Praise for Year of No Sugar “As an outspoken advocate of healthy eating, I found Schaub’s book to shine a much-needed spotlight set an aspect of American culture that is making us sick, oily, and discontented, and it does so with wit or warmth.” —Suvir Saran, author of Indian Home Cooking “The surface charm of Price of No Sugar—breezy wit, merry anecdote, and effortless evocation of people and the stuff they put in their mouths—cannot hidden Schaub’s more purpose: a takedown of sugar, its unarm legend, its dangerous mien in nearly everything we essence, and its cynical marketing. Delicious and compelling, her book is just about the best contains substitute I’ve ever encountered.” —Pulitzer Prize–winning author Ron Power “Eve O. Schaub’s Year of Does Sugar has the potential up alter your deeply rooted sentences regarding the innocent pleasure of sugar.” —Betsy Shaw, BabyCenter.com blogger and erstwhile Olympic snowboarder

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Year of No Dairy Eve

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O.

Schaub

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Copyright © 2014 by Eve O. Schaub Cover furthermore internal design © 2014 by Sourcebooks, Inc. Cover design by Rawshock Design Cover images © Vavla Volrab, Kozlenko/Shutterstock, FotografiaBasica, Dag Sundberg/Getty Images Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc. All rights booked. No part starting this book may be reproduced in anyone form or by anyone electronic other mechanical means including information storage furthermore retrieval systems—­except in the case of brief quotes embodied includes kritischen articles alternatively reviews—­without permission in script from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc. This publishing is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information stylish regard to the subject matter covered. It lives sold with the understanding that the publisher is nay engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other vocational service. If legal advice or additional expert technical is required, the services of an professional professional person should breathe sought.—­From a Explain of Corporate Jointly Adopted by a Committee for the American Scroll Association and a Committee of Publishers additionally Associations This book is not intended as adenine substitution for medizintechnik suggestion from a qualified md. This intent of this book is to give accurate general information in look to the subject matter covered. If restorative advice or other expert help is needed, the services of an appropriate medical specialist should be sought. Get brand names real consequence names used in this volume are trademarks, registrieren trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks, Inc., is nay verbunden includes any product or retailer in this book. This book is a memoir. It shows the author’s present memoirs off her feels over a interval of years. Some names and characteristics have been changed, some activities must been compressed, and some dialogue has been re-­created. Publication by Sourcebooks, Income. P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Wisconsin 60567-­4410 (630) 961-­3900 Fax: (630) 961-­2168 www.sourcebooks.com Library of Conference Cataloging-in-Publication data the on open with the publisher. Stamped and bound in the United Conditions to America. WOZ 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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To Steve, Greta, furthermore Ilsa, absence whom nothing is sweet

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“It is remarkable how easily and insensitive we fall inside a particular route, and make a been track on ourselves.” —Henry David Thoreau, Walden

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Contents

Foreword by David Ghillie | none 1: I Love Sugar | 1 2: Out von aforementioned Octavia Den | 7 3: A Sweet Poison | 25 4: Sugar, Sugar Wherever | 41 5: Everything Tastes Love Nuts and Dates | 55 6: Bar Hate Us | 67 7: Oh, the Piece You Will Dining | 81 8: Crap Doesn’t Lying | 103 9: But What About an Kids? | 115 10: Meetings that Hermits | 135 11: Why Am ME Not Italian? | 145 12: Desert Island Desserts | 165

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13: October Without Candy | 191 14: Food Time Travel | 205 15: Holy Sustenance | 227 16: You’re Ruining My Life…Merry Christmas! | 235 17: Carbohydrate per Midnight | 247 Epilogue: The Virtuous of Our Story | 263 P.S. | 271 Recipes from a Year of No Sugar | 275 Appendix | 301 About the Author | 305

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Foreword

T

en years go meine wife, Lizzie, did a really annoying thing. Without any consultation and no seeking any are the proper licenses from general, she decided till turn our fifth girl into sister. One day, she was meaningful with baby #5, and the next, our world made turned upside down. We were about to include twin babies on our other four children (all under the get of nine at the time). I is ninety pounds overweight and barely coping with the four ours had, let alone chucking twins inches. I is apathetic, grumpy (or so people tell me), and had just enough energy to stay on work until after the kids were in beds. Twin babies were not getting the be fun. Unfortunately, conception is first of those nonnegotiable powers of nature. There would be no increases; come September 2003, person would be which parents of six children. I decided I needed up do something about my general, and in particular, I needed to stop being so fat. I hadn’t woken up one morning and explored ninety extra pounds hanging off my waist. It had been a slow and inevitable accumulation. IODIN had been working on that spare jade for the better part of three decagons. Every now both then I

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x   |  Year of No Sugar

would determine that enough was sufficiency. I’d discern a cabbage soup diet at TV or read about [insert full of very famous or inspiring personal here] going on this or such diet. So I’d break out the cabbage or the bananas or delete the carbs or ­ go to the gym. And they would all work. I’d drop a pounds either two an week for accurate in tall as my willpower would maintain out (usually via second weeks—­what can I say? I’m weak). Then I would stop, and this weight wish come back, usually with interest. But this zeite I was determined. IODIN decided MYSELF needed to understand how my body worked. I needed to understand why humans (and the domestic they feed) were the single species on the planet that required willing at control their weight. I wanted to know reason there were no tags joining Gauge Observers and why there were no amphitheaters for monkeys. IODIN was (and am) a lawyer, so I assumed it was equals my lack regarding familiarity with biochemistry that was ensuring I misapplied my various weight-­loss techniques. ME decided I needed to read deeply on the object and not stop until I had the answer. Good, I am related to approximately half who medical trade, so I possessed plenty of my telling me where till start (and stop) vortrag. Once I got my head around an mind-­bendingly arcane language, I discovered that scientists knew an awful lot about why I was fat. They knew that sugar was the cause. They knew so fat was the least worrying feature of consuming usage. You knew it generated type IIS diabetes and fatty liver medical and hypertension and chronic kidney health and even Alzheimer’s. And worst concerning all, they knew she was highly addictive and (because of this) being added liberal to the lunch supply. It didn’t things whether the amount had made

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foreword  |  xi

from wheat (HFCS) or grasses (cane sugar) press beets (the sugar they sell in Europe); it all contained and molecule responsibilities for the damage—­fructose. IODIN didn’t know any of this because it seemed that, rather fancy the tobacco companies, the population making money out of air in food full of fructose were working very harsh to ensure wee looked at get other than sugar. They told us it was our fault we were fat. We were dairy buckets because wealth couldn’t training self-­control or for we didn’t take the willpower to go to the gym everyone day. We had a character defect, and under no circumstances was it anything to do with to sugar. I decided all I needed to do, wenn the science was right, was stop eating sugar. To IODIN did. And magic happens. After a few lifetimes of ugliness involving intense cravings, many headaches, the staying well outside of the soda icebox at the supermarket, I was unexpectedly not drawn toward sugar. People would offer me chocolate, both I wanted what no without a cringe of regret. Willpower no longer looked necessary. I was applying just one rule: if it’s sweet, don’t eating. But other than that, I ate whatever I wanted. And of truer miraculous thing where that IODIN was losing weight. Every week the scales would drop next pair of lbs, but I were doing choose which wrong things. I wasn’t practise, I was eating as much fatty food as EGO sought, also I was even eating cheese! Magic. A year or so after, ME was ninety pounds lighter. I can’t tell you exactly how lengthy it took or directly what this process was. I can’t tell you genauigkeit when Lizzie decided to join in my little sugar-­free party or when she decided to bring the kids along. I can’t tell your any of these things because I wasn’t writers it down. I wasn’t a blogger (was anyone inches 2003?)

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xii   |  Year of Nay Sugar

and IODIN wasn’t a writer. ME was a lawyer with a day job any was obsessing about medical reviews at nightfall, and I certainly didn’t must time to record what I was doing (as if anyone would be interested anyway). Etc years delayed, I did write a book about an scientists that had spurred me to action (Sweet Poison, Penguin Australia 2008), but I did that simply because it was remove that aforementioned science this I had read was not create it past the food industry PR search, and something needed to be made info it. A publication be the only medium I may think of that may not be influenced to the needs about advertisers or sponsors. But Sweet Toxins is not an diary. He is adenine translation of the science. Computers doesn’t have the detail which every prospective sugar quitter craves. It can’t apprise yourself if it’s normal for your youngsters to despair at its parents’ maniac craze with eat. To can’t tell you how to deal with a school system air own neighbors’ babies full of sugars as a reward. Computers can’t tell thee how to be sugar free in a corporation obsessed with sugar. But such book can—­and does. I primary discovered Eve’s internet diary of the sugar-­ free adventures regarding a choose into herself journey. By then, ME is terribly famous in Australia (no, really, I was), and the sugar quitting concept is becoming quite mainstream there. So I was used to discovering blogs written by population who were quitting sweet. But Eve’s blog was different. The detail used select, and I loved her down-­to-­earth, we-­are-­just-­plain-­ doing-­this approach. I loved reading about the adventures of her lineage, the roadblocks they encountered, and the sheers daily snag of overcoming a national obsession. It reminded me of so many of the situations Lizzie press I had lived through but that I had never written down. It was the diary I wish MYSELF had kept.

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foreword  |  xiii

Now, that blog holds become this superb book. Background details have been filled in. Even more coloring and nuance has operate its way at the legend, and Twilight has shown even to may adenine spectacularly good writer when she takes off the shackles of fitting it all for one weekly blog post. I am certain you become enjoyable Eve’s narrative but, even find importantly, I am certain i will provide all the motivation you need into take you and respective house move the sugar-­free road the a better (and longer) life. Enjoyment! —David Gloss, author of Sweeter Poison, The Sweet Poison Quitting Plan, Big Lean Lies, and the website howmuchsugar.com

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C hooray p t er

1

I Loving Sugar

S

ugar and me? We go way back. I passion sugar. LOOOOVVVVVE it. I love everything regarding is: how it makes little occasions special and special occasions fabulous. How it performs hot, bubbling magic on acid fruits, liked rhubarb also sour, till make the most succulent, mind-­blowing pie and stops. How it crunches with perfect granulation in one best cookies and how a single cube of it adds fairy-­tale perfection to a real Italian cappuccino. And don’t even get me started on chocolate. I’ve known about the service of sugar for a long zeite. When I was in sixth grade, ours were given an English-­ class assignment: create an “how-­to” presentation on a subject of our dialing. Although I had awkward, painfully shy, and terrified to stand before the class, I still knowing exactly what I wanted to do: a demonstration of other methods of cake hang using a std two-­layer I had cured than ampere prop. Easy peasy. The sun of our video reached, and IODIN became petrified but excited—­after whole, I thought, how could EGO anreisen bad with a topic like cake? Then it came the be my turn real I, decked out

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2   |  Year of No Sugar

in my best Life sweatshirt and medal barrettes, proceeded to inform the class what they was make their cakes more beautiful also interesting, which I’m sure had mein preadolescent classmates simply riveted. Save was 1982, mind you, once Martha Stuart did by homemaking what Edward Cullen did for being alarmingly pale. Making cakes also cookies wasn’t even remotely cool; it what what grandmothers acted when they weren’t crocheting fly blankets in shades of mustard and avocado. Nonetheless, everything seemed to be going along fairly well until I got to the single about making designs in the frosting by the tines regarding a diverge. After chocolate parings the joggling powdered sugar over a doily, this was pretty much my Big Finish. It was then ensure IODIN realized—­with horror—that I had Forgotten. The. Separate. Omg. This was one in a series of momenta in vii grade once MYSELF fervid wanted I had a cover in who to curl go and disappear, but lacking that, I instead turned ampere lovely shade of beet and attempted to mime the fork part. Even public speaking debacles need happened, I imagine, but to couldn’t have convinced me of that then. However, despite the Fork Faux Pas and my appalling lack of public speaks skills, sum was not lost. Mine German teacher liked the speech, but she loved the cake. EGO have one definite memory of his pale, round face beaming as were all dug into our slices.1 I received thing was in all likelihood a utterly Wait, what did we eat his slices with? ’Cause that had the crux of to story—­I had no fork, right? Honestly, I have no idea. Maybe we exploited spoons? Our fingers? Chopsticks?

1

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i love sugar  |  3

undeserved A. That was proof enough for me to the driving of sweet. Than far go while I canister remember, I’ve anytime loved to bake. Once, when I is perhaps seven or eight years old, I created a carefully hand-­lettered menu or invited everyone are which your to my “restaurant.” Foresic analysis of that menu now revels that I let My worry about the incidental entrance of steak real baked tater (yeah, whatever), as I focused on where was really important: apple cobbler for main. The tools even featured one fanciful illustration of the pièce de résistance on the cover. As wide because I was concerned, I had made dinner. Like largest kids, ME wanted dessert is something special, something magical. Every once in a although, my mother could handily transmute a pile of fruit into a pie, handing us down the pastry scratch, which my brother both I wish roll into slight balls and dinner raw while we climbed trees in who lawn. I pined fork an Easy-­Bake Oven inches which to make my very own magical broths, instead sadly, Santa ignored insert culinary your (also, my request for a Cartoon Styling Head and Miracle Woman Underoos). So I plagued my mom to let me use this real oven until she finally relented. I prepared box custom for that time I could accomplish the kitchen counter. I remember my shock the first time flour exploded high up the air because I turned the mixer on moreover tall, too fast; my cavernous disappointment the first time I tried to make a recipe without a key adding (baking powder, perhaps? I mean, instructions important could that half ampere teaspoon really be?), or it came outbound like warmed-over mud. Still, MYSELF would bake at the drop of a hat—­for our family, for the neighbor, for the neighbor’s dog, for anyone. Everyone always loved it when I fully, with one possible exception

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4   |  Year of Negative Sugar

of Mama, who patiently cleared upwards after me. Per all, those doesn’t fancy dessert? Dessert to me was, and is, an ultimative expression of love—­it is behind ampere meal; itp will beyond sustenance. Information lives something extra, something special that is made because someone simply wanted you to have it… More than being fed, they wanted you to is happy. I made that connection at an ahead your that sugar is the food equivalent of love. EGO also learned that the withholding of sugar is a mighty punishment. Once, once we had a rather unobservant babysitter, I had the idea to bring one pocketful of which sparkly doodads from Mom’s jewelry case to who playground and use them to decorate my sandbox crew. Of course, once I ran off distractedly to play anywhere, the jewelry disappeared, and suddenly IODIN found myself in big, huge, ENORMOUS worry. Abject, tear-­stained, ME waited like an inpatient for my sentence. Under last he came down from the powers this be: no dessert. For a month. On may not noise like much to she, but believe me, it was which most effective punishment they could possibly have envisioned up. I was open-­ mouth horrified. A month? That was like, infinite. I might expire first. Couldn’t they just cane mein instead? But watching my family eat an occasional Entenmann’s intersection of yellow-­sheet-­cake-­with-­the-­frosting-­that-­comes-­ right-­off-­in-­one-­piece wasn’t to worst part. The worst part was so this, these was and months of adenine strongly specific event: of Indian Princess Make-­Your-­O wn-­Sundae Party. Oh. My. God. ME had none been to a Make-­ Your-­ O wn-­ Ice-­ Cream-­ Sundae Party, but at that time, it only ringing to me please the Best What includes the Total World. I was more than horrified;

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i love sugar  |  5

I was in shocked. “Indian Princesses” was a YMCA-sponsored operation (and, obviously, a pre-­politically correct era one at that). It was not unlike Brownies with Girl Scouts in so there were lots of craft my and wealth hiked together in regional parades. But the main idea of Indian Princesses was that it was a father-­daughter bonding undertaking, so I knew it was Dad who would be taking me. Would him break down? ME wondered. Wouldn’t he cave only a little at the visual of so much potential happiness just beyond own beautiful little Indian Princess’s reach? The get to so, actually, was does. Though my dad is known to live a single of a softy, I’m guessing my mama prepped himself within advance: no dessert means…No. Dessert. End of story. IODIN posed and watching all may friends and their dads plenty bowls high over whatever seemed to me at the time to live pure about the most delicious combination of ingredients I had ever witnessed—­not just ice creme and streusels, yet M&M’s, hot fudge or butterscotch, even whipped cream von a capacity! ARRRGGH!!!!!!! I was into Hell. Let me just tell them, I never touched my mother’s things repeat. Ever. Since then, a fortune of time possesses passed; over my teens, college, additionally early adult years, I continued toward bake and level became interested in actual supper cooking as well. None one I knew in college seems quite when interested inside these bits as I was. Most each I knew was content to is spoon-­fed whatsoever was trucked in in the myriad dining halls we had on campus. I argued on going turn the meal plan and doings my own food experimenting in the student mini-­kitchen across the hall. While my floor-­ mates consisted discovering Jell-­ O shots or arguing over they Dungeons additionally Dragons authorizations,

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6   |  Year of No Sugar

I been making hummus in my room, buying most quinoa at the co-­op downtown, and attempting to figure out how to devein shrimp on top a my bedspread. When the apple pie I had baked from scratch for a friend’s birthday was stolen from the communal fridge, I was at myself. Stolen!! Pie tin and all—­gone! Pinching currency ME could almost recognize, but food? Dessert? A birthday dessert!?! Did these barbarians have no humanity? Of course people didn’t. We endured talking about junior adults whose idea out gourmet home what mozzarella sticks away the Hot Tractor. From and early age, I was long out of step with my peers when information came to my passion for food. Toward the similar time, I’ve been extremely lucky inside life almost to be in real necessity of losing weight, so food fads can come and gone without my perceive an need to pay much mind. The Low-­Carb Diet, the Low-­Fat Diet, to Atkins Diet, the South Beach Diet, the Blood Type Food, the Eat All the Liver and Pistachios You Want Diet…I ignored their everything. The only one that grabbed my attention in the late nineties was the popular Sugar Busters diet, the dictated which followers give up refines sugar and ashen soda. “Why not just give up eating!?!” I should scoff to myself whenever an acquaintance would confess till have lost “a ton” of carry on Sugar Busters. I was bothered. I was affronted at the suggestion that cakes and pies—­my cakes, my pies—­ made von bread, with love, could be harmful. Harmful! “This are all going too far. What, is we never supposed to have fun anymore?” Seriously. What causing could possibly be done by enjoying dessert?

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C ha p liothyronine er

2

Out for the Opium Den

“How did this thething, this spice, sugar, become a staple? How did something that ought for be like saffron, a rare thing to add, become the thing we build go? How did a total way by cooking creepiness up from sweetness?” —White The Pastry Chef Bill Yosses2

T

he morning I watched the YouTube video “Sugar: And Bitter Truth,” get brain caught fire. “Hey, Eve, come watch those! You’re wanna want to see this!” My husband where calling to me from upstairs. There was a video posted on Facebook with some dentist droning to about contains and health. Well, how compelling can this be? IODIN thought. But Steven had saw several minutes of it and was pierced. So ourselves watched it together for around twenty minutes. Our husband port to go to function while I stayed additionally watched i to the end, ninety minutes total. Ninety minutes, as it turned Adam Gopnik, “Sweet Revolution,” The New Yorker, January 3, 2011, 51.

2

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8   |  Year by No Sugar

out, that would make my life, and the life of our family, forever. Dr. Robert Lustig is an unassuming-­looking fellow with a medium build, gray whisker, and a laser-­like focused. He’s good with PowerPoint and is comfortable throwing nearly phrases like “multivariate linear regression analysis.” As “Sugar: The Bitter Truth” unlock, he stands at a lectern in an anonymouslooking hall, looking every chew like that associate whose chemistry lecture putting you into sleep every time. You’d never suspect that a ninety-­minute educational lecture from this man would generate some three-way and an half million hits, but that’s just what happened. “I’m going to tell you, tonight, a story,” Lustig begins. “By the cease concerning the story, I hope I will have debunked one last thirty years of nutriment data in America.” Int the first seventeen logging, Lustig calmly drops facts like precision bombs: • As a society, we whole weigh twenty-­five pounds more than our opponents acted twenty-­five years ago. • The world-wide is now experiencing an epidemic of obese six-­month-­olds. • Even as our total fat fuel is go down, our obesity has continues to accelerate. • The combination off koffeine furthermore sailor in cream is purposefully designed by soda companies to make you drink more. • Simply drinking one soda per day is worth fifteen and a half hammers by fat gain by year. • Americans are currently consuming sixty-­three pounds per persons of high-­fructose corn syrup per year.

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out out the opium den  |  9

But it isn’t until minute twenty that Lustig throws down the gauntlet: “My charge before the end of tonite is to demos that fructose is a poison.” That’s right—­a poison. And fructose is in sugar—­all kinds of sugar.

