, I've gone for dark chocolate. But not 50% dark, or even 70% dark — we're talking 85% to 90% dark. A 41-gram bar of Hershey's Special Dark still contains 21 grams of sugar (note, the same amount as a serving of Yoplait). The highest percent dark chocolate bar I have been able to find is by Lindt. A 3.5 oz bar (about 99 grams) of their "Super Dark" chocolate has nine grams of sugar. Wow! I can eat half of one of these bars and still ingest less sugar than is in my plain yogurt! But there's a catch: A Lindt "Super Dark" bar has a lot of fat in it — 360 of the bar's 550 calories are from fat. So, don't go all crazy on that chocolate! (I'm currently "researching" dark chocolates [85%–90%] for a future post comparing taste, sugars, fats, and calories in six different bars, so watch for that!).

Along with cutting out sugar, it's a good idea to increase your protein and fiber intake. In the morning, I have eggs scrambled with onion, broccoli, and brown rice. Or, if I'm feeling self-indulgent, I'll have peanut butter on a brown rice cake or some gluten-free "Glutino" fiber bread. Again, read your labels! Natural, organic peanut butter is just that — peanuts, with no added sugar. The brands you usually find in the grocery store have had corn syrup, sugar, and even molasses added, along with unnatural oils. Once you get used to it, having to stir and refrigerate your peanut butter isn't all that inconvenient.

Oooh, and one more thing: My new favorite: Sugar-free pbjs! No, I don't use jam; I use frozen raspberries. I warm the raspberries in the microwave (defrost for 1 min., then cook for 30 sec., stir, cook for 15 sec.), spread them on my gluten-free toast, and mush that together with my natural peanut butter on another piece of gluten-free toast. Yum! Note: Even though this is really tasty, it's really not a good idea to have this pbj for breakfast, lunch, AND dinner. LOL.

I'm not a dietician, a nutritionist, or a medical professional — just an editor. But I think eating is a good idea, and eating so you are WELL is even better.

In the word's of Julia Child, "Bon  appétit!" But I doubt she would approve of this blog, unless I added butter.

What I read and what I thought about it [[ed. note: title changed from "Read It," which I think was a lousy choice]]

Over lunch today, I had the pleasure of reading the 13 March 2010 issue of NewScientist [[Note: mag. title edited 29 Mar.]]. Two articles, both, ironically, about eating, merited underlining and annotation: Andy Coghlan's "Food, not flab, is the real killer" (p. 8-9) and Ewan Callaway's "Grrr… what's 'Step away from the bone' in dog?" (p. 14).

"Food, not flab, is the real killer," highlights new research¹ findings that being overweight or even obese might not be as big a health risk as most people think. In fact, having some extra fat on you might be to your benefit. Fat cells, it seems, were designed to protect us.

According to the study, fat cells are kind of like the air bags of the immune system – absorbing the impact of excess fat and sugar (and other food-borne toxins associated with overeating or a junk-food diet) that would otherwise flow unimpeded about our circulatory system. It's this free flotsam and jetsam that signals danger, danger! to the body. Once this stuff hits the organs, "metabolic syndrome" (it is believed) follows. The organs begin to fail, bringing on diseases we regularly blame on obesity: diabetes, high cholesterol, heart disease, and the like.

If fat absorbs these toxins, how come obese people tend to end up with metabolic syndrome more often than "thin" people? First, let's fine-tune this assumption. Coghlan cites statistics from a 2008 study² in Archives of Internal Medicine that found 33% of obese people and 50% of those considered overweight to have "healthy metabolic profiles," while 25% of so-called "lean" people showed "signs of metabolic syndrome."

The idea is that these "lean" folks just don't have enough fat cells to cushion them from the assault of bad food. On the other end of the spectrum, according to Coghlan's article, fat cells can only do so much. Pushed to the extreme, they collapse under the pressure. Toxins nicely packed away in these cells by our trusty immune system overflow and overwhelm.

Why did this article spark my interest? Well, first, it speaks to something I've been thinking about for some time. I've learned that I'm pretty sensitive to what I call "normal-but-toxic" food ingredients; namely, gluten and sugar. I gave up gluten (more or less – I confess a weakness for pancakes) a couple of years ago and lost a bunch of weight plus some unpleasant digestive problems.

In January 2009, after noticing that every time I had a Coke or a Hershey's bar I got really crabby with my boyfriend (more so than usual), confused, and dim-witted (more so than usual), I had my glucose tolerance checked. One hour after drinking a bottle of horribly sweet yellow water, my blood sugar level went down. It's supposed to go up. Over the next two hours, my blood sugar dropped 11 more points, and I lost all my cookies (so to speak). Doc said, "Hypoglycemia."

My point is – Back in 1996, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, what I believe to be the result of an overactive immune system (not, like all those TV ads are saying, "overactive nerves"). If the immune system reacts to food toxins as in the studies noted above, perhaps, for me, those toxins include sugar and gluten. Instead of developing "metabolic syndrome," however, my body attacked itself on another level. Like I said, my health improved after I cut out gluten. And that's nothing compared to what happened once I reduced my sugar load: The fibromyalgia symptoms abated. I'm running 5K races, experiencing the joy of working out for the first time in years, and getting ready to do a half-marathon in June.


I'm not a scientist, just an editor. I hope that I'm making sense here. What makes sense to me is that food triggers an immune response. I'm looking forward to seeing more articles along these lines.


Oh, and the other article?

Researchers³ tried to separate a dog from its bone by playing recordings of three types of growls elicited from 20 unsuspecting dogs to 36 other unsuspecting dogs. Turns out, "dogs' growls seem to have distinct meanings," and, according to Alexandra Horowitz (quoted in Callaway's print piece, though it's not clear how she's related to the study), growling is actually "used intentionally." Hello? Just in case you're not sure about this, you can listen to the growls at www.newscientist.com/article/dn18617.


¹Unger, R., and Scherer, P., 2010, Gluttony, sloth and the metabolic syndrome: a roadmap to lipotoxicity: Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism, doi: 10.1016/j.tem.2010.01.009.

²Wildman, R.P., Muntner, P., Reynolds, K., McGinn, A.P., Rajpathak, S., Wylie-Rosett, J., and Sowers, M.R., 2008, The Obese without Cardiometabolic Risk Factor Clustering and the Normal Weight with Cardiometabolic Risk Factor Clustering – Prevalence and Correlates of 2 Phenotypes among the US Population (NHANES 1999-2004): Archives of Internal Medicine, v. 168, p. 1617-1624, http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/168/15/1617.

³Faragó, T., Pongrácz, P., Range, F., Virányi, Z., and Miklósi, Á, 2010, 'The bone is mine': affective and referential aspects of dog growls: Animal Behavior, v. 79, p. 917-925, doi: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2010.01.005.