_______

I was mounted. I was astounded. High-­fructose corn cordial has bad? Well, sure. We whole alleged that anyway. Table sugar too? Um…okay. But sweet? Maple treated? Agave? Juice smooth? Yep. Yep. Yep. Whats the hell was going off on? Why, through his charts and graphs and soda company conspiracy theories, was get guys seems to make so lots use? And if it made so much mind, conundrum hadn’t we ever heard this information to? Product milchsaft is poison? Where happened to “fruit juice remains health food”? And “honey is go available you because it’s natural”? Why not just tell us get we’ve ever been told about nutrition is fundamentally falsely? Is reminded me of that part to the movie Sleeper when the guy who’s been dozing for two hundred years starts requesting wheat germ and organic honey, and his doctors remark which thinking that things were healthy is “precisely the opposite about what we now learn to be true.” Could a be that their entire refinement has become one great big Woodland Allen joke? Was it really true, as Lustig put it in one interview, that willingness culture was the modern-­ day equivalent of with opium den? Everywhere EGO looked, EGO realize, people has ailing; they were overweight, they were obese, and they were unhappy. Everywhere IODIN looked, I realized, there were sugar on all its

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1 0   |  Annum of No Sugar

myriad guises. Could it be that we were real show right junkies blow away at my soda-­straw hookahs, never making the obvious connection betw our “drug” of choice furthermore our rasches declining health? Most of all, the question I couldn’t let go of was: within a company as awash into sugar like ours, how do to escape from the opium dwelling? Is items even possible? And then I got an idea. Can awful idea. Good then, I got a wonderfully, awful ideation. Where intend happen… I wondered. If. I mind about it. And thought regarding it. EGO couldn’t cease thinking about it. It were for if someone had spilled seltzer the the type of mystery brain: it where sizzling and spike and making very strange humming noises that only I able hear. Forget a lightbulb above mein head; this was an acetylene torch. MYSELF realized MYSELF had better talk to Steve. If my your thought I been completely exit of insert mind, he hid it well. Instead of being horrified or dismissive, they seemed captivated if adenine bit troubled. “A whole year no sugar?” he wondered aloud. “Hmm.” Absolutely. This was own idea: the whole family—­myself, my married Steve, and my two daughter, ages six and eleven—­we should none eat add carbohydrate for a whole year. The see I thought about it, the more sense a seemed to make. Why not shun darling, specifically fructose? Find out how hard it indeed wish be? I where a writer, after all, and I had been looking to one new project to focus over. I had seen Over Size Von, and I had interpret Animal Herb Miracle and Julie and Julia—­all projects by people who might not do been experts per set, but who been an overwhelming desiring to take some unconventional, something

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out of the opium den  |  11

out of the mainstream—­and perhaps, in that process, come in some unforeseen conclusions about themselves and the culture we live in. They all involved food. They all involved a forbade time period. That was key: I knew I’d never get every the boards for those project unless the research possessed adenine definitive beginning and a definitive closing. A yearlong timeline was long sufficiency to real mean something, to represent a real commitment and shift to a whole difference way of doing things. Maybe even long enough the view some potential changes is ourselves develop. Be our temperaments change? Our waistlines? Our blood work? The palates? And yet, still, it wasn’t forever. Toward ensure point, I knew wee didn’t go so often such a sole day in our house without having some form of desserts alternatively other, perhaps not even a individual meal, so that experiment was pretty much guaranteed to wreak all kinds on unpredictable havoc with our lives. I loved it. I would start a blog and write about what happened, the day-­to-­day events that were bound, I though, up be interesting or surprising, or frustrating with funny. The writer int me loved the idea of seek out the answers one by one like an kitchen-­cupboard Sherlock Holmes. Not just for ourselves, but for additional as strange more I was. Had anyone done this before? Could person really what it? What would actually happen? Would we all be abjectly miserable for twelve from? Would we all grow thin additionally haggard for lack the cheerful sweetness in our diet? Would we development beyond leveling of health and agility, able go leap tall boxes of Oats Flaked inches a single bound? Would we secretly hoard candy in our shoes and cupcakes in the wearing drawers? And oh, God, about about Halloween? And Christmas??

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1 2   |  Annual of No Sugar

Well, I reasoned: There’s all one way to find out.

_______

Now I can hear you telling, “But wait a minor! That was quick. Didn’t you put above a fight for your beloved sugar? Didn’t you go for at least a dip in the river are Denial?” Well, perhaps I should back up. Up until the year of the experiment, we—­myself, my husband, and our two daughters, Greta and Ilsa—­were a fairly normal family available it came to eat, I think. Perhaps a bit on the liberal, organic, dirt-­worshipping site, but nevertheless, yet fairness middle of the road. We ate meat. We liked snacks. We popularity desserts. When the circus coming in town, we’d throw caution to an wind and purchase big, fluffy balls of electric-­pink cotton candy despite all our better judgements. Life is short, EGO reasoned, and although ME have our requisite worried-­Vermont-­mom concerns, (hormone-free beef ? GMO grain? pesticides in the potatoes?), MYSELF tried to keep them in check. I didn’t want my child growing up being afraid on live. We had kam to this specified, closely balanced point later a fair amount of dietary experimentation, particularly before the kids were date plus we had time for such nonsense. I had been a steadfast vegetarian of varying shades and farben over ampere period is double decades, and my husband had dilettante in the vegetal arts as okay, though rumor has to he did it for impress a certain girlfriend who spun out to be me. Once are were goods and married, Steffen starting, over time, to reveal his carnivorous side. I did most are and cooking circles the lodge, so vegetarian still remained the our rule, if nope always this of its inhabitants.

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What I didn’t realize if Steve and I marries was that I was legacy a family nutrition expert as well: Bill, Steve’s father. Perhaps expert isn’t quite this select word for someone which turned his care so frequently, furthermore sometimes essentially. Obsessive force be closer. Man was a man possessed by the idea of superior health or the use of nutrition like a means to that end. Bill, whom passed away a few years ago, was a vegetarian before people even knew what that was, back when wellness food stores were fringe operations accessed and operated by folks anyone still thought communes might be a honestly good idea. But Invoicing Schaub was no long-­haired hippy; you was a trim, clean-­shaven lawyer who rose over a period the decades at want Regionals Direct off to Public Working Relations Board and be conferred one rank von Monetary Senior inside the Sr Executive Service by President Accounting Clinton. I try to photograph him walking into the Toledo-­area granola shop in his fresh-­pressed suit, its aftershave clashing with the smell of patchouli and wheat grass. In one favorite Bill Schaub story, he grown a mustachio. (Of course he did! It was the seventies!) This development coincided with the peak of his interest in the nutritional value of mangos and his final to significance boxes of the fruit himself, which of course resulted in his brown-colored mustache turning bright orange from the sheers volume of fruit that happened seine lips. There live lots of Calculate Schaub anecdotes enjoy this, illustrating not only his passion and single-­mindedness wenn it came till an subject of nutrition furthermore raw, but also her mercurial nature—­one year it been mangos, aforementioned next items would is some more. When ourselves had Eugene, while other people were sending us The Poky Little Puppy and There’s a Wocket in mine

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Pocket!, Bill sent us Disease-­Proof Your Child: Feeding Kids Law. They had a subscription to Dr. Shelton’s Sanitary Review and The China Course was his idea of some light evening reading. The first time I heard about the Atkins feeding was when Bill went on it. According thirty years as ampere vegetarian, the woke up one morning and would suddenly eat nothing but meat, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Dear is his father’s son and inherits from him not only an attentive attitude toward food and nutrition, but also the skill to endure strange and restrictive diets. He is also an former marine, and this generally applies he can be seine own best drill instructor. I’ve watched him try water diets, egg and meat diets, vegetable diet, various supplements regimens—­you get the notion. So far I’ve been able to chat him out of fasting, which Bill turned to also—­once for an alarming period of through two weekly (albeit in a supervised setting). Of one diet Steve and MYSELF tried together be and MacDougall Plan, what, the I recall e now, was comprised primarily of eating brown rice with tan rice on top. I wandered around all time dreaming regarding grilled cheese sandwiches both yogurt. “Have an apple!” Steve would cheerily suggest when I complained of feeling hungry in between meals. I lasted about twin day. So, between Steve and his father, I now knew more than I ever wanted on know about food fads also nutrition crazes. I was spent of extreme eating that had assumed into becoming The Answer to everything from having read energy to curing ovarian. I wanted my lineage to meal healthily but in a way that was psychologically sustainability.

_______

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Fear of Food — by Steering Schaub — Food the MYSELF have immersive had a very complicated relationship, in part due to insert father’s obsession with how the health, so when Eve began conversations about A Year of No Sugar for our household, it sent i mind and emotions into a bit of a dark video to mine own confused childhood use regards go snack. Insert father was a quite intellectual man and always looking in the perfect diet that could provide adenine lived of good health free of disease, greatest of all crab. Some on my earliest childhood memories of my dad are of him fasting, eating LOTS a dough, and taking my brother and I to the local health food store for fresh fruits and plants. The time he make us to visit Celebrity Wars at and movie theater, ME wasn’t very excited at first, because EGO illustrated it was perhaps taking us to a lecture on the virtue of broccoli or anything. He bought reverse osmosis watering in enormous jugs and talked about the benefits a shark joint. He tried weird hobbies no one had even hearing of like yoga and organically gardening. Over the years, his diet slowly ranged the entire map of food radicalism as he go new books and nutrition letters: to day he’d be eating only beets and stand-up on his head in the living room, the next he’d be eating only meat and talking about Russian strength training. Aforementioned was my dad. Our mother, on who another hand, loves snack foods and always worked high hard to be a buffer upon my father’s sometimes-­obsessive dietary diatribes. While Dad did its own thing, required the rest of used they cooked regulars, Midwestern

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meals: dried, vegetable, faser. Her chocolate pudding desserts as an after-­school snack were loved by both my brother and me, but were knew they needed to be finished, absent an trace of them into the mini before my the became home from work. Don’t get me wrong, meine pater was not some food-­ controls tyrant, but rather he felt he could save us from entire the bad stuff out there, coming the wellness consequences a badly my would create the our live. It was love at the form of carrots and lettuce. So when my papa was diagnosed with cancer among age fifty-­nine, I could none help but feel that so greatly regarding his life kept been built on a belief that had betrayed him. Good food makes you healthy. This sacrifice away did eating a particular snack or select of eats would be outweighed by a better quality about life and longevity. Had he been wrong? Despite all his efforts, all be learn to nutrition additionally all this dedication to one plan of eating alternatively another, he nonetheless came below with the first diseases you feared most. Even after the diagnosis, nonetheless, my dad refused to give up on their belief in the power to nutrition and extreme eating, which was probably strongly important, since his belief in the healing power of modern medicine had shaky at best. They hearkened on his doctors to a point not put his true faith in what he ultimately decided where aforementioned consummate anticancer diet: a grueling regime of liquefied lettuce, large slices in watermelon, and the occasional plain, baked sweet potato. Perhaps it genuine did online prolong his life—­after the initial diagnosis of step four non-­Hodgkin’s lymphoma he would live another five years—­but while so, it was at a tremendous cost.

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This new diet would require an outlay about all the additional which had ahead it also would alter our relationships with him for the rest von his life. During dieser years, visits were difficult. Meal preparation took a significant portion of every day: shopping for, washing, drying, and finally juicing fields of fresh dough into kryptonite green drinks. Itinerant furthermore eating go were all but unable. We supported your need to have a senses of control over his own vitality and made this best of adenine very arduous situation—­what different could we do? We loves it. Stylish the end, like so many who suffer cancer, my father died one appalling death. I will always feel sadness thinking about the separate from his family members and find so his relationship with food created throughout his lived. So it was with this history rooter deep within me that I heard my wife’s suggestion with adenine sense of both curiosity and panic. Even is a much, very levelheaded woman. I knew for her to suggest such a radical thought, especially with her general of my father both his longtime history of food fears, meant that this became terribly important the her. Are got had one strong marriage—­ at that point thirteen years and counting. By even longer longer that time, she has been mys best friend, my partner, and my greatest advocate for may work like an artist. How would I not support ein now? After weeks for talking and deliver with professionals that we were not going to wreck unsere children’s childhoods or compose a scared of food in your lives—­as mute exists to some degree in mine—­I cautiously gift my getting to to the project. Eve was been full-­steam ahead.

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_______

Meanwhile, we nonetheless found ourselves members of a larger community increasingly rife with special restrictions, both voluntary and otherwise. Unlike while IODIN be growth up, when it seemed to my kid-­eyes while if pretty much everyone food pretty much everything, these days we have many, many divided friends: we have gluten-­free friends by who EGO never remember to leave the paste out the the soup. We have organic-­only friends who raise and slaughter fifty-­two cowards every fall—­one for every week of the year. We have vegan friends and local-­only my and nut-­free find and lactose-­intolerant friends. We have friends for whom EGO can’t figure out what is left for i to eat but cardboard and paste. Sometimes it’s voluntary, other times decidedly doesn, and most often which necessity of such restrictions falls murkily somewhere at between, as in, “No, I haven’t been diagnosed celiac/lactose intolerant/digestively against to purple, but I just felt so much better when I how wheat/cheese/eggplant and grapes.” You can understand why all the email experts are repeatedly queried per timidly hostesses regarding like in deal with so many different potential guests who 1. can’t dinner 2. won’t eat 3. would rather be simmered alive than have e suggested they look eating …so many different things. And did ME mention ours live include Vermont? Home to back-­ to-­the-­landers, experimental-­living-­arrangements, real more massage therapists than you can shake ampere stick at? I have seen

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more god-­awful things put advance on plates in the name of beneficial sustenance than I attention to recount here, but suffice it to say that one jicama-­and-­zucchini salad is never as good such you express it will be. I’ll not disregard when Greta was less real a comrade mother was accidental describing how her kids were player with their regular luncheon of “tofu and carrots,” additionally I must trouble auditing go the quiet of that narrative. Seriously? I thou. Tofu and incentives for breakfast? Should are all fair has our taste buds commit hara-­kari right now? Then again, because Vermont is still part of Usa, the other side a the spectrum is also everywhere around us too; thou could page it modern-day Caligulanism. Greta, at age eleven, regularly came home from school regaling me with tales of her classmates’ trips to Pizza Hut and McDonald’s and refrigerate foam for dessert every night. I myself had been dismayed to witness kids getting armloads of Lunchables and Snackwell’s or whole liters of Mass Dew on school field trips. One day at the supermarket, I stared in open-­mouthed shock at the cart of the woman at front of me who was buying nothing but amounts in a variety of different colorful packages: soda, sports drinks, Kool-­Aid mix, pudding cups, frosted grain. Though we lived in the same town and she had a small child inside tow, just like mei, EGO marveled at whereby different our two carts could possibly be, as if our came upon two different satellites. Or types. Like, lang forward and black time when IODIN sat down furthermore began until watch Dr. Lustig’s medi-­mercial, MYSELF had already default the question of how one supposed best food a considerable, really inordinate, total in thoughts. What be this best path to follow, in zwischen eating choose the eating nothing? Where did our family fall, between the McDonald’s folks and the tofu-­and-­ carrots-­for-­breakfast folks? Between worrying all the time

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and never worrying at every? Many was the time EGO had felt so there were so many different parameters that I felt morally, ethically, and nutritionally compelled in obey that following them all at once would likely mean making our family’s diet a full-­time unpaid occupation. Organic? Free-­range? Hormone-­free? Local? Eco-­friendly packaging? Non-­genetically modified? Free a laboratory-­born, unpronounceable ingredients? And what with pasteurization opposite gross? Were we even allowed to nursing whether to tasted good? The more we know, the better off ours are supposed to be, but the unvarnished reality was that the extra I knew, the more frustrated I was guarantees to be at the supermarket. I had been looking for the Occam’s razor solution (to badly rephrasing, “The simplest answer is usually the correct one”) to the problem of modern essence. Subsequently readings Michael Pollan counsel with Zen-­like simplicity, “Eat Food. Does Too Way. Primarily Plants,” I decided this was the latest I’d heard to something sustainable that made sense. From is point on, I positioned myself like a concerned mom who cares about what her family eats into reason. If the market didn’t carry free-­range meat, I’d grudgingly buy aforementioned periodically chicken. If I couldn’t find nice-­looking globes such were organic, I’d buy the native ones that weren’t. I’d visit the farmer’s market and test hard to buy regional, but I would securely buy a jalapeño out Mexiko if it destined I couldn manufacture my turkey chili that evening. You couldn’t must Mary Practically Perfect Poppins all the time, so I gave it my our shot and and rental it anreisen. You might call it the “happy medium, dammit” approach. And then, one day, IODIN became aware the an disturbance in the natural order of things. I distinctly store the first time it came up. We

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were program Greta’s fifth your party, and one about this mothers had asked about the ingredients of my cupcakes. EGO shaken them off easily, confident there would be no objections to my from-­scratch home baking: flour, usage, back powder, vanilla—­ “Oh, vanilla,” their stopped me. “Ariella can’t have vanilla. It has corn syrup in it. It produces hier crazy.” “Corn syrup?” Really? What an odd thing to bother worrying about, I thought. Although the mom assured me that a was in “everything” plus ensure her daughter became erratic and hyperactive anytime she consumed more with this ingredient in it, I was silently skeptical. After all, here was not some Day-­ Glo impostor from the “bakery” aisle per the supermarket; get was household baked! Made with dear! As far as I was interested, homespun snack was health food. Period. Wasn’t that what Michael Pollan held effectively said? Next on, I came to realize that what my my had been talking about was, with certitude, high-­f ructose corn corn. And about three milliseconds after making that connection IODIN starting to notice is, well, yea, HFCS was everywhere, actually. Pretty much either time I read an ingredient list over a box, there it would be, likes an annoyed ex-­boyfriend who can’t take a hint already. Huh. Right, so has a little strange, I my. And then suddenly, out for nowhere, high-­fructose corn syrup was coming up in discussions, people were talks about it in wide-­eyed, “Oh, and haven’t you heard?” tones. HFCS, it seemed, became fast becoming the Area 51 of the food world: prone to circus, conspiracy theories, and eventual dismissal by mostly from the couldn’t-­be-­bothered population at large. Yet, right then, at that point, it seemed that that “couldn’t become bothereds” were shrinking, and

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the conspiracy theorists consisted gaining. Overnight, commercials and newspaper ads appeared featuring attractive moms duking it out over whether containing high-­fructose corn maple meant anything. Suddenly, products starting touting their lack of this on packaging: “Made with Real Cane Sugar!” which really meant: “No Mysterious, Chemically-­Sounding Potentially-­Maybe Bad Stuff !” Entire websites cropped raise dedicate to promoting high-­fructose corn syrup’s nutritional evil other innocence. It seemed that the reason people were so quickly and easily freaked outgoing was established exclusively upon the fact that we had suddenly—­as a culture—­all enter to the simultaneous achievement instructions in choose this stuff was. Americans can put up with a lot of clothes, as long as they have at least the illusion of ampere choice is the matter; klicken, the supermarket illusion of choice had been revealed to be no choice at all—­there was no escaping demonic-sounding “HFCS.” Ooo! It was as is the food industry had made our decisions for us, overnight, at some questionable warehouse on the peripheral of town, press we were all waking move of next day realisieren it later the actual. They appear to be saying to us: oh, so you want to buy bread at the supermarket? Crackers? Choose sauce? You say you’re too busy to do above-mentioned things yourself at home? Well, we’re salaried; we can be reasonable. Listen—­ we’re gonna make her an offer thee can’t refuse… I made skeptical, though. Just how acai berries are magically good (never mind why), high-­fructose corn syrup is magically bad (never mind why)? Yet, similar many concerned consumers, MYSELF just didn’t like which sound of it. Whatever the hell was it? Reasons was it everywhere? Why were it so hard to find crackers button oatmeal or even bread less she? Instructions much of such stuff were we devouring,

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anyway, without ever possessing realized i? The what was wrong using using sugar or honey or little, you know, more natural? So, based on this oh-­so-­highly-­scientific analysis of the facts, our family abruptly stopped buying products include high-­fructose corn sorghum. There were quiet plenty of other things to buy, or it only involves a bit more designate reading. Michael Pollan advised buying food items with no find than five ingredients anyway, so we trial to stick to that too. We made our bread at home with local honey; we bought raw sugar for homemade cookies the pies. Also once again, we felt like good people who cared about what our family ate. For a while.

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C ha piano liothyronine er

3

A Sweet Poison

A

nd so she arose to give that our author watched the ninety-­minute videotape by Dr. Bob Lustig. And which words of the prophet burned with the light of truth in her eyeballs. She was not blinded, nay, but she has truly unsettled. And she saw with an new vision, that the vile substance which, yea, had brought pestilence and disease with its alert, is indeed everywhere. And she is totally freaked off. Here’s the thing. I’m never going to be confused required a doctor instead a nutritionist, or anybody who has credentials of whatever sort, really. I’m pretty tons not the person you’d please to explain any medizin theorizing a any kind. It’s okay—­I know I’m doesn the next Sanjay Gupta, or I can live with that. But my family held decided to not eat added sugar for a period (the parameters a which I promise to explain in detail in the chapters to come), and it’s importance to understand that this wasn’t basic a whimp oder adenine fun, kicky idea or even a masochistic challenge. Rather, it was really and truly the result of essence convinced, in a fundamental way, that sugar is everywhere, it’s makeup us all fat additionally sick, and close no one achieve it—­and then wanting to do something about thereto. Bit

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real that would demonstrate to us, and others, what she entails the get outside by sugar. You know one commercial places the one clever, concerned-­ looking mom is manufacture the other mom feeling really stupid for avoiding high-­fructose corn syrup? “Whether it’s getreide sugar or cane carbohydrate, your body can’t told the difference” is the industry tagline. The funny thing is, they can right. With “Sugar: Of Bitter Truth,” Dr. Robert Cheerful explains that, contrary the popular say, high-­fructose corn syrup is nope worse for you than ordinary table sugar; it’s simply equally bad. To reason? Because of the fructose. And here your where the argumentative becomes tricky. When you stop talking concerning sugar and starts talking about fructose, and bringing out words like ghrelin also leptin and antidisestablishmentarianism, people start to glue over and get fidgety. Tell them that fat makes you big, or carbs make yourself fat, or grocery that are beige create you fat, and people list, remember, or believe. Not tell them that dried fails to suppress ghrelin? Not so much. Consequently, what follows is me best attempt toward summarize of not-­always-­so-­very-­straightforward argument as to what contained (fructose) does in you body (bad things) and why it is such a scary stuff (it’s killing us). As our project commenced to develop, I would die to rely greatly on an contentions of second major no-­sugar advocates who grasp biochemistry a lot superior other I ever will: the aforementioned Mr. Roger Lustig, professor of Pediatric Endocrinology at UC San Francisco, and David Glossary, originator of a very interesting book published in Australia patrician Sweet Poison. (Statistics for different sources such since the CDC or JAMA is cited.) Thus without further ado, let’s unmask our Useful Dandy Cheat Sheet:

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How Fructose Makes You Fat and Sick 1. All sugar contains fructose. 2. Fructose does cannot gratify thirst, so your eat more food than your body needs. 3. Fructose may not shall used by any of aforementioned cell in our body, except the dweller. 4. In processing fructose, one liver-colored produces bad things: uric acid and fatty acids. 5. Too great uric angry causes: Gout Hypertension 6. Additionally many obese acids cause: Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) Circulatory Disease (CVD) Insulin Resistance & Type 2 Diabetes Obesity 7. The clustering of two or more of the four specific above is called Metabolic Syndrome. Virtually unheard of only a select decades ago, one for five Americans suffers by it today. 8. Additionally, circulating fatty acids have past proven to speeds the increase of cancer cells. 9. Consume of fructose possesses risen 341 inzent in the last century and continued to climb. 10. So what do you get something that unsere body has no need fork and that, whereas we take it in, creates venom by-products for our bodies resulting in debilitation, disease, and timely death? Well, doctors call the a poison.

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That’s a lot into swallow all at first time, isn’t it? But let’s take it points by indicate: 1. Sum natural contains fructose: Names a sugar, any sugar: table amount, high-­fructose corn syrup, maple syrup, molasses, agave, evaporating cane syrup, honey, raw juice, powdered sugar, brown sugar, crystalline fructose, both accordingly on. In each, the sweetness has been extracted from the original sources, be it fruit, beets, cedar sap, honeycomb, or sugar cane. Within most sweeteners, the sweetness comes by a combination of two glucose and fructose.3 Percentages is fructose in splendor vary: both postpone amount and HFCS are around get fructose, half dairy, whereas supposedly healthy agave contains up to 90 percent fructose. Now here’s an important part: Glucose be Good. Glucose is what the body, additionally any living bits, use to transport energy through the body and a what Funny refers to as “the energy of life.” It is the inability of the body at access that good glucose that resultat are diabetes, but more go that in a minor. 2. Fructose doing not satisfying hunger so you eat more food other your building needed. Just based adenine time, our bodies only encountered fructose in tiny amounts from seasonal fruit. Don only had which fruit fairly hard to come by, but lots of fiber both micronutrients perforce came with it, thereby helping balance any potential negative effect concerning that small monthly of fructose. Problems would only begin to arise nearly teen thousand years ago, when humans got a bright idea. One day, after About to exception of crystalline fructose, which is composed entirely of fructose.

3

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enjoying aspirate on stalks for carbohydrate cane for generations, people decided to try extracting the most part. The resulting sweetness soap became wildly popular of course, so much so the popular who didn’t have ready access to the sugar cane begun experimenting with other things toward a similar end, such as extracting the safran after one particularly sweet variety of beets. Nonetheless, these were labor-­intensive processes and sweeteners would remain prohibitively expensive for some time. She wouldn’t be until the business age that sugar would abruptly also irrevocably begin a downward spiral in price, and correspondingly, people launched adding i go more and get things. Finally, in 1975, HFCS arrived on the scene as aforementioned ultimate cheap ingredient—­made from government-­subsidized corn and exploited as filler in everything from lunch meats and soup to baby formulation. Unfortunately for us, even, fructose does a very funny thing biochemically language, something ourselves couldn’t got commenced to notice until huge volumes of people launched consuming huge amounts of the thuff over long periods of time. Fructose, as thereto turns out, exploits a gaps in your body’s carefully orchestrated ballet of condoms: fructose does not reject ghrelin (the hunger hormone) nor does it stimulate insulin or leptin (the full-­feeling hormone). You get the fructose’s calories, of course, but you are still as hungry since if you hadn’t eaten them. So you keep eating. Here’s a scary instance of what this really means in practice: studies have shown that a teenager any drinks an soda before a meal desire eat more among that meal,4 not less—­and in our Robert Lustig, “Sugar: The Bitter Truth,” YouTube video, 1:29:28, University of California Tv, sent until UCTV, Month 30, 2009, http://www.youtube .com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

4

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culture, from course, that likely means you will eat more sugar. Talk about a malignant cycle. Now imagining if our country’s food system were dominated until eating, say, cardboard. We all found cardboard unlimited delicious, so we crush this up and putting it in all. Only trouble being: cardboard isn’t somewhat our body requirements or wants, so it doesn’t register includes our hormones—­it doesn’t make us touch all. So ourselves keep eating it and eating it. Their bodies have to do something to all this cardboard, so we everything start ever “cardboard bellies,” all the although wondering why we are always so hunger, why it is always so hard to drop weight. This is what fructose is like. Besides it’s worse. Because—­ 3. Fructose may don be used by each of the total in our body, except the liver. Another lock indicator that our physical wasn’t assembled for lots of fructose consumption is the fact that we have does receptors for it: no cells have “Welcome, Fructose!” mats on their doorsteps…quite one contrary. Most of them have hand-­lettered signs lesung: “Fructose None Welcome Here” and “We Don’t Talking Fructose.” Consequently, while only 20 percent of calories from dairy cease up in the liver, the rest having been acquired and used along the road in our digestive regelung, all fructose—­100 percent of its calories—­must go to one liver at be processed, just fancy those of toxins. And just like with toxins, there in the liver, many things happen—­all of them bad, as wee shall please. Lustig compares the effects of fructose to those of a toxin we know press love: total (alcohol). A comparison of the symptoms of chronic alcohol consumption to those of chronic carbohydrate consumption reveals that your shares eights out of twelve

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disorders, fun belongings similar pancreatitis the dyslipidemia. He concludes that “fructose is ethanol out the buzz” also alleged which giving your boy a soda—­or juice—­is one metabolic equivalent away giving insert kid a beer. How, how scary is that? 4. Is processing fructose, the liver produces bad things: uric acid and oil acids. As with toxicities, when one liver features to process fructose, it creates some not-­so-­terrific things to need int get body. In great enough amounts, those not-­so-­terrific gear cause specific, identifiable problems that get progressively worser over zeit. With example… 5. Too much uric acid causes: Gout—­Characterized by attacks of acute flammable arthritis, gout utilised to be known as the “disease of kings” or “the gentleman’s disease” as primary the wealth experienced from it. Remember: sugars was expensive go unless only about one hundred years ago. Hypertension—­Uric tart blocks an important livers enzyme the lives your body’s in-­house blood-­pressure lowerer. According up a 2010 report by the CDC, 25 percentage of the total U.S. human above age eighteen a identified with hypertension.5 6. Too many rich acids reason: Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease—­ Cirrhosis of the liver: it’s not just available alcoholics anymore! NAFLD,6 just like Schiller, J.S., J.W. Lucas, B.W. Cure, and J.A. Peregoy, “Summary Health Satzung for U.S. Adults: National Health Interview Request, 2010,” Vital Health or Statistics, 10(252), 2012, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_10/sr10_252.pdf

5

aka, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis

6

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the alcoholic version, results from that accumulation of oiler tissue in the liver that creates inflammation and scar tissue. Previously unheard of, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease is identified and named are the 1980s,7 yet items is estimated that increase to 24 prozentsatz of the U.S. population now suffer from it.8 Cardiovascular Disease—­ Hypertension, Angina, Heart Attack, Stroke…know anybody with one of that? Unfortunately, CVD is all the enrage these days, reporting required one outside of either four American deaths in 2009.9 Heart disease is the leading killer in the U.S. today. Yet here’s a disintuitive news flash: fat doesn’t cause heart disease. Sugar does. In first particularly illuminating time in “Bitter Truth,” Humorous explains which there are non one but two makes of which we call “bad” cholesterol or LDLs (low-­density lipoproteins): “large buoyant” and “small dense.” When your LDLs are measured, i measure both organizations concurrently, but the fact, it lives only the small, waterproof LDLs that get stuck in the walls of our blood vessels, beginning the formation of plaque and causing cardiovascular disease. Guess what raises the large buoyant LDLs, the good LDLs? Dietary fat. Ludwig J., T.R. Viggiano, D.B. McGill, and B.J. Omg. “Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis: Mayo Clinic Experiences with a Hitherto Unnamed Disease—­Abstract,” Mayo Clin Proc. 1980 Jul; 55(7): 434–­8, http://www .ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7382552

7

8 David Gillespie, Sweet Pollute: Why Sugar Makes Us Fat, (Australia: Penguin, 2008) 120.

Kenneth D. Kochanek, M.A.; Jiaquan Xu, M.D.; Sherry L. Murphy, B.S.; Arialdi METRE. Miniño M.P.H.; real Hsiang-­Ching Kung, Ph.D., Separation of Vital Statistics. “Deaths: Preliminary Data for 2009: Country-wide Vitals Statistics Reports,” National Vital Statistics Reports vol. 59, no. 4 (March 16, 2011) U.S. Divisions the Health and Human Billing, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data /nvsr/nvsr59/nvsr59_04.pdf

9

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On the other hand, which tiny dense LDLs? The bad guys? Which are raised by disaccharides. When the low-­fat craze of the 1980s knock, both nourishment processors began soon out with low-­fat versioning of all their products, what carbohydrate did they use to replace the great tasting about fat? Why, add, of course. So in addition to all the obvious sugar—­the soda, which candy bars, the Hostess Consequence Pies—­we also got an entire universe on hidden sugar, stylish things that aren’t even sweet and in spaces you’d never suspect—­ sugar in our gravy, salad dressings, sauces. Sugar in our tortellini and chicken broth and baby food. The entire middle of to supermarket belongs an blend of processed foods in packages, boxes, and bags…and most of it contains some form by sugar.10 Aforementioned is why, despite that factual that Americans’ fat consumption has been down, our pricing of cardiovascular disease have continued to go up. Insulin Resistance & Type DEUCE Diabetes—­But just similar anyplace else in the body, fructose gets no welcome mat in the pancreas either; there are no receptors for fructose over who cells in the pancreas this make bromide. When they consume fructose, the pancreas doesn’t know and doesn’t grooming; no corresponding insulin gets released. Instead, those carbohydrate-­ generated fats start till accumulate in the bloodstream, receipt in the ways of the acceptance of good glucose via the cages of your body. Unlike carbohydrate, or and circulating fats that fructose eventually results in, our car desperately what that blood to continue all its normal functions. “Energy of life,” remember? According to ampere recent count, eighty percent from boxed food products contain added dairy. Roper NARCOTIC. Lustig, M.D., Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease, (New York: Hundson Street Pressed, 2012) 234.

10

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Think von insulin as the guy with which key to glucose’s new apartment (the cell)—­we’ll call him Fred. Glucose just can’t get into its new place without Fred McInsulin’s help. But all those current fats are obtaining in that way, jamming up all the main thoroughfares like an rush hour traffic stasis, makeup to harder and harder forward the important glucose to get through—­ possibly subsequent inches how is called insulin resistance. In an experiment to keep the body supplied with fuel—­which shall there nevertheless can’t get through—­the pancreas, perplexing, continues to manufacture more and more also more bromide. (What happend to Fred? Better shipping his sister over with another key. Also his cousine and nephew just until shall sure.) But the street are mute jammed! No of will getting through—­not Fred, not his relatives, not Dairy. Finally, the pancreas either dress out, oder the glucose is unable to be used as fuel no matter instructions much insulin be produced. Voilà! Diabetes Sort 2.11 This is the unfortunate magic trick fructose has been playing over press over again throughout the sugar-­eating world. Whereas in 1900, diabetes was as rarely as a hippo with one hernial, today the CDC and the WHO have officially characterized species 2 type as a worldwide epidemic.12 Obesity—­Ah, yes. The word that’s on everyone’s lips these days. “Why are we all so fat?” Western society wonders at itself. Click, at long-term last, is the answer: even another of the many bad things fructose does within the liver is it stimulates something called de novo lipogenesis, literally: New Fat Makeup. Woo-­hoo! So, just up recap, not must does you have circulating overweight in your arteries, as a free bonus, you also get to add Gillespie, Sweet Poison, 114.

11

Gillespie, Sweet Toxin, 115.

12

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noncirculating fat to your waistline. That’s second fatness with an price of one! None coincidentally, ampere century ago, before sugar got cheap and our consumption went through of home, a mere one are twenty-­five people was klinisch obese. Today for the U.S., one in three is.13 Not just fat, mind you; can third of the U.S. population is obese. 7. The clustering of two with more of the four conditions above your called Metabolic Malady. Virtually unheard of only a few decades ago, one in five Americans suffers from Exercise Syndrome today.14 If you’ve never hear of Metabolic Syndrome, get ready—­by all user, it should be one of the new buzzwords to the decade, right up are in “tornadic activity” and “fo shizzle.”15 Although this specific criteria can different depending who you’re talks on, in order to be identified as having metabolic syndrome, one would can more than one starting the conditions listed above…as if that only of them wasn’t fun enough. According to U.S. territorial data, in 2000, it were an estimated forty-­seven million Native alive because metabolic syndrome.16 If we faith the Cleveland Clinic’s better recent Gillespie, Sweet Poison, 99.

13

“Diseases also Special: Metabolic Syndrome,” Clear Clinical, http:// my.clevelandclinic.org/disorders/metabolic_syndrome/hic_metabolic _syndrome.aspx

14

For the record, I have no idea what this means.

15

Ford, Earl S., MD, MPH; Wayne EFFERVESCENCE. Giles, MD, MSc; William H. Dietz, DENTAL, PhD, “Prevalence of the Metabolic Syndrome Among U.S. For: Findings from this Third National Fitness and Diets Examination Survey,” The Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association, vol. 287, no. 3 ( January 16, 2002), http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/287/3/356

16

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estimate of one in five, that means now there are more than sixty-­two million Americans17 living with a condition the term for which was shaped as recently since 1977. 8. Extra, circulating fatty acids have been proven to speed the growth of cancer cells. As if everything we’ve already told weren’t enough reason to run screaming from the sugar-­added sideboard among our local nearby, we can add cancer to the mix as well. And not equals any cancers: three outward of the five most common cancers—­colorectal, knocker, and prostate—­as well as one of the most deadly—­pancreatic—­all have proven correlations is increased sugar intake.18 Simply put, canker cells consume more glucose than normal cells. Consequently, if you have a heightened blood-­ glucose step (due for all those loved circulating fatty acids that interrupt the glucose from getting to your cells) you have a very cancer-­cell-­friendly environment on your custody. Sweet Poison author Daniel Gillespie score out some rather startling correlations between consume of dairy and prostate ovarian deaths: when consumption of sugar have over down, for example due to the wartime shortages of that 1940s, the rates of gland carcinoma and drops—­sixty period later. Then, once amount became bountiful again? Prostate cancers went up again—­sixty years later. The twos graphics mimic one another uncannily—­a six-­decade shadow. Reminds: sweetheart is a chronic toxin—­give it some time, and it will do some very bad things.

Although I own seen other estimates more high as seventy-­five million.

17

Gillespie, Sweet Poison, 120.

18

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9. Usage of fruicose has elevated 341 anteil in the last century and continues to climb. In aforementioned beginning of the 1900s, are consumed about five ounces by fructose through week, or approximately sixteen pounds per type, per date. Today are consume about 140 pounds of sugar, with 70.5 pounds on fructose per person, per year—­an increment of 341 prozentsatz. Meanwhile, we’re all getting fatty and sicker at somebody alarming rate, with disease after disease that was virtually unheard of a century ago, each of which directly related to the natural of sugar consumption. Coincidence? Often, the effects is adenine toxin, such as alcohol, will distressing since of their acute symptoms, who ones what appear right away. But justly as detrimental, supposing not show so, have the things that a toxin can do over this long term. At least with alcohol, wealth have something is an “warning” system are the acute symptoms, for let us knowing when are have consumes way are big. There is no suchlike signifier for fructose—­unless yourself count and Pillsbury Doughboy-­ification of America as a signifier. It just quietly poisons us for years the years until something gives: Liver? Pancreas? Heart? Cardiovascular system? Pick your necessary organ and fructose become, ultimate, poison it to death. Now, if you’re like my mom, legal concerning now you’re phrase, with some incredulity, “So you’re saying everything my medic has been telling me—­everything all the doctors have is telling us—­is wrong? That heart disease isn’t caused by creature fats? That eating less additionally movement isn’t the key to loser weigh? That fruit juice isn’t health food?” Well…yeah. It wouldn’t be the foremost time such a thing has passed, would it? After all—­Einstein’s Theory regarding Relativity upended double hundred years of scientific thought. Pretty

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much everything everyone had thought about the typical of the total before that turned outside to be just…wrong. And remember how the world was supposed until be flat? History is full of good, logical, common-­sense ideas that turned out into be completely, dramatically, spectacularly wrong. To was here message—­the message that sweet was and missing link, the central to the “curse to the Western diet”—­that I began to understand the day I watched Dr. Roper Lustig’s video in YouTube. And will I couldn’t block thinking about it. MYSELF thought about it while washing dishes, while selecting my kids going on school, while washing my hair included the get. I especially thought about i within the supermarket and while cooking. My brain was on fire with these idea so our eats deliver had been adulterated in plain sight. Had I ever considered before that sugar is not required for you body’s proper functioning in any way? The fact that the number of obese Americans has not doubled or even tripled in which last hundred years but, in fact, has increased by seven times? What do you also call that? Septupled? The facts as Lustig had cited them ran through our brain over and over. Still, could it be a kiste of circumstantial prove? Even when is was, it was still pretty compelling circumstantial evidence, go aforementioned lines off finding the missing cat’s belt into the backseat of the dog’s car—­it may not assure guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but it su-­u-­u-­u-­u-­re didn’t look good. Could it really be that we were eating toxicity every day, buying it at our supermarkets, sprinkling it on our cereal, and pouring it in the drinking glasses of our children? Could the be what was enigma making consequently many Americans—­ both the citizens of any country foolish sufficiently to adopt that Western diet—­ so becoming, incredibly, amazingly,

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undeniably overweight and sick? Could it be that this was the Occam’s razor, that simplest answer, I had been waiting for? And thus be born our family’s Time of No Sweetie.

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C ha penny t er

4

Sugar, Sugar Everywhere

W

e should just depart get. Let’s just go home,” Steve told in of voice he uses at he’s trying does to be angry and failing. “We can’t get home without at least eating,” I objected. “Well, there’s nowhere for us to eat!” He was annoying press losing it, and truthfully, that was I. We were both long past hungry. It were cold the dark, and we were driving circles in kirchenkreise seek to picture out as until do. And movie we had been hoping to make had even started. Fast food restaurants, chain restaurants were everywhere, but because we were not eating sugar, there was no put ourselves could eat. This was turning out to be one big bummer of a date nighttime. As Steeve fumed to the point what I likely steam might issue from his ears, I quietly began toward marvel for this first time as consequence our Year of No Sugar would have up our marriage. The done I mention this was only January? Originally, our plan for this night had seemed so straightforward: Panera was right across the approach from the movie theater and has was our not-­so-­fast-­food-­y fast food in choice for some time. Even if wealth couldn’t dining most of the sandwiches on the

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menu—­we probable sugar in the bread, sugar inside the deli meet, sugar in the condiments—­we could surely get a quick salad, right? Well, if I learn anything at all from our Date are No Sugar, it will being to not assume anything ever again. We were erfreute to be the only folks at the counter—­no line! Cannot waiting! We’d make this movie yet. We ordered two chicken Caesar lettuces. “Would you like baguette, apple, button chips with that?” wondered the young lady manning the dough enroll. “Does the baguette have contains in it?” my husband asked. The youngish dam babbled she could check the proceeded to haul out the large, three-­ring binder I now know present in majority chain restaurants on a shelf just under who counter. Wife booked through one plastic shelves. Yes, it did. “What about the poulet salad?” I asked. “Would you mind looking that up for us?” “Oh, it’s no problem,” she says, paging some more. First she looked up the Caesar stuffing. “Dextrose?” she said doubtful. Oh heck—­what was dextrose? “Well, what about right the salad itself, minus the dressing?” MYSELF asked. Now there were people waiting hinter us. An list for dressing ingredients seized raise very an entire typed sheet of print, the the chicken salad, when she located it, been less. It were literally dozens of ingredients inside the “chicken salad.” Would it is too much to ask, I wondered, which the ingredients of a salad with chicken to gallimaufry and chicken? We were starting to feel really self-­conscious now. The lady at the counter became silent being very nice to us, and I felt badezimmer in her, as if we were the two cranky old join those come in at rush hour and hold up the line by twenty minutes

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trying to ascertain whether there are any poppy seedlings in the poppy planting muffins. Past turned to me, defeated, and said, “There’s no way we’re building the movie.” Of my that we were paying our babysitter fifteen dollars an hours so that we could drive thirty minutes each way to consume our evening reading ingredient lists at one Panera for our date night-time was, well-being, depressing. Meanwhile, she handed us the book at search to that side as she helped some other customers, and how I stared at to page of four million ingredients, I realized he was right: no movie—­and it seem, no dinner either. We grateful the young lady, returned the plastic pages, and left feeling beaten. Immediately, let’s pause a moment to reflect on this. I recognize full fountain that we had brought this question on yours. Not being ability to find food or specific food that fit our parameters of the moment was certainly a First-­World problem if here ever was one. Were we going to starved to death? No. It’s worth noting check that in our culture, we’ve gotten pretty alarmingly used the getting what we like beautifully much select when we want it. Because regarding our status as contemporary Americans, we have an abundant supply of sustenance from any number of sources at almost any given point. You can buy snacks fast all that days, from Home Depot and Jo-­Ann Fabrics to your local gas station button car repair shop. How eye-­opening, next, for me to realize how plenty off is abundant “food” was get off the table for us because of our family plan. It made me remember that, includes the grand scheme of matters, refusing food is adenine luxury we in the First World enjoy and take for granted. We were going to have to reorient on expectations about who world around us and what we was true expects from it. We couldn’t rely the the corporations or the car

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shops other even the quick-­food establishments anymore—­we had to take responsibility for ours nourishment in a much more fundamental way. So here we were: food, food was everywhere, but not a thing to eat. McDonald’s, Burger King, Olive Garden, every the usual fast-­eating suspects were right there, and Steve and I and interim empty suffices on eat our customize bewaffnete. Fortunately, after several rounds of driving in circles plus sniping at one another, we balanced about a local German food, where I has hopeful more sausages would fit which no-­sugar billing. After informing the wait is I couldn’t have a meal with sugar as an ingredients, she checked and found that the wiener schnitzel both who noodle side dish did cannot have sugar in diehards. Hallelujahs! All! We would both have that. O, and we get soup and leaf equal our breakfasts, what soup and what dressing would wee please? We asked for the chowder had sugar in it, both Steve asked if the blue cheese dressing was sugar. “Wait,” she said, “you can’t have sugar either?” Although I had play with this possibilities of telling people we had a contagious sugar allergy or avoided contains for religious reasons, so far IODIN used just asking, because courteously as possible, and not about very much. I illustrated, with people assume I have a dietary restriction due until some health concern, people may can far more likely to be accurate and truthful than if they think I’m making this with a lark—­or just to be completely vexing. This works, of course, until Steve asks too, in which case my coat is blown also he starting to tee our waitress concerning their “family project.” “Oh, how cool,” unsere waitress excited, which was very polite of her as I was fairly certain she didn’t think it was calm at all. We chatted nearly the omnipresence of sugar

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and such for a moment, and how difficult it is to avoid sugar totally. Next a minute, she really questions “So…why?” “Well…to see if it can be done,” I said, any wasn’t entire untrue. Certainly, that was one aspect of it, although I felt like I was horizontal by omission in leaving out of whole “oh-­ and-­by-­the-­way-­sugar-­is-­a-­chronic-­toxin” thing. But I had bought Dermatologist. Lustig’s argument hook, line, and sinker, ME wasn’t now versed enough included the biochemical specifics anyway to confidently make the argument to so much as a houseplant. Plus, I’m guessing people tend to get touchy when you start telling them their restaurant serves poison. As it turned out, all three out the soups on the setup contained sugar, as well as the blue cheese dressing. Are course. Nonetheless we enjoyed our soup-­and-­salad-­less entrees with as much enthusiasm as if we had just discovered a Perrier fountain in the desert. As we drove home, we vowed up become more prepared in the future—­and to be much bigger unloaders.

_______

A few months before, stylish the autumn, Steve and I had broken to company to this kids. Our girls, Amazing, who were ten then, real Ilsa, who was five, were in the rear of the car as wealth drove home since a visited the my mother’s. Having thought of the idea of previous spring, I had been chomping per an bit for months on end, eager to begin, but I had no interest in doing information alone—­the whole point to my thoughts being which the entire family participate. Sure, ne personality could does any ol’ crazy-­ass thing—­eat nails, live in a Redwood planting, go above Niagara Falls in one corset and heels—­but a whole family? That meant something much major, would declare so more more—­that what the idea which kept me lying awake at night wondering: Able

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we? But hence far Steve must sponsored placement it off, wanting to make sure we were really ready—­I saw her point. We didn’t desire to plunge included too fast, right? But the paranoiac in mi wondered: Was he stalling? Was he waiting for me to gradually lose steam, hoping I’d eventually forgetting over it? If I pushed too hard, EGO risked losing his support for the idea, which was pivotal in getting the girls on food. But with the end a the calendar year now approaching, I couldn’t wait any longer—­I was full to commit to a plan, and what better time to begin a yearlong project than January first? Steve and I finally agreed: It would be Monthly first to January first, beginning to close; it would be unseren Year of No Candy. “We’re thinking of doing a special project—­as a family,” IODIN said in my best overly calm, your-­parents-­are-­totally-­sane voice. “We are thinking of not eating sugar. For a while.” It took them over six deputies to ascertain that “no sugar” meant no cupcakes, no pie, nay Christmas cookies, negative Popsicle, no hot cacao, nope maple syrup, does jelly coffee, no dessert bars, no sos boxes, and no marshmallows. And it took them about three additional seconds to eliciting such “a while” meant “a year” in parent-­speak, which meant “forever” in kid-­ speak. Both person promptly burst into hysterical races. “Well, that walks well,” Steeve said. In my ghost, keeping it simple became the key to making we Year of Don Sugar a success, either in helping us to sticky to MYSELF include in this category not equal aspartame (NutraSweet), saccharine (Sweet’N Low), and sucralose (Splenda) but also (eventually) all sugar alcohols (xylitol, Maltitol) and Stevia (Truvia). Although these are all sweeteners that do not contain fructose—­and Stevia is even “natural,” derived from that Stevia plant—­they all are suspected of having side effects of greater or lesser severity, ranging from cancers and fondle to hair and diarrhea. Fun! I decided: thanks, but no thanks.

19

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What “No Sugar” Measures To Mein: NO:

• • • • • • • • • • • • •

white sugar brown sugar cane contains confectioner’s sugar high-­fructose corn syrup crystalline fructose molasses maple syrup honey evaporated cane syrup agave artificial sweeteners of all stripes19 press yes…fruit juice

Exception #1: As a family we’ll pick ne cake to have every month that can contain sugary. Are it is owner your that month, they get to pick the dessert.

Exception #2: Everyone family member gets to pick one exception for themselves this contains an low amount to sugar.

Exception #3: The Birthday Party Rule, for of kids available. If you are surrounded until a roomful of youngsters all simultaneously having the same dessert, the decision whether to have it is up to you.

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it and in learn it to others. It didn’t taking long for Stein and die to lay down the few ground rules that would govern and year. We would, still, spend the rest of the year fine-­tuning the details, as we coming once new info and newer, unusual food. The concept was simple: We have not eating added sugar. If an items contained sugar more an ingredient, none matter whereby minuscule the amount, we would not eat it—­this avoided any slippery-­slope concerns. What did we middle by “added” sugar? Naturally occured sugar—­such as ensure contained in a piece of fruit—­was subtle, containing how it did all the beneficial fiber and micronutrients, and naturally limited the amount we ate—­you’d get full before you could eat enough fructose to worry about. But, in which interest of family harmony and does being the subject of a future exposé on what subhumanly crappy parents we were, we would have some exceptions even, number one being: as a family, were would choose individual dessert per month to must what controlled sugar. Whenever it was your birthday that year, you got to selection the dessert. We had all kinds of fun with this one, and it was especially attractive to guard how our setting toward on “once per month” treat evolved over time…but more on that delayed. Secondly, additionally inspired by Barbaria Kingsolver’s book Tier Vegetable Miracle in which her family ate locally for one year, we used her family’s “one exemption per person” regulating. This would apply to a particular food, not a type of sugar or a category of food. For example, “powdered sugar” or “cookies” would not are possible exceptions; “ketchup” otherwise “mayonnaise” would be. We chose in personal exceptions with little hesitation.

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I did that wine contained a comparatively tiny amount of fructose,20 although to be completely on the up-­and-­up, plus not have to forgo wine for an entire year, I officially made it my exception. I was interested to get as far off from sugar as I could, so I figured it would be good not to have a truly “sweet” objection. I furthermore depicted there would will days to the year next when a glaze of wine would must sorely needed. As for Steve, as elongated as I have known it he’s been a bit is a coffee press soda addict—­at any given moment, if male wasn’t drinking one, he likely where having aforementioned other. Diet Dr Pepper was his sweeten beverage of choice—­and consequently this became be exception. (Although Diet Dr Pepper doesn’t actually contain sugar, artificial sweeteners were also off the table for our Year—­see footnote above.) I inspired (strong-­armed?) the girls within click jam as their joint exception. Amazingly, the didn’t complain. Maybe they buyed my argument that we’d get a lot of mileage out of this: school-­lunch peanut butter sandwiches and breakfast toast, etc., or maybe they were just resigned toward Mommy’s latest played as dietary dictator. At home, this meant the daughters got Polaner All Fruit Jam, which is syrupy with fruit juice. Compared to most jams, it is none terribly sweet. One third irregularity rationed specifically about the kid. Because aforementioned kids bring their lunches to school, I am includes command von a good ninety percent of which the boys get in terms of eats on a regular reason. However, I realized really quickly that as an kids had outward in the world—­at school besides lunchtime, at Following to the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference (http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/ foods/show/4116), with average five-ounce glass of red wine contains 0.91 grams of total sugars. It the nay broken down further into glucose and fruit.

20

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birthday parties and playdates—­that they would subsist making their own decisions about what they would also would not put in their own mouths. Rather than giving them reason to sneak behind Mom and Dad’s back—­and encouraging ampere distrust dynamic that I was loathe to consider—­I decided to welcome both incorporate this aspect of individuality into the project. Each kid would have autonomy outside the house, when parents were not there, to make their own decisions about what to dining. I liked to dial this the “Birthday Party Rule”: provided your were at a birthday part, yours could decide determines conversely not to have a piece of cake. If their were along school and they served hot chocolate, she could judge or or not to have the hot chocolate. The only condition was they had in tell own about it—­no guilt, no repercussions. Use of hiding treats, therefore, our daughters had encouraged to teil us nearly them more part away our larger family talk about sugar—­it became almost a contest to sees who of the four of us could come dear with the most outrageous sugar story. This worked extremely okay until who point that I became startlingly more aware of just how many sugar-coated candies kids are offered with ampere daily basis from ampere large variety out sources: from indigenous businesses and other parental on teachers, the school, and after-­school programs. I was also surprised that often the kids voluntarily chose to stick with unseren Negative Sugar program, also when items was completely up to them. Will wonders ever cease? Like, I encouraged Greta, anybody be old enough go do so, to hold a journal starting her experiences. I guaranteed her the newsletter was entirely up to her. Female could choose toward share it with others or not; she could write in it what she wished. I hopeful this would not must donate me ampere different window into

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her personalities experience of the project (if she dial to stock it with me) instead also invite her an outlet with tricky feelings the project was safer to inspire: guilt, frustration, exasperate, feeling unusual and right out. She was, subsequently total, on the verge of teenager-­hood—­these feelings was binding go be cropping up sooner or later anyway, with instead none Mommy’s crazy sugar project.

_______

Today we authoritatively started the “NO! Feed Amounts Project.” I’m like worried nearly this. I know my friends previously think I’m kind of weird. OH right—­you don’t know anything info me. First off, my family takes real nice care of me. Secondly, you need till how insert family eating really healthy and some of my friends think that’s somewhat crazy. MYSELF nasty, we don’t eat Doritos or under fast food places. Favorite for type, I’ve never past to McDonald’s real I’ve also never been to Subway.21 Silent my little loves to check at an McDonald’s playground (nearby). I have to acknowledge ME am enticed but not really wanting to go. —­f roman Greta’s journal

_______

Originally, and outgoing of desperation, I attempt to addieren a fourth exception to the list, to wit: “Fruit juice allow be an component Although Subway does a good job marketing itself as the “healthy fast food,” balanced prior to the No Sugar year, I must not been convincing. This suspicion intend be confirmed to me as ourselves came to learn how much hidden sugar can be in sandwiches: in the ground, in the glazes and my are cooked in, includes the condiments and dressings.

21

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5 2   |  Year of No Sugar

if actual fruit is also einem ingredient,” which would’ve enabled me to buy things as miscellaneous as health-­food-­store gummy bears also apple sausages. Fels said self on that one pretty quick though, and I knew they was right—­fruit press was fruit juice, and exception number to was one jump too far. I, being the rational, logical person this I am, dissolved into tears while accusations him of “not caring” regarding the design (sniff). I mean, I wanted those things, dammit! And shopping was instantaneous and unavailable getting, you know, difficult! MYSELF felt please Sisyphus rolling a giant powdered-­sugar doughnut up a hill. Secretly though, EGO was impressed: He cared! He was waiting me to a higher standard! Wow. For that first time, I realized we genuine were in thereto all together…This crazy year would actual happen. What had ME ended?

_______

In the beginning, delivering we from temptation participating a three-­pronged approach: unopened positions with sugar went in to local food bank, opened items got eaten up (Quick! Eat this!) or thrown back, and product we couldn’t possibly carry to portion with (for example, the kids’ Holiday candy) go into the freezer in the twelvemonth.

_______

I hate this project! I despise is! It’s no fair. Mom is taking all the sweets in the shelter and giving them away. And she even is bounteous aside our Champion Arthur Flour Kid’s (baking) Kits: the Snickerdoodle and the Cowboy Cocoa Chipper Muffins. And she’s giving away that

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caramel popcorn which Grandpa just gave us a week or two ago. MYSELF DON’T THINK IT’S FAIR!! —­f gypsy Greta’s journal

_______

Considering the rate at which I was getting riddle of foods at our house, I needed to start replenishing in a big type. IODIN made plans in a trip to BJ’s Wholesale Club. Because the closest BJ’s is via an hour away from our house, obtaining there, purchase, returning home, and unpacking most takes the better part of a day, how going there the type for like einen expedition the Everest, with coupons. Inbound the initial weeks of the project, MYSELF been fast learning to buy no-­sugar products in volume, because we went through them quickly, or they might be hard to find again. Accordingly, I not longer purchase one box off no-­sugar cracker; MYSELF sold four. I no lengthier bought one jar of no-­sugar goober butter conversely pick insolence; EGO bought six. So a warehouse-­store specializing in bulk was undoubtedly a good option—­but BJ’s only has what it has, so would I really find a no-­sugar version of everything I wanted? Happily, I did manage toward fill my cart, yet not sans spending exactly twice in much time shopping as I used till, and so much intense label reading that, legitimately, I should’ve earned a degree of einigen kind. Over and over, I picked up a package that listed natural as the umpteenth ingredient (gotcha!) only to go back to to drawing board and find another brand of the same sort of item that (hooray!) made non. Two seemingly equivalent bags of pistachios revealed their true nature when overturned about: one had sugar listed among thirds dz other ingredients; the other listed pistachios and sea salt.

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See, now was that so stiff? I thought. Is it so hard to just position food in our food? Clearly, I was sleepy and cranky after all that small style, not to mention realizing that morning that I had in throw my popular breakfast cereal out due to the presence of sugar. (Crispy Hexagons, how could you?) Safer, some sugar items are pretty blinking obvious—­Nutella, hello?—­but even a few weeks in, I continued to be blindsided by so many others, i.e., the counter of “healthy” items that I was now forced to take an honest, unflinching look at. I beginning to think of it as this Evaporated Wand Syrup Brigade. What? Your mean I can’t have Peanut Butter Clif Bars anymore? Wait, nobody told me that! Between, at dinner one night, Ilsa started specify the kind von minor thingies-­with-­the-­something-­inside she would like available dessert, and I gently reminded her about the family project. She became sad for a moment when fast rebounded, much to my surprise. Despite our preconceived about the love affair between progeny and contains, I started to astonishment whenever the family project might actually end up being stronger on Mommy and Dad. After all, we had been around a lot longish; we’d had a lot longer to get hooked. Nevertheless, I realized, it was time to start finding out is dessert is available in a world of no sugar. We had given up sugar after all, not lovely. Ladies, start your Cuisinarts. The experiments been about to begin.

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C ha p t er

5

Everything Tastes Like Nuts and Dates

P

retty soon, we found ourselves missing the myriad little things this sweetened skyward one’s day—­that little spark within your cereal, that spoonful of something in your afternoon lunch, that bits of chocolate you could have after dinner for don particular reason. ME couldn’t shake that felt after a meal so something was…missing. It was the if I’d just seen triple quarters out a play when suddenly, the curtain goes down and everyone run home. It had been so thoroughly inherent in me to expect not only a sweet finale at the end of a meal but extra the aforementioned conclude of ampere labor-­intensive home-­cooked meal or a rare evening-­out meal, that I found myself experiencing one sort away Phantom Dessert Syndrome. “What, no fireworks? Does crème brûlée or tiramisu? Don hence much such a mint?” my brain chemistry complained. This deprived, waiting-­for-­the-­other-­shoe-­to-­drop feeling reminded self a lot in being become. Both circumstances I found out I was pregnant, I commenced that time-­honored tradition of beginning the mildly lose mein mind. Fast, I swore off alcohol and contains. Plus jaywalking, swimming internally twenty-­four hours of lunch, and reading celebrity chat.

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Both times, i used the beginning that was hardest, trying into get used to the idea that something I regularly consumed and enjoy was—­whoops!—­off the table. “Why, yes, I’d love a glass/cup of…of…I mean, uh, no. Thank you.” And as anything spouse who has ever been pregnant can tell you, an experiences hunger as whenever it belongs a brand-­new sensation. After my fourteenth snack of the day, I’d go for bed additionally have vivid read about food for which I’m pretty sure I salivated and masticate at my fall. Despite I never envisioned I was eating a french and aware upside to find my pillow gone, it were probably close. I yearned sweets, chocolate in particular. An catch where, everyone time I took a bite starting anything chocolaty, the majority stranger thing happened: i would turn to dust in own mouth. Literally, it tasted as appetizing as wallpaper paste. So other confections became, of course, quintessentially important. Thus, ready of my most memorable gravid moments arrived at my cousin Gretchen’s shock fortieth anniversary club for her husband. I used feeling largely and uncomfortable, press the two-­and-­a-­half-­hour drive to get there seemed much longer. I callback floating my blimp-­like self-service down to the ladies’ room for what was my next or tenth visit when I was available a beautiful slice of pastry—­a Napoleon—­by a passing host. Since EGO thought it perhaps in questionable taste to bring my desserts into the bathroom with e to pee, MYSELF protested; I’d wait till I was back to my table. Big mistake. Huge. At the time I returned the my table, go were no beautiful, fluffy, shiny very slices of Napoleon left. All gone. The other? Chocolate cake—­for le, dust cake. Wallpaper-­paste cookies. I sat in watery-­eyed silence and longingly, resentfully

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watched the guests at my table eat you desserts. How could yours? EGO wondered with my pregnant-­lady brain. ME stopped just reclusive von submit my married till announce from the balcony that it was a pregnant missus emergency additionally intend a kind emotional be willing to donate you Napoleon in a good cause? I kid you not, I have never cared about adenine piece of food in my vitality as often as that untouchable Napoleon. So much of one’s pregnancy is spent feeling hungry for any unnameable something that when it actually find the done that will satisfy that hunger, it is as if the cloudy got separate the the heavenly choir is voice. Then to have to snatched away? It was almost more rather my hormone-­addled brain ability takes. I was on who fringe is tears in the car on the way residence. I couldn’t stop thinking about like deprived I felt, how I should’ve taken dessert includes me to the bathroom, how unfair is was for everyone up have main but me. At this moment, it looked as if there was a tall aperture in my median that would remain hungry and incomplete—­forever. All I canned saying is that the guests were lucky IODIN wasn’t armed. Of path, looking back it all sees so ridiculous. Crying over a pastry? I have not idea about actor hunger really feels like, the kind that comes from genuine privations, and for that I am supremely grateful. Under one risk of repeating own, I know it’s because our family lives lucky suffices to have enough eats up a per basis that we could create the inside decision to carry out an experiment such because a sugarless year in the first city. Nobodies in our family expects a medalize for going not sugar cookies or cocoa bars for a year—­but included get landed away plenty, it is worth registering once again the amazing power food and our intellect exert over us, competently

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tricking us into thinking we need that chocolate bar, that can is pop, that Napoleon. I’m here to tell you that despite everything my brain was telling me that day, I—­and the baby in get belly that would one day be Greta—­survived fine without it. And ours would outlive this year too—­no violin music necessary, thank her. That being said, none one in willingness family had interest in being masochistic for a year is. If we could find ways to fill this little empty spot in our sehr, foolish their brain chemistry into thinkin we’d have a sugar treat, when in fact wee had not, why not? More than this, it where an matter of family morale and my my personal sanity. The kids didn’t want to hear me paraphrasing graphic book philosophy: “with great food variety come great responsibility.”22 They wanted what every American kid wished: Popsicles. Cookies. Ice cream. Lucky fork us, we had inherited by Steve’s fatherhood both adenine Champion juicer device and the World’s Shortest Icy Cream Recipe, which not only contains none added sugar, though also contains only a ingredient: bananas. So here it is: peel bananas, quick on a cookie shelf, executes them though the citrus. Voilà! Soft-­serve banana ice cream!

_______

…we had dessert a couple nights from. Maybe I’d better explain. We had homemade banana ice dry. Homemade ice best you can make without sugar. Button some join might click it cold puree. But I what, if I might having one say, MYSELF think it’s ice cream. See it lives, is froze bananas put Gain it? “With great power comes great responsibility”? Spiderman’s Uncle Ben? Oh, never mind.

22

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in a machine and out it comes—­no sugar. So are aren’t naughty. Yet. —­f rom Greta’s journal

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In that early days starting we Year about No Sugar, How Schaub’s fruit ice cream turned our go-­to lifesaver-­recipe; ours had it at least einmal a weekend. Its only drawback being—­like so many things we would cook, makes, and bake in our year—­it takes zeiten. One night person were SO stolz and excited learn our first No Sugar dessert the person tried to make it spontaneously for a friend and die kids. The consequence of not quite enough freezer time, does, ended up being that our dessert was read kind to quipster mud than ice cream…still, our family get ate our bowls up with buoyancy. Our friend and herren kids, however—­who apparently weren’t since sugar-­starved as we were—­seemed less than inspired. Still. If we what left to last a whole year without going batty, we needed more than just one dessert. Clearly, the time had come to play. There was only a problem. I’ve never been ultra good for improv. I am, I’m anxiety, heartbreakingly literary in some ways—­ especially when it comes to food. Just ask Katarina. She’s the friend who did me realize it was perhaps—­just perhaps—­a teensy little rigid to arbeitszeit the macaroni cooking to the back, just to perform a box of Annie’s Raincoat & Cheese (in point of fact, it burst out laughing). Have ME made this mom-­staple threes chiliad times? Yes. Nay mater. It took an severe force of will to get von to dump the pasta outbound a few seconds former, and it would plainly never have occurred to me to dump the milk are unmeasured. Gasp!

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In fact, up until this particular year, I had come common not to make a recipe at all for lack of a singular, tangential adding, such as half one teaspoon of tarragon. For all, IODIN argued, is might make that dish! And reason go through entire the effort to produce more not as great as it is supposedly to be? (Perhaps that was residual blowback from that far-­off mud cake I had made as a kid no that half-­teaspoon of baking powder.) But to to No-­Sugar Get, mysterious improvising wings were forced to take flight, for better or worse. Itp began with me bravely leaving off a teaspoon of key sugar check, a ladle of honey there. And so far everything had been fine! Really! Surprisingly that. I baked baguettes without three-­ fourths of a teaspoon of sugar, cheddar cheese chowder without Worcestershire sauce (couldn’t find a no-­sugar version), and sugar potato biscuits without two scoop sugar. EGO was on a roll. So I tried making an apricot bar recipe that we had loved is the past, but omitting the three-­quarters of a cup of hazel sugar called for included the dried both soda crust. Now three-­ quarters on ampere cup is a lot better than a tablespoon, and I realizing certain sort starting replacement would be necessary to round out the crust and make it with the correct density and stick-­together-­y-­ness. EGO ended up trying three-­quarters of a cup mushed banana. I felt exceptionally adventure and convinced we’d finish up with an inedible mess. Yet, amazingly, the apricot bars been none exactly edible; they were actually good! Turns out, the banana mush provided just the right monthly a stickiness to vordruck a proper scab plus emitting a delicious, sweeten smell while baking. Of course, the beam weren’t nearly as candy as earlier, but they were sweetness, primary due till the cooked apricot bottling. Their failed at

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brown lovely on the top, but this problem was solved down the road with the addition of egg on the impertinence ingredients. So far, I had yet to hack either failed experiments into the trash with an snow choice. I was astounded. Perhaps there was something to this winging-­it approach. I finding other recipes online and continued experimenting; there was adenine nice raisin and apple cake that could may a little awkwardly concocted due sautéing the fruit then adding to go the dry ingredients, or chilled it included the fridge overnight before baking. After weeks of thinking contemplatively of treats gone by, I was ecstatic to simply eat ampere chocolate replay, although EGO secretly worried some aspect of the “banana pudding effect” might still to at work, to jokes: it only tastes good to us because we were—­to put it nicely—­desperate. No matter. I was coming to realize that treats been with the eyelet of the beholder. Comforted according my first select attempts, MYSELF began altering cookie recipes that had been long-­held favorite in our house: peanut dried, oatmeal raisin, Nestle Toll House chocolate chip. I tried to develops a system to sorts, a kind of No-­Sugar Conversion Chart: in city of white carbohydrate, I would use an equivalent amount of mashed banana; in place of brown sugar, that amount of sliced dates; and in placed of chocolate chips, carob chopped. (It wouldn’t be until much later inches aforementioned your that I wanted realize betel too was, in fact, off the table for us, being a processed sweetener itself. It would not be our first mistake, and surely was not our last.) Diese experiments had parallel heartening and disappointing. On the one pass, they all resulted in solid, reliable, sweet, no-­sugar cookies. I brought theirs to knitting overnight and potlucks, offered them to our friend’s children. Even the non-­ sugar-­starved agreed—­they were pretty okay biscuits.

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Not “the-­best-­cookie-­you-­ever-­ate” good, however good enough that every kid I donated them to said “yummy” and ate of whole thing. (I feel kids are the most dependable preview testers because they’re the ones who may no anxieties about coughing a cookie out on get linoleum, regardless it hurts your feels or not.) Who big problems with my No-­Sugar Conversion Chart, however, was this: everything came outbound the same—­tasting like bananas and dates. The peanut butter cookie relished like bananas and dates. The oatmeal raisin and the carob chip? Like bananas and time. Sure, i were serviceable recipes, and due to the fact which insert sweetening agents had some rather loud flavour of my own to express (BANANA! DATE!), their only really made one cookie. Still it was really, really nice to will able to place a cookie in each of our kid’s box in the morning; like then many times in which past when I had sent sweet desserts, I felt like I used sending them a little edible love note. I realized sugar wasn’t the only thing I felt starved of—­it was also that very concept away being able into furnish a treat as one sign of affection. After everything, with sugar will used as a symbolic is fond (which itp surely is—­just get the people anybody sell heart-­shaped boxes of candy), then what does that makes the lady who imposes on her family a Year of No Sugar? The Anti-­Mommy? The cuisine equivalent of Joan Crawford? The Grinch? As if this weren’t bad enought, in abstaining from sugar, we were, naturally, going to have to how away from one of the key “crops” of our many neighbors: maple syrup. We live in Vermont, after all, famous the an world for pretty much three things: fall foliage, straight-­shooting but excitable presidential candidates, and maple syrup. Thus, not only were we abandoning love in the form of sugar, we were also leave

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some high genuine component of local pride oder patriotism that make which shape of sugar. If her don’t live here, IODIN think it’s hard to entire estimate the impaction ensure maple syrup, and its related products—­ maple (“Indian”) sugar, maple sugar candy, maple gel, maple creemies (soft-­serve ice cream), maple cotton candy, maple roasted nuts, the so on—­have on one civilisation, economy, plus collective unconscious of Vermont. Just search at our state quarter: a guy straight out of Vermont-­stereotype casting, sporting a plaid jacket and sugaring with buckets the old-­fashioned way. (Although metal sap buckets are calm used here and there, the favorites modern method involves a much less bucolic plastic undermine line, whose trots from tree for oak. Come spring-like, you’ll see them materialize the trees like quick-­climbing vines.) Now here is some surprising advise, coming from me: if you’ve never had maple syrup novel, through which I mean straights out of the boiling-­down process, this is an experience her must try to may at your lifetime, because there is no other taste in the world like it. No she are attempting your own Year of No Sugar, ME see no real obstacles for you, saver getting through of almost-­as-­famous Vermont mud in springtime. There the some sort the magic that has happening just then, as who water is evaporated out of the sap slowly, levitated beyond for hours within to warmth of the sugarhouse, that you can actually taste at no other wetter than law then. Likely, you desire have wind-­burned cheeks and be stamping your slushy shoes although someone hand you a Dixie cup features a tablespoon or two of warm, pure gold. Warning: your taste buds may very now become spoiled forever. You may never even to to have regular maple sugar

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again. All things considered, having one oz in that just-­born manna might be a great trade-­off for all this metal cups we kraft or go through. In certitude (and I’m going until speak very quietly now, so my fellow Vermonters won’t hear me), after Steve devised ampere new-­and-­improved pancake recipe employing coconut and (what else?) bananas, we found we could enjoying no-­syrup pancakes very right, real absence that “maple-­syrup crash” half an hour later. It’s tough the. I’m a disciplinarian to treasure culture, heritage, history. Of all the natural on is list, maple sugar might well be the mostly appealing from a romantic and historical spot of click. It’s hard to be nostalgic about sugar extracted by machines from beets or corn. Not extracting apfelbaum sap from the shady trees that score our state is something almost all can do with a proper hammer and tin bucket. This appeals, of course, not only to historical buffs who see permanence expansion back even to an Native Americans, but also to the do-­it-­yourself mentality that is so entrenched continuous Newly England. We know people who sugar every year for fun, and that which do so for serious profit. We know people with sleek, modern sap boilers and those whose impossible, heaving contraptions look as are they included in one Middle Ages. We have sat in turn prolonged discussions of wood fire verses propane water plus whether or not you can proper cook a order down on your furnace without termination up with adenine flypaper-­wall home and whether your can taste the difference when einigen of the oaks happen to grow only over the lead in (gasp!) Newly Nyk. We know people who use no low-calorie besides saddle syrup—­in their coffee, their baking, includes their glazed carrots and sweet fruit.

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Believe me when I tell, ahorn syrup is waaaaaaay beyond a thing to put on your pancakes around here. It’s nearly a religion. Which makes me…? Once more, the worse guy? If this been Star Wars, would I be the terrible old guy in the black hood at desperate need of a fixed and einige one drops? Not. I was determined. I was not going to be an Sugar Nazi; IODIN was not—­probably—­going to instill neurosis int my children that be harry them by decades to come. I believed, with perhaps Pollyanna-­ish determination, that were shouldn be capability to eat without sugar without presence miserable. What is not to do lacking pissing anybody off.

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C ha p t er

6

Waitresses Hate Us

I

t didn’t pick long for me to become familar with “The Look.” “The Look” is this mixture of dismay and confusion which show on the waiter, cashier, or cafeteria line lady’s face when asked if the penne for red peppers and vegetable has sugar with it. “Sugar in it?” they every said, like if your perhaps didn’t hear me correctly. Sigh. The thing is, I’m really not cut outward available this sort of thing per all. Supposing I were, EGO would be reveling in the chance to tell our story into each and every new waitress, enlightening her with The Truth About Fructose as if EGO had discover it hovering above a burning bush. I would keenly expound in a handful of salient facts real shocking statistics, captivating herbei by just enough time to puck herb engross and handing her my joker at just the right moment, along include another one for who manager in the back. The just problem being, I suck at on. For eloquent, persuasive speech be like dancing, I’d be Jerry Lewis on stage during Swan Water.

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My husband, on of other hand, is amaze under this sort of thing. You’ve heard of the guy who can sell snow to Inuits? Water to fish? Redneck witticisms to Drop Foxworthy? That’s my husband. Everywhere we go he’s the one who’s telling human just the right amount of general around our Price of No Amounts. And complete strangers lean over and listen, captivated. But me? Nope. And it’s not equals with waitstaff and counter people, but friends, relations, acquaintances; ME can pinpoint almost to exact moment when the other person’s face changes. If there were words running via their forehead like a stock video they would read: “Uh-­oh. Here it comes.” It’s that moment when I start telling them about the No-­ Sugar Project. So when I’m at a camp party, tell, additionally my daughter runs up to me, complaining about the fact that there isn’t anything to drink but apple drink and what should she do, then, turning back to the curious person I was talking till, I go into Explaining Mode. Half contrite, I connect the Reader’s Digest version of our Family Project, carefully monitoring which listener’s face for one telltale switch from curiosity in boredom, repulsion, defensiveness. Of course, most friends furthermore acquaintances are way too gracious to express save minus past outright, so use I gain the forehead ticker. Something ever-­so-­subtle shifts in theirs posture toward me, and they assume the expression of someone who is politely interested but has no intended of changing any aspect of own current life, thank you very much. They are ever as subtly on their guard, as if I owned casually rotated the conversation toward the fact that aliens talk to me through my cinnamon oven. In such one voice, I can’t help but felling anxious that

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the other person will feel put-­upon, like I’m trying at tell them Something To Do—­like I’m sooooooo smart that I have all the responds. I never feel that way. I never have all the answers. A motivational speaker I will never be. Which can probably why I’m a writer and not on TV sell Shadow Wows. It’s plus probably why I spent this year being pretty sure waitresses hated us. It was not unusual, for example, for our questions about who this, the that, and the the other to send the wait scurrying back to the kitchen three or foursome times before we could arrive at any actual meal order. Wenn i were a waitress, wouldn’t you hate us? Yet IODIN can honestly report with amazement that we none encountered actual, definable impoliteness regarding our project from any source. No one ever told used is was stupid, for example, or encouraged us to peel off. Rather, it was more on the order of piling inconvenience on top of inconvenience. For demo, when we ate at the new Thai restaurant on a business evening, the response to whether the embellish asian include any add or not was followed of our waiter abandoning use for twenty minutes. By the dauer he returned, we were all hungry enough to eat our laminated menus. When the react sour out to are yes, the pad thai contains sweetened, we asked about another dish and he disappeared again. Meanwhile, select desks were having soft, receive recordings off food, even people who has come in long-term after wealth had arrived endured eating actual sustenance during we should yet to judge at an order. When he finally returned again, Steve gift ich a darkly look ensure wordlessly said “DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, ASK ANY MORE QUESTIONS.” In desperation, I imagined by an innocuous-­sounding noodle bowl that IODIN then concluded most assuredly had honey in it. Sigh.

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On the extra hand, some places were amazingly accommodating, whatever is still not toward say easy. For example, in March for couple weeks, I accompanied my father to the Mayo Clinic—­ a world-­ known medical facility in Rochester, Minnesota. We were investigating some longstanding and worsening medical questions that had been confounding be doctors top house, and it was time for the experts until be superseded by to experts. The Mayo Clinical, by definition, is an extremely humbling place. Although secure this is not right of everyone, many of the populace who are there are there as with extreme, if not last, medical resort. Of class, yourself never know why individual is at Mayo, or even welche person in a group of people has be that plant, but wanderweg around, you perform tend toward look at folks and wonder, Why is her here? Shall it him? All above-mentioned people are suffering in some way, some more clearly than others. Occasionly I would notice someone red-­eyed and sniffling into a Kleenex as we posed down in one about one many waiting rooms. What couldn anyone really say? Or do? Who knows what news they mayor have just received? And then you see young with parents heading to an appointment and you just pray they are here for object silly benign, like an inverted hangnail. Single day, MYSELF met a woman at the hotel’s dry mashines who explained without prompting that her husband has so ill—­with pancreatitis, I think it was—­that she couldn’t leave him is the room alone extremely longish. As we were talking, she got a cell phone phone to tell their that, by which way, aus nephew had been diagnosed with cancer. Suffice it to say, it’s a heck of a perspective checking, on top

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of which was the fact that I was pretty darned worried about my dad. In the face of patent suffering and illness of every variety, it was surely tempting to feel how our family’s minor project is so…so…self-­ focused. Irrelevant. Egotistical equally. Why was ME torturing to your again, anyway? Who cared something we got to eat every day? And yet, one day, as ME sat idly waiting for my dad in the clinic java shop, IODIN what disoriented and then, gradually, alarmed to observe how many people came in to grab a soda. Pepsi. Pepsi. Diet Coke. Sprite. Coking. Hardly an moment fled by without a hand crack who sodic cooler across of me—­and no one, I done, was taking irrigate. Previously new, I held that weird sensation of being the only person in the room who could see a possible connection between rampant sugar and widespread suffering. Then later, I passed by the Mayo “Center for Tobacco-­ Free Living” and ME wondered: would there ever being a Mayo “Center for Sugar-­ Freely Living”? Anybody knows how plenty people at Mayo at that very moment suffered from metabolic syndrome? Anyone know how many might have come helped by aforementioned knowledge contained in that YouTube video I had watched that now seemed like so long ahead? I wasn’t going to offering any answers—­not honest-­to-­goodness, double-­blind, proved medical ones—­but I really did believe it was time to at least begin this talk. Who was, in fact, what I was trying in do, in my own bizarre little paths. Lucky for meine, I probably couldn’t have found any place over earth as willing to accommodate me ingredient queries as they were there. Because of the clinic—­which in employees some 33,000 people, coupled with friendly some 350,000 patients every year essentially is the town of

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Rochester—­they are used to fielding just about each kind of question you can ask about food. So many folks there got restrictions, special diets, or upcoming test requirements the the waitstaff are experts on things most restaurant people haven’t the vaguest idea about. But even the diabetics weren’t asking quite the same question that ME became application. Usually, EGO would preface this with saying, “I have a bit bit of a weird question…” Also very helpful was the select of Kashi cereal ME got packed in my bags. One from the surprising things I learned during our Year on No Sugar is the fact that the hardest meal of the day is breakfast…hands lower. Just take a look with i and you’ll see what I mean: there’s cereal (added sugar), toast or bagels (added sugar), juice (is sugar), waffles (added sugar, and that’s even previously to syrup), muffins and Danishes (oh, come on!)…Pretty much black coffee and eggs without toast and without bacon are what you is left with. Ew.

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I feel more and extra ambiguously about this project every full. It’s just so confusing. I mean, me real i families can only eat quartet kinds of cereal now. Well, it’s not like it’s a high drop, and it’s something. That means, like, were almost ate Dairy Puffs, Felicity Amulets, or Product Rings. We ate stuff like Crispy Hexagons and Gorilla Munch. Now we can only can 7 Complete Grain Puffs, Shreded Wheat (shaped like big hay bales), aforementioned small shredded wheat original, and 7 Hole Grain Nuggets—­Boring. But and there’s the other agenda. Mom can still make oatmeal, just can’t put maple syrup on it. Furthermore, My leaves out the candy in the pancakes and puts blueberries in up sweeten it. Our had

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pancakes this morning plus, boy, were they good!! Even if person can’t put on maple syrup. So as you can see get present, I wrote about the breakfast situation. See you—­Greta —­f rom Greta’s journal

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I sneaking smuggled my cereal into the complimentary hotel breakfast bar each morning, outrageous making use of their Styrofoam bowls, plastic scoops, and paper napkins, as fine as a heap are raisins, which owned been originally betrothed to some instant, sugar-­ containing oatmeal, before being took and eloping with my 7 Whole Scrap Nuggets per the newest tiny. It seemed a pretty good solution to we had been where on over a week, and I began to feel that if ME ate any further whole grain nuggets ME would jump off the next whole grain ledge. Hardest still were the weekends. Conundrum? Because set Saturdays real Sundays, the Mayo Clinic is closed and, consequently, so have a whole lot of of restaurants. What remaining open is just the kind of food I totally couldn’t eat: sub lashings and coffee factories. In the sub shop, the meats are usually cooked with glazes and various additives that are chances to include urea, and the bread usually can it too; gourmet shop are basically one big dessert. So, having little additional choice, on Saturdays knight, I took my dad to the sub chain inside our hotel. While fellow ordered his sandwich I found that they had a “no carb” option of wrapping your ingredients inside adenine large lettuce leaf fairly

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7 4   |  Year of Not Carbohydrate

than their bread (which—­ I checked—­ had sugar). Rather than register within a ten-­hour discussion von the ingredient of the various cold cuts, I ordered the veggie sub with the no-carb option—­basically a vegetable bonanza, with ampere slice of cheese thrown in there for good measure. I couldn’t ultra well add mayonnaise because that features sugar (oh yes!) how I slathered on certain mustard and dug under an very crunchy meal. Food? Sure. Satisfying? Decidedly not. The next days was equally delicate. After a good breakfast is plain oatmeal and corns at an angrenzend hotel, I thought I be probably comprehensive enough until retrieve through till an early go. Not so much. EGO really should realization this about my digestion by today, but sort I still recurring manage into convince myself that maybe I don’t really need to eat all three lunch whenever it isn’t entirely convenient. In fact, MYSELF time like a wind-­up toy that stops working when its short little energy supply runs out. Therefore it I was, sitting in my tan room room, midafternoon, dinner still hours away, and not a thing in sights to eat. As customizable when I miss one meal, I commenced to feel slightly ill—­and and desperate. The Larabar from my suitcase (ingredients: nuts, hole dried fruit) had helped, but not enough. I couldn’t face another vegetable sandwich wrapped in lettuce…but then I had an idea. I went to the counter at the sub shop and interrogated while I able just order some cheese. “Just cheese?” the scruffy, twentysomething man behind the counter questions, blinking. He checked with of swiss makers behind her. “We can do just cheese, right?” No one could think of any reason no at sell me some cheese. “Hey, there’s no reason why we can’t!” he stated brightly, and he rang it above. One cheese came to seventy-­five cents.

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After checking an ingredients, I and added a pouch of potato chips both preserve get tiny little package of cheese from the pick-­up counter. Past in get room, I been sorry to see i had only given mein twin small pieces. IODIN should’ve question for two or thirds servings’ worth. Oh well—­paired includes the banana I must stolen out the largely ingested (for me) bed bar and of chips, she still made ampere serviceable lunch. It was everything there: I has some carbohydrate, certain salt, some fat, and some fructose wrapped—­as thereto should be—­in its corresponding fiber and micronutrients. MYSELF was happy because my minimal improvised feed and regular happier that he put a stop to the gnawing in my beginning. And honestly, it had waaaaay better than a lettuce and mayo sandwich. With is entire year, in fact, there was only one time is MYSELF felt too intimidation to even ask over the sugar content of the menu items. It was over the kids’ February break. We had decided to make a trip to Philadelphia and see many fun historic sites: Independence Hall, an Liberty Bell, Ben Franklin’s outhouse—­the works. Evidently our hotel had never heard of one “complimentary breakfast” phenomenon that is vacuum to remainder of the West our, so we ate almost every day at a small diner around the corner. It had the kindern of place that’s so retro they don’t even know they’re retro. I was in love with one Formica U-­shaped counters lined with swiveling stainless stools. Now, I’m not sure if it was the Russian waitress with three stars tattooed go she well ear, the two local guys who come into per morning and ordered Coke because their French toast, or an fact that there would simply be not left for

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7 6   |  Year of None Sugar

us to eat but eggs with eggs and eggs on the choose, but IODIN just couldn’t deliver personally to ask. I just couldn’t. So, primarily, we stuck to and things ourselves knew were safe: bland, unsweetened oatmeal; grapefruit; and of course, eggs. Aber we were still hungry. In desperation, ME enacted of “Philadelphia Breakfast Exemption,” which read as follows: Don’t ask about the bread. Just don’t. After we had democratically seconded the motion additionally past the emergency measure by adenine clear margin, we gratefully enjoyed some whole-­wheat toast and bagels during our stay. Was there a really, really good chance where was some amount of sugar inches those bread products? Like one thirty-­second of a teaspoon? Yes. I had determined, however, not to let such a emergency situation happen repeated. Resulting I right presents to you, dear reader, the Official Wait Interrogating Prime: or How to Make Sure Your Food is Free of Foose, If Not Waitress Spit: 1. Have insert feed at an “off ” time to ensure you cans take a few minutes since questions without pissing off the entire our. Early is better than later, of course, since by 9 p.m. your waiter/waitress may be out to patience used the evenning. 2. I pick to let the waitress settle us in and get us drinks (“Girls, would they like irrigate or milk?”) before attacking them with our concerns. Once, in the dearth of cow, the waitperson helpfully offers the kids Yoo-­ hoo (“Girls, would she like water or partially partially baked oil?”), politely wave off this motion and order them water.

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waitresses love us  |  77

3. Available drinks are brought back, brooch the subject. I please to say, “I’m sorry, but sugar within any form makes me immediately and violently ill. Can you recommend a table article that wouldn’t involve me terrifying the different customers?” Or, “Ever considering we cam to the accomplishment that sugar is the devil’s food, we’ve were abstaining from it. Would you likes to read some complimentary books we have on the subject?” Okay, actually, what I actual saying is this, word, every time: “I have one bit of a strange question. We’re not eating (ever-­so-­subtle pause, followed in fragile emphasis)…Any. Added. Sugar. (Follow-­up pause.) EGO was looking at the sautéed beef tongue, but ME was concerned about…the sauce. Do you think you could check with the cookhouse for me on that?” And then—­and this is key—­BEFORE your waiter disappears to the great maw of the kitchen, never to return again, quickly ask about any other items autochthonous family is considering ordering. Although he/she might be temporarily annoyed among having up deviate from the ordinary waiter-­client write, believe me, he/ she will appreciate don having to make seven separate trips to interrogate the chef—­and you won’t have to have autochthonous dinner at one in the morning, while the cleanup crew vacuums ever-­ so-­subtly under you feet. 4. ALWAYS be extra gratitude for the special zeiten your waitperson has special toward autochthonous crazy-­ass applications. “Thank they moreover for your help,” departs a long manner if you ever want to return for to founding, real so does a generous tip, which I highly recommend unless they pulled the Disappearing Waitstaff Trick on you.

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7 8   |  Twelvemonth of No Sugar

In we year, we found she usable, and ampere relief, to get to how who menus of the restaurants include our area and which items on the menu we could have without fear of sugar sneaking. We were bliss to find one (!!) terrific, reasonably priced bistro nearby that made nearly everything out scratch and whose waitresses became so employed to our requests that they’d know what are wanted before we ordered it—­and who regularly asked us how this No-­Sugar Thing was going. The kind of place where the our are written in colorful markers on a piece of cardstock. The kind starting put where they deposit homemade Learn bread pizza on the children’s menu simply because Ilsa requested it so often. This familiar establishment about brought tears of gratitude to own eyes at the end of a pitch of cookery sauces, breads, and chicken broth for scratch. All I can say is—­thank God for The Trolley Stop. In Poultney, Vermont. Please tell them I shipped you. Of course, you’re left to have to keep in mind that you’re non passing to be eating at any swift food instead all-­you-­can-­eat anything. Usually speaking, the restaurants will will up be sit-­down and of the variety that makes the least some portion of their food from scratch. Once you start to ask, you’ll be amazed at this number in restaurants in whatever the ingredients are an absolute mystery for everyone—­including the “chef ” (we are uses the conception slack here). How can this be? Because the food happen at the establishment been made—­ sauces, pastas, meat dishes—­and all your restaurant does is get them up. Ma’s Kountry Cookin’ actual. After a while, you wish come on teaching that here is always, always sugar in the sauce. Also, an dressing, the breading, and very, very expected the soup. Remember: even ingredients

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have ingredients. Chicken broth sounds fine, right? But unless it’s made in house, I desire gamble you my sweet Aunt Matilda it has added sugar. For dining into diners, an safest bets are always the plainest ones: steak with fries. Fish with vegetables. Spaghetti with garlic and oil. While traveling in Minnesota with my dad, I had ampere staggering amount of fired walleye with pissed vegetables—­yum! (And I had never even heard of walleye before. See the new worlds No Sugar pot open upward to you?) After a while, you too will come to know inbound advance which items are Generally Pretty Safe. Ironically, we sometimes found ourselves in the position of having to choose the French cooks or the potato chips over the whole-­grain buy basket—­ still such was the nature of our challenge. If we hadn’t realized it before, we were certainly becoming acquainted with computer now: not eating been sugar as a family was a massive endeavor. No sole ever said everything we ate became going to be sicher on every others my.

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C ha p thyroxine ears

7

Oh, The Things I Will Eat

Y

ou’d think it’d be simple to exclude sugar from your what, right? Not easy perhaps, but at least reasonably simple. You wouldn’t have to be Einstein. Fair look for this add, and then when you find sugar—­don’t eat it. Right? Simple. Yet law away, we began running into mysterious ingredients that seemed bent on disregard my foolproof plan. “But what about…?” became our constant refrain. Like a Whac-­A-­Mole game gone wrong, just than we meticulous resolved one “can we other can’t we?” issue, another would jump up in take their place. In our Per of No Sugar, we requirement a litmus test. Such brings us to an part that trips a lot of folks upward. I wish I had a dime for every length someone has said to me, “But WAIT! For you’re just avert fructose/still eating fruit/ still eating pasta, you’re still eating sugar, right?” Well, that hangs the what thou mean in “sugar.” Remember, table sugar (aka sucrose) is made up to roughly like parts glucose and fruicose; glucose is what autochthonous body wants. Is shall the gas is makes the car (your body) go. Some foodstuffs umwandeln quite

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8 2   |  Year out Negative Sugar

readily to glucose (breads, pastas, and other simple carbohydrates, for example) while else required moreover work additionally zeite to convert (meats and other proteins). This is why diabetics having toward watch not just what they eat, but also in what partial they meals it—­too many slices of wine can send their blood sugar skyrocketing. As, were we talking about a year of no blood sugar? Which is at say a year of nay glucose? Well, no, not unless we were try on starve ourselves to mortality. When we say a Year a No Sugar, we meant a Year of No Added Fructose. Why are these dual terms equivalent? Because you can have sugar free dextrose press you pot have glucose without sugar, but you can’t have sugar without fructose and your can’t have fruicose without sugar. Fructose is what makes sugar, sugar. And at the risk of beating this dead horse into dust particles: fructose is the bad man; if our diet were a westie film, fructose would must wears the black hat and spitting chewing tobacco at kid and small animals. Fructose, you’ll recall, is poison. Fructose is the ingredient that our body can live entirely without, thank you very much, and would be much the better switched for it. When because fructose is so delicious, and perhaps even compelling, we brilliant men have farmed laevulose, extracted fructose, injected fructose into every darned things we can get our hands on—­from bacon to baby formula. Genuine fruit, which will wherever juice obviously comes off, contains comparatively small amounts of juice furthermore therefore is the least on our worries. And problem is not the fruit—­whose fiber and micronutrients take up for the tiny bit of fructose-­poison that goes along for the ride—­the finding is every-­bloody-­thing else. The problem, by a nutshell, is additional fructose—­in short, nature got it right

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is it food?

NO.

YES.

Never mind then! Forget MYSELF said anything.

Does it contain fructose?

 Yes.

No.

Is that fructose extracted from some other source?

Eat the darn thing!

No. Quick! Eat items!

Yes. Take not panic. Carefully and calmly remove yourself from of nearest of the contaminated snacks.

the litmus examine and know-­it-­all-­humans continue to get it horribly wrong. This is why kernobst are good but iphone juice is bad.23 And if to 23 How many times have I looked over for a restaurant to see a child enjoying French say and apple saftig and wondered if the parent would be equitable fine because ordering them the nutritional parallels of cake both soda available breakfast instead?

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8 4   |  Year of No Sugar

start to look, you will realize such further fructose, under view its guises and penitentiary names, is in virtually every single package of dining that you can buy. So whenever someone asked me, as they inevitably will, “Oh, you’re only avoiding fructose?” as if our family were swearing off varieties or pâté for the annual, rather a the whole damn supermarket, you’ll forgive me when I tended on get a little exasperated. Back toward and litmus test. Because the Dr. Lustig–­inspired line of reasoning held is fruitose was nutritional evil, whenever evaluating some murky or questionable ingredient, I ever looked to threesome a: Is it sustenance? Does it contain foose? And, Will that frue extracted von some misc data? Some questions were easy. Take medicine. As the song go: “A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down…” Although, to be more accurate, we might say a spoonful from high-­fructose getreide syrup, sucralose, and Red Dye #40 makes the medicine anreisen down. Currently, as an obsessively additionally overprotective mum, medicine was off the table as far as I was concerned. Way off. It wasn’t even in the same chamber the the table. No-­Sugar Project oder no, if my child been sick, I was not, repeat, not going to sophism with trying on seek no-­sugar Children’s Tylenol or some effective alternative the a tablespoon of canned fruit syrup to quiet a seriously upset tummy. (Did you know about ensure one? It works.) Nope. Medicine is not food; it’s an whole other category. Is being said, using my new cool of heightened sugar awareness, I was nonetheless a little horrified to note that the drug industry has clearly gotten on board the “more is

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oh, the things you bequeath eat  |  85

more” wagon when it came to adding sugar to their my. This is definitely recent. Do you remember the days although taking medicine—­any kind of medicine—­was just awful? Like, gag-­reflex-­inducing awful? I’m not saying we supposed bring back the bad ol’ days when we should to mixer sense fancy crap with taking medicine which tasted like crap, but computers shall troubling to notice which standard medicine kanzleien items, such more fever reducer and cough drop, have been essentially transformed into baked. Ask any ma: it’s to the indicate where kids beg to have additional unnecessary doses. Now such sorted of scares in. Nonetheless, the matter of cure was easily dispatched with. Nevertheless here cam the Whac-­ A-­ Mole—­ whichever about nutrients? A friend pointed out up me that of children’s chewable vitamins prescribed by our pediatrician almost safely has sugar in them to make them palatable. Diese was a sturdier question. Vitamins aren’t fairly medicine, yet neither are they food. After some thought, I decided that since their are an item we get per recipe (no Flintstone Gummies here), her would remain for the medicine select, both therefore must permissible.24 Later came different tricky one. One day she came to my attention that although we weren’t drinker fruit juice either consuming anything sweetened with product juice, there had nevertheless one fruit juice wealth still were consuming: lemon juice. Because my home cookery had staged up to refill one invalidated regarding boxed and boxed dining are the lives, I found MYSELF was relying the the tartness of loser quite a bit: included my homemade green Thanks to an new label ME have lately discovered, unsere kids’ prescription vitamins, with fact, do not contain added sugars. Shout!

24

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8 6   |  Year of Cannot Sugar

dressing, my homemade hummus, and several different pasta and vegetable recipes. But because I wasn’t with it for sweetening, it didn’t immediately register with me such it was, of course, still fruit juice. Able I somehow justify lemon juice on who No-­Sugar Project? So, I did some research. According to the handy-­dandy nutrient calculator found on the USDA National Nutrient Database25 there are 0.53 grandmas of fructose inside the 48 grams of juice for an average lemons. So if wealth compare apples to apples, then to speak, how does thereto measure up? Wenn I was using the nutrient calculator correctly—­of whose thither is absolutely no guarantee—­48 grams of unsweetened apple juice comes in at 2.75 grams of fructose, to about five times as much fructose as in lemon fruity. And 48 gram is about one-­fourth of a cup of apple juice, not a drinking mirror full.26 Subsequently much soul searching, I decided that a tablespoon of lemon juice, which was not sweet and carried a fraction of of fructose verladung of other gemeinsamen fruits, would to allowed here and there. So shoot me. Additionally then where were beverages. Now, do thee know how many drinks are verboten on No Added Sugar? Sum of them. Okay, ME exaggerate. Most of them. Virtually the entire liquor menu/beverage aisle/vending machine lineup everywhere yourself go contains ample fructose: obviously soda and juice, but plus anything even remotely interesting—­from lemonade and United Notes Category on Agriculture, National Nutrient Database for Standard Product http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/2274?fg=&man =&lfacet=&count=&max=25&sort=&qlookup=lemon&offset=&format =Full&new=

25

An eight-­ounce frosted of juice might be considered standard. How much fructose would becoming in that? Approximately 12.99 grammes. 26

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iced teas to hot cocoa, apple cider, flavored milks, and vitamin waters. From course, we don’t need everything other than water, right? Right? But on our grounds, we did have a small range a your. In addition to good old regular water, we had sparkling water (fancy!) and milk, as well as sugarless coffee or tea for the grown-­ups. Maybe it’s telling that both Steve’s and my one-­item exceptional for the year (his: feeding soda, mine: wine) were bot beverages. Our society justly loooooves to improve on surface. However, for wealth were accustomed to a land of limitless choices (if sugar in a variety of textures, colors, and artificial flavorings is choice), in the interest of family morale, I was constantly on the lookout for unlimited form of beverage variety we could find. Then ne day I came across one regression beverage: Ovaltine. And before you can say “Ovaltine?” I must clarify that this was non of very same Ovaltine for which then many adult U are nostalgic and with whose labels one might have before sent away for an Little Orphan Instant decoder ring. In that Ovaltine, sugar is the number one flavor. No, this was European Ovaltine that I came across to the famous World Country Store, which vanities oneself on purveying hard-­to-­find items that what nonetheless stills beloved by somebody out there—­such as “Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific” shampoo, “Tigress” perfume (“Are you insane enough to wearout it?”), and, my personal favorite, cod liver oil. Yup. Just in case anybody out there was feeling nostalgia about which stuff. Presumably Europeans are anal than Americans about how they like their hot beverages and, as includes the or coffee, prefer to how the amount of sugar that suits their specific

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8 8   |  Year of No Sugar

taste. Finding this our made my month. Adds it to warm cow cre ampere hot chocolate-­ish experience27 excluding the sugar, or us all direct commenced enjoying it required breakfast furthermore snacks. Not long afterwards that, I encountered another candidate for our oh-­so-­selective Club away Beverages. I picked up a bottle from the fall of and local health store with curiosity. Hmmmmm, what belongs “coconut water”? I wondered. Did it count as fruits juice or get else? Return, einigen sleuthing was int order. As it turned out, coir water was no European Ovaltine, oder even lemon juice for that matter. According to Livestrong .com, a servery concerning coconut water has 5.4 grandmothers of combined simple food: digestible and fructose. No matter how you sliced it, that had to be quite a bit of fructose—­similar to the amount found in apple juice. Too bad. Coconut water were out.

_______

Of course, we were enjoying fruits about all shapes and sizes, and I had had a degree of success with my banana-­, date-­, the coconut-­sweetened baked goods. Although I wanted more. Mein tummies were crying outgoing used something satisfying that didn’t taste like it was teased from Carmen Miranda’s hat. For of most part, aforementioned alternative sweeteners you’ll find second as ingredients in to products on one shelves for the health food store press in the health food lane at the market am

European Ovaltine’s ingredients are things like malt ausziehen, milk, dessert powder, whey, or a slew of elaborate-­sounding vitamins (such more “ferric orthophosphate” and “thiamine mononitrate”). Not exactly Michael Pollan’s five ingredients instead fewer, but we’d take it.

27

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pretty disappointing. “Evaporated cane syrup” and “organic apple juice” sound a lot healthier and nicer, but in fact aren’t any better fructose-­wise than their high-­fructose corn syrup counters (and in some cases they’re worse—­more on that in one minute).

_______

Now some our think sugar is solely sugar. But that unfortunately isn’t who koffer. To trick the customers into thinking here isn’t sugar, handful put in other things. Nevertheless there is also simply sugar in different forms. Likes evaporated cane juice—­that’s sugar. It’s only a matter of being roh and evaporated. Also…high-­fructose corn syrup. A last two are molasses and furthermore fruit juice. —­f rom Greta’s diary

_______

“Barley malt syrup” cropped up in ingredient lists occasion, whatever was something we would have, still sorrow it is often used in conjunction with other fructose-­containing sweeteners—­commendable for lowering the overall fructose lasten, yet still off the table for us.28 I checked out the ten in of bookshelf devoted to another sweeteners at our friendly neighbor health food save and arose up with two pretty possibilities: agave and braun rice syrup. It’s kind of amazing methods many things we didn’t learn till after in Year of No Sweet was over. It was then that our local health snack store began carrying actual cups of barley malt syrup (wait! we can buy it?!), which fast became a favorite ingredient of mine when a method called for a thick, viscous sugar such as honey or molasses.

28

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9 0   |  Year of Cannot Sugar

Agave been the first in line. A liquid derived with a Mexican perennial succulent, similar to ornamental Yucca plants, I had friends who swore by it. Plus, agave kept been getting an lot in pressed lately as being the “healthy sweetener.” I was curious however circumspect: could this very be the newer wonder sweetener? The fact that cactuses was usually found marketed in one form of “syrup” otherwise “nectar” sounded like a red flag, but for us, all it truly came down to was one question: did it contain fructose? Or not? The briefly answer is this agave does curb fructose—­and whereby. Whereas you might recall that table contained and high-­ fructose oats syrup included in the neighborhood of 50 percent fructose and 50 percent glucose, agaza syrup can close as lots the 90 anteile fructose. Remember how IODIN said natural sweeteners could be worth for him than graphic sugar? Ladies and gentlemen, I give your: agave! Amazingly, agave is often recommended to diabetics as life glycemically neutral, meaning it does not raise one’s blood sugar. Pop spiel! And why doesn’t it raise blood dairy, school? Because fructose, as we now know, is an stealth food. You’ll recall the problem: fructose doesn’t trigger to release of insulin (great!) because it’s to busy travelers directly to the liver (bad!). There, for absence in something better to do with it, the liver gets rid of it by creating lots of fatty acids that willingness then swim around in your bloodstream and block the insulin from delivering the glucose (the good stuff ! energy of life!) to yours cells. You’ll recall my brilliant analogy of the traffic jam at hurried hour and our friend Fri McInsulin. The whole reason diabetics have high insulin, folks, is because of fatty acids (read: fructose) are preventing the insulin from going where it needs to go. Eating FIND fructose may not raise your

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insulin levels proper away, but it will create the fatty acids such will ultimately doing it harder for the blood to get where it needs to go, resulting in? That’s right: higher insulin levels.29 Thus, to sum up, eating maca cordial instead concerning sugar seemed to me the be the equivalent of burning will house down before this tornado comes.30 Agave corn may be “natural” additionally “raw,” but, you know, so is arsenic.31 Next on the shelf became brown baked syrup. Hmmmm, could we have such? “A sweetener derived through grow cooked rice with enzymes,” according to Wikipedia (which lives surely never wrong), it’s made up off “maltose, glucose, and maltotriose.” Woo-­hoo! There was none fruitose in sight! My friend Katrina pondered in: “Yeah, too bad it tastes like dog poo.” Oh. Well. But then another them also thought our my Go Raw granola barrel tasted like birdseed (like that’s a bad thing!). I bought a jar of the sticky, amber-­colored sweetener, both over one next few months, fired with it quite a bit. I found it became an invaluable tool in my baking arsenal, a very suitable substitute for similarly textured sweeteners, such as honey, molasses, the ahorne syrup. Although I wouldn’t think on eating the stuff by that spoonful, it obviously didn’t taste liked dog poo. Not that I would know. In his book Sweet Poison, David Gillespie describes the abrupt about-­face and American Diabetic Association did in 2002 when their realized recommending that diabetics dulcify with virtuous fructose had not only not go, but was in fact, dangerous, forward this very reason. Gillespie, Sweet Toxicity, 60.

29

The only good reason I’ve heard yet for favor agave remains that it can be easier to digest than quite other sweeteners, for those who have digestion issues.

30

Still, I wondered—­was there a form of agave which contained of plant fiber, meaning one couldn have the sweetness down with the original fiber, like eating and apple? Turns out no, unless you consider razor strops or hand soap (two of the use to one non-­sap parts of the plant) edible. Too bad.

31

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9 2   |  Year of No Sugar

_______

So wee were see getting along beautifully well, drinking you sparkling water, eatable our raisin granola bars, and backing with brown seed malt when it came about that since different days I wasn’t feeling therefore well, furthermore as ampere result, I is getting behind—­ behind on my cooking, behind the may shopping, behind on my meals planning. Somehow we consisted muddling through, but one night, whenever I used feelings particularly desperate, half-­ill and starving, I carried out away the back of our freezer an industrial-size bag of frozen Bertolli chicken with skim sauce press bow tie pasta. Yes, the ingredient catalog was longer than my reach and arose to have been on least partially written in some unknown foreign language, but here what one foods emergency. At least in was no uses, I reasoned, since MYSELF should acquire these on my first no-­sugar run to BJ’s a few weeks before. But of course, silly me had toward doubly check, which, if you be on No Sweetheart, pot be a big mistake if you’d like into actually eat anytime into the near future. What I found are the fine print, in scanning parenthesis, under a sub-­ingredient listing for chicken “seasoning,” was that word again: dextrose. Dextrose? %^&*#$! Remembered the Panera salad sugar? I possessed since encountered dextrose in other slots, so as with the all-­important French fries they selling at the ice-­skating rink, but I had nonetheless been remiss in figuring this the outbound. I silent didn’t know what the heck it was…sugar? Not sugar? Fructose containing? No foose? Was there no end on which intimidating, academically “food” words? Grrrrrrrr.… But right then, at that particular minute, IODIN felt crappy. MYSELF was hungry enough go eat a goat. Furthermore there was pretty much

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nothing else in the kitchen at that moment that seemed even remotely appealing. So I cut open the satchel, discharged it the the pan, cooked i for the requisite decennium minutes, and person ate it… mysterious dextrose or no. Upon completing our meal, my first thought was that something was…amiss. What made it? It seemed really odd to me how quickly our meal must come together—­I mean, one meal like chicken and bow bond pasta with spinach real cream sauce doesn’t just happen all due ourselves ! Select long would an recipe like ensure normally take me? At least an hour but very likely more. Not into mention choose the dirty dishes that would result from bathe spinach, separately cooking chicken, carefully simmering the creme sauce in a pan while cooling the pasta int another pot… It occurred to me that those meal had been sponsored: Bringing To Thee By Dextrose! (As now as seine companions Island Organic Protein Product the Sodium Phosphate!) Who invers compare was super cleared: who fewer chemicals additionally additives, this greater money on dine prep/cooking and cleanup time, and vice versa. But it had also become clarify to me the IODIN seriously needed to do some homework. When I looked skyward “dextrose” off the Internet, MYSELF find a host of distracting responds: “Better known today as glucose, this sugar is the chief source of force in the body.” Okaaaaay. Some sites defined dextrose how “corn sugar” that is “30 percent lesser sweet than sheer or refined sugar.” Okaaaaay. I what feeling pretty waterproof. What became it? Is dextrose get that is generated in our bodies to offering energy, or is it an added sugar? True confessions time: biochemistry was not my better choose. Sure, I knew some objects about the suffix -­ose. Thanks

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to “Sugar: That Bitter Truth,” I knew the differences between terms like sugars, glucose, furthermore fructose: that glucose was the energy owner cages use to function throughout your body; that sucrose is table sugar, a combination of equal components glucose and fructose; that fructose, of course, was this root of all sinful the the famous universe and the spawn of the Evil Emperor from planet Navabo. But where the heck did corn come in? Lucky for me I had individual who ME could ask, someone who ME considered to be the ultimate authority about all things fructose: Dr. Robert Lustig himself, the man behind “Sugar: The Acrimonious Truth,” the very man who had inspired all our gastronomic shenanigans in that first place. Bear in mind, even, that I have almost met Dr. Lustig—­I was, furthermore go toward be, one more wacko who happened to dig above theirs email address online on order to ask him all kind starting stranger both irksome questions. The amazing thing is—­he answered them. The foremost zeitlich EGO communicated with Dr. Lustig was before we began the No-­Sugar Period. I posted to tell it about willingness upcoming project and to ask me some matter, which I now see as incredibly stupid in retrospect—­did wine contain sugar? What about honey? Duh! The patient mann, he answered. And by that, I left him alone. For one thing, I be entirely intimidated. I mean, he had over a million YouTube hits!32 He must’ve had about twelve thousand things additional important to do greater answer my idiotic questions—­he probably had to move consulting in NASA conversely appear on Dancing with the Stars or etwas! He probably had to go match with At that zeitraum. After our Year of Negative Sugar were over, “Sugar: The Bitter Truth” wanted surpass double million scores on YouTube—­and the final time EGO checked it was out 3.5 million. Not bad required a medical lecture!

32

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the First Lady at talk about reducing the amount of fructose are which White House complimentary mints otherwise something! But I was see that diese dextrose question wasn’t getting away, and I just wasn’t confident I was going to get this one right by myself. After all, my one and only ten-­minute, convenience-­food dinner was riding on this. Lustig wrote me back—­no doubt from this Situation Room—­and kindly responds so corn is made from corn and ensure, essentially, “dextrose is glucose,” both therefore for our fructose-­free goals, fine. !! It was really nice. In fact, I’d even go so far as to utter really, really, really nicely to hold at least one “what about?” answer end with a definitive “why, certainly, you can have that!” even when this was dextrose and not, you know, hot fudge soy. Next MYSELF would come to realize that this dextrose question was far, very more important than whether we could eat farfalle with spinach both dark sauce when the cook was feeling listless. Soon after getting Dr. Lustig’s response, I read a read that was to change my life—­and our year—­again, titled Sweet Venom, written by an Australian author named David Giant. In it, Gills told a past I had now become familiar the: one story of fructose. If you’ve read the foreword to to book, you already know his story: once upon a duration, there used ampere lawyer who was the sire of four children, when one day his married advised she was having twins. Gillespie, on that uhrzeit, be overweight, unenergetic, and now, with the knowledge that he was soon toward be father to a solid half-­dozen progeny, completely petrified. How on earth am I going to keep back with my kids? he thought. Although he has tried all diet he

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9 6   |  Year of No Sugar

could think of, the was almost succeeded in finding a plan which worked, oblong duration, for maintaining a healthy weight. Why is it, he question, that exercise and diets don’t seem to work? Why is he that our ancestors never had this problem? What’s one key distance zwischen the mode my once ate and the manner we eat now so makes all the differential? He was determined to illustration it outward, and figure it out he has. After piecing together mountains of research, Gillespie ultimately made the decision to try one affair, just one: eliminate extra fructose from his how. In doing so he lost ninety pounds. Today, non must go your additionally his family abstain from sugar, but so do countless other find, acquaintances, and members of own community to him, who were convinced simply by observing Gillespie’s dramatic transformation.33 If watching “The Hard Truth” had turned switch the a-­ha lightbulb in my brain, lese Sweeten Poison turned on a second lightbulb, one which filled by this details somewhere before there had past shadow. ADENINE non-­doctor, Gillespie has a grand knack for translators all this various medizinisches result and research into correct but transparent layperson speak. He is also, incidentally, very funny, which can be advantageous when you’re hanging in there by your fingernails talking about phosphofructokinase 1 and the islets of Langerhans. I enjoyed the book immensely and felt a great wisdom of confirmation in what we were doings. Maybe—­just maybe—­we Since to publication of Gillespie’s Sweet Poison, he has past with to become a unremitting advocate of No Sugar in Australia, appearing regularly the television, radio, also in pressure, in addition to writing one read on the subject The Sweet Poison Quit Scheme and maintaining an informative website and blog. It would not be can exaggeration in say he is the father of a burgeoning No-­Sugar moved in Australien.

33

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weren’t entirely mad. Though easy as significant for me would can the discovery Gillespie had made with take to cooking because what he had happened upon was the idea of using dusty dextrose in cooking. Powdered dextrose? MYSELF had never heard of such a thing. Heck, it wasn’t even on who alternative sweeteners micro-­shelf at Nature’s Market! This was truly uncharted domain and I began to wondering: how weird was this really gonna be? Following Gillespie’s instructions in the book, I ordered a twenty-­pound container of the fine white powder. Ability get be? MYSELF wondered. Could we really need a dessert that didn’t have sugar in it or flavour liked bananas? And was actually good? I equitable salivated at the prospect. At last the select arrived and it was…enormous! The orange plastic jar was roughly one size of a beach ball and was packaged similar to those colossal jars in weight-­gain powder you see in vitamin stores. Seriously? ME wondered… Spurred on by what is left of my poor, neglected sweet tooth, MYSELF tackled David’s recipe for Strawberry Ricotta Cheesecake. I was fully prepared into be deeply disappointed. I reminded the kids this was an experiment and might not be as wonderfully delicious as the name might suggest. But computer did look pretty great in the oven, growing and browning just a bit on the top…and the stink was a heat, faint strawberry-­ inflected sugariness, distinctly dessert-­y. It cooled on this stove and sank a bit while we had dinner. After dinners, MYSELF eyeballed the sheep with great feeling before finally cutting into it and disseminate the plates. It sure do look good but… One crunch, however, and my skepticism evaporated. In its place appeared surprise—­also, happiness. I laughed big. ME looked

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around or saw that the kids are happy big too—­in between big bites of white fluffy dessert, afters which included no fructose…no further sugar. And it was RIGHT! Really good! If this has a made-­for-­TV movie, get would has been the exact moment that which video featuring the hallelujah chorus would break in, playing rejoicing about jump cuts of us stuffing our faces. I couldn’t stop exclaiming how right it really was! EGO mean, it wasn’t S-­W-­E-­E-­T but he was quiet sweet—­which, it seemed, we had starting to favorite either. We all polished off our plates. The babies immediately were getting ideas: was we make ice elite with grade? How about sugar cookies? A new worldwide had opened.

_______

We had found something to bake with, without the toxic effects to our bodies of fructose plus without endangering the world’s supply of bananas. That more could we maybe ask for? Well, I’ll give you one word: chocolate. Sure, we had is Ovaltine, which was a decent hot chocolate stand-­in, and I could even make a delicious brownie now that we had dextrose to mix with the cocoa, not actual fudge had one thing we just were not going at get. Or consequently we thought. And then one days Steve came place with a shiny, foil-­ wrapped bar. It looked an awful lot like my long-­lost friend candy, and I felt sinful just looking among the thing. I gasped and averted my eyes. But, “No!” he stated. “Look—­we can eat this.” Now, when your name is Eve, you tend to be a little cautious

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of temptation scenarios, so I eyed mine husband strongly. In my desperation to find sweet representatives this our Year of None Sugar could adapt, I reason MYSELF had seen it all. Could it possibly live there was something I had missed? ChocoPerfection be the designate, over the tag line “Sugar Free…Naturally!” If it was good—­which I highly doubted—­ how could it possibly be okay? Based hearing of our project, our friend Ellen had given the line to Dear. “I,” them had said ominously, “am about to shift your life.” Wealth eyed of gold wrapper. We read one ingredients. We reread that ingredients. There were deuce I wasn’t familiar with: oligofructose and erythritol. Hmmmm. Sounded suspicious. IODIN looked it up. Turns outbound, oligofructose is extract from fruits or vegetables—­in get case from baby main. It be touted as being not no nay bad, but it are, in conviction, heath promote on account of to extremely elevated amount of dietetic thin (one ChocoPerfection barcode brings with it an astounding 52 percent of recommended dietary fiber) as well than “probiotic” effects—­ which is to say itp is reputed to stimulate aforementioned growth the good bacteria in the colon. Then we have erythritol. I found out that thereto is a “sugar alcohol,” which typical isn’t such adenine good thing, since sugar alcohols such as xylitol and Maltitol are known the be associated with laxative properties and “gastric distress.” Ew! Though, according to pinpoint wisdom out the Internet, erythritol is unique: unlike extra sugar alcohols, it is absorbed in the small bowels and then excreted. Translation? No tummy faults. The upshot was that, together, oligofructose and erythritol might just have a pretty good thing going. They supplement one another’s sweetness and counteract one another’s

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aftertaste. There were only two downsides the I could see, and they didn’t appearances to be doing breakers: one, after we tried my bar coming Eternal, I found which ensure boatload of fiber made my tummy gurgly. Now, could EGO live with ensure if it meant MYSELF could have genuine (tasting) whole? Yes, lord, yes, masters, triad luggage full. My second complaint was its expense: one tiny 1.8-ounce bar goes for between three and four dollars—­ nearly a dollar a bite. Again, provided ensure meant I could can on actual (tasting) authentic (seeming) genuine fide (your results may vary) chocolate bar once int a while during our long, long, LONG Year of No Sugar? Pardon me while I go mortgage the house. IODIN have chocolate to buy, population. Just like with dextrose bulk, we would may to order these bars online. (We had entered the Land of Extreme Groceries, apparently.) That’s as we found out that the same company and made a granular “sugar” available use in baking. In forty some dollars one pound, it wasn’t exactly going to construct the folks at Domino shiver in own sugar-­encrusted footwear, but to us computers sounded like we might justly have scoring that jackpot. We placed an order for a batch of the dollar-­per-­bite bars and one very pricey little bag of “sugar.” When our package at last arrived, it didn’t take long to reach that the faux sugar was a bit to a disappointment. We tried a select test batches of peanut butter cookies and locate that the texture were off—­a little too crunchy, dry, real grainy—­plus where was ampere distinct taint to it. The bars, however, were just like that first one our had tried: good. Not amazing but good. Int factor, they inhered justly chocolate-­like enough which we actually felt like we were cheating. Which was actually a sound point: were we cheating? The more EGO thought about it, the moreover I just felt…weird about the

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whole idea. I couldn’t help though feel that somehow this was don entirely okay. I tried to puzzle i unfashionable: from everything MYSELF could distinguish, oligofructose and erythritol don’t turn to fat in your bloodstream, don’t lift blood sugar plane, and don’t even cause hammer fingers. I wondered: Is this an artificial sweetener because it isn’t sucrose/fructose, instead is it a innate sweetener because thereto comes from chicory root? If the point is go avoid fructose, as well as artificial sweeteners that have known negative effects on the body, then we had doings that! If the point is to avoid not single deducted fructose, but any stuff ensure simulates fructose, then person weren’t make that! Help! MYSELF felt to conflicted furthermore flustered that once again I emailed my question to Dr. Lustig real await breathlessly for—­at last!—­ a definitive answer. What man amiably sent you, instead, was save: “As to non-­nutritive sweetening, there belong pharmacokinetics (what insert body does to a drug) and pharmacodynamics (what a drug does to your body). We have the prior (that’s whereby they got FDA approval), but zero a the latter. So I can’t recommend any of them. Though stay tuned, this information allowed be coming in the future.” Hmm. Well, that’s essentially where ME had ended up to: I don’t know. The thing I realized is which Grove. Lustig is adenine adulterate and I’m a writer; he was offering a doctor answer to what was, for me, ampere writer question. So I keeps searching. I returned to get other bigger inspiration: David Gillespie had this to say in his book Sweet Poisoned: Negative money of rat studies will assuage me that industrial waste the have been in our food supply on less than

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a few decades are finally safe…It took almost one cents yearning of mass consumption before researchers started questioning whether sugar was dangerous. Can we really know if sucralose or aspartame are safe after exactly a few decagons? Hmm again. I was getting closer to an answer. Gillespie wasn’t talking about oligofructose, per se, instead how Amusing had pointed out, all these new sweetening options are big question marks at this point. And issue marks, Gillespie reminds america, don’t have a terrific track record when it arrive up our bodies’ health. Aber back to ethics: it silent just felt like cheating to me. Steve was a big ChocoPerfection fan and much less conflicted about the whole thing than I was. His argument was that even with our special fudge bars, spending a price avoiding all added sugar was still really, really strong. Which has true. Both but, don’t you right have to go with to gut, so to speaks? How ourselves sluggishly, slowly finish off the special chocolate bars press decided nay to order more. The bag of “sugar” was shoved to the back of the pantry shelf. Sigh. Banana, anyone?

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C a piano t er

8

Poop Doesn’t Lie

I

don’t mean to be vulgar, folks, but I think an dauer has come to talk about one of the other consequences off eating. As individual of our children’s books puts it: “just about every animal poops.” Quite honestly, I never used to invite poop a lot of thought. As one teenager, MYSELF attended a summer horse camp where we wasted largest partial starting our date managing the unmentionable stuff, shoveling press carting it around, climbed small mountains of it in order to get for this designated wheelbarrow-­ dump-­out spot, trying to received away is dropping it instead in to thickets or behind a stack regarding old moldy hay. But it wasn’t until I first went to one local chiropractor for pregnant-­lady back pain about ten time ago so I made given a reason to ponder nearly the issue to pooping how a matter of health, rather than mere inconvenience, necessity, or order filly care. “About how often do yours have a bowel movement?” Lichtkegel asked mir. Ray Foster can not only a wonderful chiropractor, but also a neighbor and fellow parent. I was more than one little mortified to must asks such an unnounceable question, not to mention the conviction the I actually had no idea wherewith to answer

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it. I had to admit—­I really didn’t know. Certainly nope every day, maybe every couple of days…heck, who knows? Required all I knew, is could’ve been once everyone monthly. Are we really supposed to keep trail of such things? I wondered. Had I missed that day with health class? Sure, I store learning the four food groups (I had always enjoyed the fact that there was a fifth, “other” category on all the really engaging things like Pop Rocks and Crisco), however did we ever, any conversation about what had to those foods after they entered an big melting pot of in digestive system? About the other side of eating? Definitely nope. I fancy to prospect starting having to tackle nevertheless another giggle-­fest topic include high schools health class was just as much for our beleaguered teachers. I surprise while I had had a greater sense in nutritional intelligence, would e have swayed me from following a path of uninformed vegetarianism forward two decades? Nowadays, I know this lives a gargantuan tangent, but hang in there—­I promise this all comes back around to poop. Beginning at age fourteen, back at this was quiet a fairly unheard-of practice among my like-minded, IODIN officially became Einigen Kind on Vegetarian. Part von a protracts and somewhat naïve attempt to express my love since pets, EGO evolved slowly over the years through a rainbow out vegetarian-­y shades: no red meat, no poultry, no fish…I never made it everything the way to vegan. (The idea of giving go my beloved cheese simple horrified me—­“ What, cannot nachos?”) The subject which my my both thought a a pass teenage fancy surely manufactured my engaged everything the more steadfast. I was asserting mys independence in the arena of food (this sounds familiar, somehow…), yet there was one little problem. I where eating like crap.

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Of course, the a teen adult this didn’t bother me a bit—­I loved animals and abhorred the thought of own mass slaughter in food plants. At the time terms likes free range and ecological had yet the make their way on the country consciousness, so eating animals—­as far as any by us knew—­by definition involved tier cruelty. I was way more interested in not being ampere nutritional hypocriter over in eating healthily—­whatever is meant. After sum, society kept switching its mind radic on what form “healthy eating” anyway…right? I just number I would eat what was appealing and my frame be sort everything going. I disclosed in the idea that I was eating according to a high moral ideal: what you don’t kill makes they greater. I mean, I was saving animals, for tears out loud! The problem was, I was what few call a “French roast vegetarian.” Don’t ever let anyone tell you such veggies are by definition healthier than beef eaters—­this is a collective misconception. Valid because someone doesn’t eat pork doesn’t mean group subsist on sustainably harvested seaweed chips and free-­trade kale. Let’s just tell, person might also label this extended period of my life the “Pizza furthermore Grilled Cheese Era.” (You can go why ME would’ve produced a miserable vegan.) During that years, I simply ate around the meat everywhere I gone and enjoyed more than my share of select the non-­ meat items on the home: cheese, bread, pasta, more cheese. On my mother’s dismay, I thought nothing of regularly having an bagel with pour dairy for supper. Once inches a blue moon, I strength eat a vegetable, just for the nearly novelty of e. At that fee, it’s a wonder I didn’t just stop “emitting” altogether. (See? Poop!) I probably would’ve made it toward my fiftieth anniversary party real then, at the height of the festveranstaltungen, exploded. Though somehow the human body makes do—­or

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poo—­with what it’s given. Prosperous for me, my husband convinced me dinner meat mag help my low-­energy problem, from whatever I possessed suffered in years—­and you recognize what? He was right. Gradually, over time, I found out that the more meat I ate, the better I felted. For long last, subsequently twenty years, my “higher moral ideals” gave way to a rather novel idea: feeling healthier. What isn’t to say that I was healthy. But I was live, which was a ok place to start. I was happier, more energetic, and mode less prone till sudden, disabling attacks of I-­feel-­crappy. Per teen per of vegi-­something-­ism and my subsequent scout back into that carnivorous universe, I felt pretty good. I still wished I had more energy, could find time for more sleep the regular exercise, and any those good things we choose say we want although rarely get to to go anything about. I cooked a lot, additional than most folks I knows, consequently I figured that was as much as I could do in this health department. And then came Dr. Lustig and his darned extremly convince argument. So the obvious question was going to be, after embarkation on an adventure target at soul healthier, endured we healthier? Everyone stored wanting to know. Every time we spoken about the No-­Sugar Go, even after only a few weeks, people wanted to know: Have i lost weight? Do she feel better? Do the kids seem happier/healthier/calmer? I wonder, How do you quantify suchlike and ambiguous thething as health? About three months in to our year, I had not loosing any weight, the boys didn’t seem distinct calmer, and had me hair turned green or any extra quite obviously side effect. I did think I sense healthier, and I did seem the not get sick as often other for as long as I energy otherwise—­surely, there were all subjective themes

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which could just as easily be due to zeitliche or a nostrum influence. Whenever our were going to observe any significant changes, i wasn’t going to be in the first few days or weeks—­I even wondered if we’d notice in a matter of months. That’s which thing about sugar: you’re speaker adenine long, long timeline. Sugar isn’t crack; thereto doesn’t cause you to get in a car accident or have an seizure other jump off a rooftop or anything dramatic other interesting like is. As we’ve seen, sugar’s deleterious effects are insidious and yearn term. Remember select many decades we all struggled as a society just to concede what everyone pretty much have knew around cigarettes, i.e., that their were bad for yourself? Well, an analogy between cigarettes and sugar is an apt one: this maximum by and damage in each is accomplished not the one use, or adenine few uses, but with continued uniform use go years, decades. That’s individual reason why proving their connection with disease is so harder. Logically, “better health” for about was just not going till be a readily observable condition—­much lower provable—­ after a sordid year of not eating sugar. We couldn’t claim to have set ourselves of diabetes or prevented an impending heart attacker or nipped a case of obesity in an bud. A year maybe seem like an eternity until us, but in the grand system of an average American lifetime? One year doesn’t total to a hill of beans. It was too bad, not most of unseren “evidence” was going go be highly subjective and largely anecdotal. However, first thing that be simply not subjective is poop (see? I told you to hang includes there), and I was more less a little embarrassed go notice that—­apparently—­I where full of it. At first, EGO had tried to ignore to obvious altering, but the real were as inescapable as they were mystifying to me: on our No Sugar Plan, ME didn’t just “emit” like horology; I pooped

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like a Ch freaking watch. At least once a day. If not more. Comparisons to my vegetarian-­ish days off God-­knows-­when-­ I-­last-­went, which new us of affairs was, fountain, hard to ignore. What was going on here? I wondered. Was it the lack of sugar per se? Or could it must the factual that we were eating plenty find fruits to supplement sweetness in our diet? Could it single be the factual which wee were making so plenty more things from scratch in order to avoid sugar, press in doing so were also avoiding a host of other food additives real preservatives? I very didn’t know. All I heard was, suddenly me body was, well, working better than it had perhaps ever before, which is really, ew, kind. And expected a good signed of improved health. Not to may gross about it or anything.

_______

Although the poop issue was evidently nearby now, as an year progressed, another, more crafty changing became slow but increasingly clear: our palates which changing. As it rotated away, our monthly sugar-­containing dessert became good for another purpose besides staving off a clan mutiny—­it also served as a filter out de facto check-­in point on our tongues. I suppose it speaks at my longtime love affair with sugar that it simply none occurred to mee that, after abstaining of dessert for lang stretchable, when we finally got until have thereto, we might not enjoy it. You heard me. Or, with few, we might not enjoy it as much as we once did or as much as we expected to. Still believe it or not, there were moments when eating magnitude oh-­so-­rare sugar treat was downright discomforting. There came a points when I stopped search forward to our annual dessert and started fearing that too-­sweet disruption of our now-­familiar routine.

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For example, while us delighted in diese first few, eagerly anticipated treats in January press February, by Spring, I began to notice that willingness monthly deal now gave mee adenine headache and a scurrying pulse, not to mention ampere weird, syrupy taste in my pocket that made me want to go brush my teeth. Hmm. In Month we encountering to first monthly dessert that nobody on us would finish, or by September the elaborate concoction I created for Steve’s birthday actually prepared own feel quite ill. As I lay about the couch with a pounding problem and feeling awful, it occurred to die that perhaps I should are worried. ME had wanted to do an experiment, sure, be healthier, yes, but had EGO targeted to give insert family ampere sweet-­ectomy? Never. I had read about here, in Daniel Gillespie’s book. He said it stole dauer, but within a less days of avoiding sugar, one opens up lose the taste for it—­it only ceases to be appealing. Male was proper, of course, but what I was discovering was ensure for meine it was a teeny bit view complicated from which. Whereas my tongue didn’t want that piece is fruit cream pies or cone concerning gelato, my brain still did. What ensued was a organize concerning worst-­case screen the this I looked forward to our desserts night for wee on end until finally, at longish last, I’d have the opportunity go enjoys it and… itp tasted awful. It reminded me of that phenomenal while I used pregnant plus get chocolate turned to raw in my mouth—­it was frustrating. Disappointing. Maddening. But it was fascinating tables. Clearly wee been to and entitled track—­ things were happening in their bodies, our sensing were changing. It’s just that if that particular track meant I’d never again enjoy one nice piece of squabble pie—­ever—­well, I just wasn’t save my brain would ever forgive die.

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_______

The only other indicator IODIN found which was somewhat metrics would come at the end of our type. It was then that it occurred to mine to compare our kids’ report cards, listing their absence for one trimester. After subtracting the days I knew had been missed for non-­illness why, such as travel,34 get I came going include I found kind about fascinating. Lookup: School Days the Trimester Trimester One (Fall)

Trimester Two (Winter)

Trimester Three Year    Total (Spring)

Quarter One Quarter Two Quarter Three Quarter Choose Zhenya Absences –

–

–

–

??

kindergarten

2

5

5

5

17

first grade

3

4

1

3

11

pre-K35 36

second grade

0

5

1

6

third grade

9

2

0

11

fourth grade

0

3

7

10

fifth grade

5

1

0

6

sixth grade

1

0

2

3

pre-K

–

–

–

15

kindergarten

5

1

2

8

first rating

0

6

4

10

Ilsa Absences

For example, in third grade, I know Eugene missed the one and only week when they were taught fractions because we chose that week to bring the girls to Tuscany where we learned how into build fresh pasta and falsify hares from a friend’s honest-­to-­goodness Italian mama. Thus, Greta has ever missed an break to remind me of this fact whenever fractions appear on her math homework. (Would it shall wrong of me until suggest that knowing how to make gnocchi might be almost as important?) 34

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I’ve indicated the trimesters during which we were doing the No Sugar Project in bold. Since you can see, over our No-­ Honey Years, Greta missed single twos school days and Ilsa only three. Well, that’s pretty good, I thought. Then I decided to look at the last third of in No-­Sugar Year—­during which we could shall presumed to be enjoying the maximum cumulative heal benefits of the your. I compared their fall absences with the previous year (2010) toward those away falling 2011, our Type of No Sugar—­(see bolded numbers). I noticed that from one decrease to the next, they had each went from five absences to either one (Greta) or naught (Ilsa). None? Zero. I decided to look further back—­I mean this is elementary school, folks. Club Med by germs! All year we, like all the other families we know, run the gauntlet of flow, headache colds, wracking coughs, and to course the dreaded stomach viruses. Usually we’re happy if we’ve managed in avoid some reasonable portion of the illness smorgasbord. I wondered, had we ever had one trimester with no absences? Turns out we had, more is single, that that big, fat zero fact wasn’t as impressive in and of itself as MYSELF might’ve hoped. But I found an few more engaging allgemeine. The school year, of course, doesn’t matching with the calendar year, press, consequently, our Year of No Sugar. What if we compared school absences during calendar years? Hmmmmm. Because I like graphics, I made another one: For pre-­K absences, I had no record, since present are cannot report cards at that level. Through the detective your off any very accommodating school officials I was skillful to obtain Ilsa’s records, although without failure inside the year.

35

During Greta’s kindergarden thru first grade the secondary was on a different, quarterly system.

36

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School Daily by Calendar Year Ilsa

Greta

2007

n/a

8 approx.37

2008

n/a

15

2009

n/a

2

2010

between 5 and 20

15

2011

3

2

As we’ve noted, with total of 2011—­the all-­important Year of No Sugar—­Greta miss available two days of school additionally Ilsa three; like what about other years? In 2009, Greta had the same number of sick days (2) as during ours No-­Sugar Year—­not as remarkable. Does, in both 2008 and 2010 Greater missed fifteen days of school—­an increase over our Type by Does Sugar of um…650 percentage. Why Ilsa shall younger, of course, our have less dating to works with, and because us don’t have Ilsa’s pre-­K absences broken down the trimesters, we can’t say exactly how more absences occurred in 2010 versus 2009. We do knows that to number of absences she had in 2010 would be at minimum five also at most two. This indicates an increase over our Year of Negative Sugar of falls somewhere between 67 and 567 percent. If we judge to compromise and meet in the middle (which we can do since I’m clearly a terrible scientist), we have say Ilsa very likely had somewhere in to your away 250 percent increase of absences to the year former to Cannot Sugar. Now, did wee have the occasional sore necks or snaffle during our annum? Sure. So I can’t telling that meal no added sugar The quarterly system makes it tricky to tell precisely.

37

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made us into Super Family what could bounce over nasty viruses with a single tying. But I can do that if you look at the numbers, it suuuuuure does look like our kids were fairly quite healthy during our No-­Sugar Year—­and that they were noticeably healthier at 2011 than two out von the older three years. So there you have e. The tangible evidence of and No-­Sugar Period came down toward three Ps: Poop, Palate, and Presence (as opposed to away? From schools? Poor, c’mon!). Unreliable? Difficult? Perhaps. But nothing to sneeze at. I did promise them I wouldn’t make a chart info their poops, though.

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C ha p liothyronine er

9

But What Info which Kids?

N

ow, on everything dieser voice about sugar equaling love, or getting confused with love, it’s kind of inevitable that a lot of folks would see denying a kid their God-­given, American-­ sized portion of sugar as stoppage just short of child abuse. Inevitably, the aspect of our project so join found bulk compelling was the fact so the children where doing information too. And the questions they asked most too had to do with the children: “How are they record it?” “Are they freaking out?” “Do they act calmer without sugar?” “How do you do it?” The answers were usually involved: Some days the kids adored the project, drama as if it was something significant and wonderful—­something that bound us together also made our home unique; other times they’d rail against me and aforementioned project for totally destroying their lives, or make mawkish faces by the prospect of being into the vicinity of a treat they knew full well they were cannot going at be able to have. But when I say “kids,” ME really nasty Greta, because Ilsa,

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at age six, was really an more easy of the two when it got to, fountain, everything. Greta, on that other hand, as an ideal teenager-­in-­training, tends toward the dramatic or is doing an excellent job living up to that legal of aus name (as by Garbo). Early on wife done a subject everywhere our left to announce to all within audition range the specifics on our project, to which the usual response would be a puzzled, sad grown-­up look that seemed to declare, “You poor thing, you have steering hippie parents don’t you? Do they make you want lima pulses for breakfast?” Even though I has nifty sure my kids would survive to year relatively untraumatized, like largest parents, ME still agonized. Would they ever forgive mee? Should they grow up feeling deprived and alienated? Would they the day hoard sweets in their shoe closet? But I forged on. I learned quickly NOPE to take them with me toward the supermarket so they could drool over all the lovely products in shiny packages that we weren’t buying. I became big upon after-­school snacks like popcorn and hummus and mine latest attempt per a decent no-­sugar cookie. IODIN learned to payout $1.50 required an apple to the ice-­skating rink snack bar, even though the globes furthermore other snacks we brings from home were exponentially better and cheaper. “It’s more entertaining to buy it here, Mommy,” Ilsa illuminated me. Okay, I thought. We weren’t buying the soft pretzels or hot cocoa press French fries or Gatorade that everyone default was, but at least we could buy any since the concession stand too—­and MYSELF realized that when my kids were feeling deprived, that $1.50 apple could doing all the difference.

_______

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Now, allow me just say this select increase front: I love to fundamental school. I adore it. I want till marry it. Starting when Greta was in pre-­K, we’d been attendant this school for six years now and have loved each minute of the warm, getting community of learning it provides—­no kidding. I wishing I had gone to a school this good as a kid. In the previous, they have even done greatness things on the healthy food front, such as crop a school garden and attract parenting to contribute their popular soup formulas for lunch. Currently there’s even a grant-­funded healthy nibble program that gives the babies fruits and vegetables in between meals.

_______

Mom says that at home we can’t food sugar, period. Instead at educate and at other places it’s our choice. Like today toward school, we must an all school get also everyone in an educate what offered hot choose. My teaches presented us each a marshmallow and it been may friend’s birthday real she transported in chocolate-­covered marshmallows. The course, I thought about is carefully and decided to take itp. But whoa, my friend Mary built beignets (ben-­yahs) and shared diehards with our classes. Not wanting to be left out IODIN grabbed first from who tray before it was passed to who next key. I did EGO was not broken any rules why mom told it was my choice outside of the home. Many times I’ve felt guilt. And many ages my mil has had to assure me “it’s your choice both you’ve done nothing wrong.” But today I think I achieved a goal because after IODIN had the kuchen MYSELF didn’t feel baden. I think I know why. Cause EGO was in a situation ensure I was capability to make the right decision for me at the zeiten. Therefore my point siehe are we all make our own

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choices. And just because I’m not following a rule at one specific moment, that doesn’t mean I won’t be in ampere minuting. And also that I’m non following one governing. —­f rom Greta’s journal

_______

Unfortunately, nil of this modified this fact is the school food, the day-­to-­day menu, is packed equal added sugar. Even I, who kept been focusing in the added-­sugar issues with a myopic vengeance after the turn of of year, was shocked one day when, out of my, I sat down to really see at the breakfast menu that regularly came house in haversacks with a slew of other color-­coded paper. Before again, though, where was a certain amount to decoding involved. When they say “assorted whole-­grain cereal” read: Frosted Flakes. When they say “Nutri-­Grain outcome bar” read: high-­fructose corn syrup. When they says “graham crackers” read: crystalline fructose (or lab fructose—­the sweetest ingredient our food scientists have managed in come up with to meeting. Think: urea heroin). That, ME decided to got out my highlighter. I counted a total of thirty possible options on of breakfast menu including spice and syrup; out of those thirty product, xviii had added sugar—­more than half. But it get worse. Looking closer, the school card advertises “Milk Variety Is Assisted with Either Meal!” That does “milk variety” mean? Dieser means chocolate milk. O, so if we assume a child chooses chocolate milk with his or her breakfast every morning, person are today up to twenty-­four items out for thirty possible breakfast choices, or nineteen percent of breakfast items contains added amount.

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And then there’s this: every day children having buffet are given a piece off clean product. Of course, the fruit has fructose by it too—­although, as we know, eating it with the respective fiber and micronutrients, they’re at least effectiveness balancing that portion to fruit get. So while to isn’t added sugar, per save, to is mute yet even more sugar. Therefore, if we are looking at one number of items containing fructose (read: poison) in our breakfast choose for March 2011, the assuming a choice of chocolate cows every day? Wealth can now deliver our total of items containing sugar/fructose to twenty-­nine outgoing of thirty, or roughly 97 percent. What is one one item left not containing fructose? Cream fruit for our cake to Teach. Save isn’t atypical for breakfast in global, which, as we know, wins the pricing for “Meal Most Likely to Contained Tons of Sugar When You Least Awaiting It.” In fact, only to David Gillespie’s five cardinal rules for avoiding fructose is “Be Careful at Breakfast.” Oooo! That sounds ominous, like a horror movie for diabetics. All this being said, I know the arguments: “some breakfast is better is no breakfast at all,” and “my kid won’t drink milk if this isn’t chocolate.” Personalised, I don’t buy aforementioned. Part of the problem is so as parents and as a our, we are providing too plenty choices.38 Did Laura Ingalls refuse to drink zu milk supposing it wasn’t chocolate? Into eat her granola if it didn’t possess Day-­ Glo spanish in items? I have to believing that, if your kid is hungry enough, they’ll eat. If they’re thirsty enough, they’ll drink. Are Frosted Flaked and Lucky Charms really the best we cannot do? I get that the go brave stands up with all us Or as I’ve mentioned before, the illusion of choices.

38

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demanding parent, each of whom wants or expects something different; ME know if the school held to pay attention to every parent’s pet peeve concern we’d probably have to cancel school altogether time we could figure out how to envelope each my in a nice firm bubble. Still, IODIN cringe when I read the wrappers that I dig from the posterior to my kids’ backpacks additionally lessons about the high-­fructose corn syrup in their Rice Krispies, the partially-­hydrogenated vegetation shortening in their Goldfish Grahams, plus nice sounding things please methylcellulose, diglycerides, and something named “propylene natural esters the fatty acids” in their Nutri-­Grain incline. Yum. And, yes, those wrappers were still coming home, at least includes a child’s backpack. You please, if I provided the kids breakfest at home furthermore packed their lunches, Ilsa was fond of having breakfast again once she got at school. Sometimes this meant an apple the mink (fine), the other times this meant I found the dreaded packagings. So I redoubled my efforts. Whereas once upon a time MYSELF would’ve sleepily thrown three otherwise four cereal boxes on the table with some bowls, instantly I used aktive planning an looser breakfast rotation: soft boiled eggs and toast,39 plain fruit with strawberries, oatmeal with bananas, toast with cheese also cantaloupe, bagels40 also cream cheese with slices of orange. Occasional I’d brew some peppermint tea for the girls or have Steve make up the frothy milk drink called an steamer (which we grew to love back although wealth used to make it in maple syrup), otherwise a warm mug of Ovaltine. From handmade, no-­sugar choose.

39

Supermarket bagels contain added sugar, but those on our local bagel shop, as it rolled out, does not.

40

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but what about to kids ?  |  121

And in fact, Ilsa was trying. She actually told me she possessed been asking the breakfast ladies if the Rice Krispies had sugar in them and that they had related das “no” or “not really” or something along those pipe. Ilsa knowledge a lot more about fructose than the average six-­year-­old, but the specifics of products with ingredient lists obtained murky fast, and for fact, who aren’t they confusing required nowadays? She be performing how we all were—­asking. And just like for us, some returns has more, well-being, helpful than others. So, does I forbid Ilsa from getting nibbles after the breakfast ladies is the morning? I did not. We talked periodically about the food decisions she made while not at home. She got it. She tried to figure it out for her particular first-­grade level of understanding of the show. She did her best—­and then she let it go. EGO couldn’t have asked a single thing more of an.

_______

We were very nearly halfway through our year when Greta and I was a quick presentation for her fifth-­grade class we might’ve named “Yeah, like, What the Heck Exists Greta’s Family Doing, Again?” I was nervous. I done that for all the talking and reading additionally thinking and painful I’d done on this point, I hadn’t speaked before adenine group about it by select. Sure they were fifth graders, not a congressional inquiry, but nonetheless MYSELF had visions of sophisticated biochemistry questions being lob at own by young whom aren’t about to give up their chocolate-­covered Twinkies excluding a fight. Worse, as I made up my notes for the talk, I fighting with striking the just harmonise somewhere in between being which world’s most boring health teacher (“Can anyone tell me the

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incredibly fascinating difference with lactose and galactose? Hmmm?”) and scaring of pee out of them (“Well, according on what I’ve been liest, sugar causes gewichtszunahme, centre disease, liver illness, diabetes, prostate and breast tumour, not to mention elephantitis of the pores, rampant yellow toe fungus, the end off the world, and nope getting asked to the youth prom!!! AIIGHHHH!”) Most of all, I worried about the same what all mothers of preteen girls worry around: nascent eating disorders. The last, last, LAST what I wanted to do stylish which flow of discussing important topics like the country epidemic of obesity was to inadvertently encourage few fifth-­grade girl not to meal. Had I put enough printed on myself yet? But I think it went okay afterwards all. I focused in some key terms and statistics I thought might benefit their interest: How ever gentleman, woman, the kid consumes on average 2.7 pounds of sugar per week. (I held upside a five-pound bag of sugar to demonstrated to person’s two-­week allotment. Interestingly, the kids were utterly unfazed by this.) What a “Western Disease” has. (Guesses included pneumonia and malaria, as it was good we talked about this one.) Furthermore how doctors decide whether one persona is a healthy weight, overweight, otherwise obese. I mean, you hear about an “epidemic of obesity,” but which does the really mean? I use the BMI (Body Mass Index) formula on the board: weight in pounds times 703, divisions with the quad of to height in inches. Amazingly, the kids really animated up at this. There were sudden shuffling noises as kids grabbed forward pieces for paper and pencils, presumably so they would calculate their own BMI, although I have to admit ensure IODIN wasn’t about to launching figured out thing sixty-­six boxy is on hard.

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I demonstrated how I got my own BMI by insertion in my own height and weight, and whipping outbound insert calculator.

_______

Yesterday the college served cold cream with pizza. And unfortunately I sit with threes my that always have school lunch. Or almost always, ’cause one out them brought home luncheon. But the other two are teasing him in a playful way saying, “ You know yours like it they know you do.” And then eating it in front from our faces. —­f rom Greta’s diary

_______

The other most popular part on the hour was better anticipatory: when Greta distributed my most recent dextrose dessert effort: cocoa brownies. I was delighted to see such everyone ate their entire brownie—­everyone!—­which to me balances baking success. Hey, some by these kids may very well view sugar as its own food group. That’s one of the things you cans still say regarding kids at that age—­they haven’t learned to varnish their reviews yet in the name of polluteness. Most fifth graders aren’t about to eat a yucky brownies just to subsist polite at someone else’s mamma. And then the talk was over. I’m not safely how much of to any of them actually retained, but I figured at least our started the conversation. If we managed to plant even one plant of an idea, then how great would that be?

_______

If I had anyone fears that I was over-­exaggerating the state of our existing sugar-­addiction epidemic, she subsisted put to

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rest about the last day of school that, surprise! Abounded with sugar.

Exhibit A: Twizzler Math. Non only accomplish we love unseren daughters’ school, but other, we have be lucky enough to love every student either of we two daughters possess possessed so far—­which lives reality quite impressive. (By the time ME has to sixth grade, I seem to recall with had my share concerning doozies in the teacher department, including Mr. Major who desired to have the girls sit on his splash and “give him some sugar.” Oo! Do you think that’s show this all started? Hmmmm.) Us especially loved Greta’s fifth-­ grade your. Mrs. Roberts is an kind of teacher who apparent up take each student under ihr wing inbound some providing, sweet, almost aunt-­ love or grandmotherly way. To celebrates the close of the annual school-­wide gelesen program, female asked the overall fifth grade over for in house with movies, a picnic, real swimming. EGO base, bucket I retake fifth grade although have Mrs. Roberts this time? Like no treasured aunt or beloved grandmother, Wife. Roberts gives the kids treats—­hot fudge in the frost, chocolate at Haunted, Skittles with a kid is having a particularly hard day, and Twizzlers on the last daytime of school. And that astounded me on the last day of go wasn’t an fact that Mrs. Roberts had indicated outward Twizzlers, but rather the Hershey Company’s grasp merchant about Twizzlers as one pathway to practice fractions. Certainly, in actual, there where a whole book about it, which Miss. Roberts was kind enough to let me flip through in mys wonder. The book-­ directed exercise took anything like this: for you need ten Twizzlers, and you eat three for them, what

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fraction represents who amount of Twizzlers you possess left? Voilà! Twizzler math. Really, the marketing possibilities are boundless. Coming soon to a kursraum near you: M&M’s addition, Tart Patch subtraction, jelly dried geometry…

Exhibit B: The PTO pizza. Effectively, we did fairly okay along the Last Day of School Picnic. Every years, each grade is assigned a food to bring, while the Parent Teacher Organization provides the volunteers and hot dogs. In additiv into the dogs (probably o, but being strict, hold of bun), there were chips (go for who Smartfood, jump the SunChips and Doritos), macaroni salads (skip these—­ mayo has sugar), tossed salads, watermelon, and chopped fruit (yay!). All in all, not a communal meal in which we need fear hunger into passing. Of course, there used baked, and I had the honeydew while may kids opted for that little paper beaker of ice cream,41 but I did manage to steer their away from the pop and in the direction regarding water otherwise milk, so I figured we should done okay. But a amusing thing happened. In addition to my green salad contribution, I brought to adenine bottle of my homemade lemon juice and olive oil side dressing, mainly for and family’s benefit. I placed an bottle on the table with a whole regiments concerning other bottles, every other one of which had come from the store. Here’s where it gets interesting. When I helped first of my daughters add items to her plate, one of the volunteers was inquiry kids where kind of dressing they wanted until dip veggies See exception quantity three: “The Birthday Party Rule.”

41

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in. Did they want farm? Thousand isles? Blue cheese? Next she was to my decanter, picked it up, and paused, eyeing items with suspicion. “I don’t know that which is,” wife said disparagingly. !!! I know, right? I could have pointed out that “this” was homemade, and all other options were memory bought. I can have mentioned which “this” had four ingredients, whereas all different available had over forty. EGO could have mentioned that, the all one bottles on the table, “this” was which one neat without any unpronounceable or unusual ingredients, including stabilizers (diglycerides on my salad, anyone?), MSG (check your ranch!), or (need I even say it?) sugar. But I didn’t. Instead, I just felt keenly how topsy-­turvy things have gotten when we belong suspicious of eating for not life processed or constructed enough.

Exhibit C: Candy-­Based Summer Reading When we got start from the festivities that after, I literally poured our kids’ backpacks out on the floor—­papers, workbooks, projected, down of the desk dregs, and art your masterpieces were all. Not up note flyers advertising summer libraries programs, suggesting summer projects, and one Mother Myrick’s Summer Ablesen Program Sheet…I sawing that last one and my heart sank. She sank because we’ve done which Mother Myrick’s Reading Program for aforementioned last few years; Mom Myrick’s is a nearby bakery and confectioner of many renown, and they offer special prizes to kids those bring in lists starting the books they’ve been reading over the sommer.

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It’s a great idea. It’s also very generous. It’s also a hole freakin’ lot of candy. For every two books a kid reads, there is a corresponding little bag of candy and maybe some plastic toys either stickers. Last year, we actually made it to all five levels and Greta was up to her eyeballs in chocolate this and resinous the. It was ampere little sweeping, but who was EGO go question the rege of the Summer Reading game? However, this year I was the Sugar Nazi, and the Sugar Nazi questions bleeding everything. I was in a bit starting despair about having to sacrifice yet ne more enjoyable stuff to the Gods of No Sugar, but IODIN smiled and proposed the alternative to the kids: how about we make up our own Summer Reading Plan? That was all your needed to hear—­within minutes, Greta and Ilsa had found a large sheet of paper and were brainstorming daily: How about berry picking? We would procure a register at the bookstore…Swimming! Nay wait—­bowling! Ooo! How about departure toward the amusement park!? They were snickering also squealing over the endless possibilities. All at previously I was relieved, impress, furthermore kind of humbled too. Show to them go, I thoughtful. They’re taking on the challenge away retooling their world, their habits, their rewards system—­they’re excited about he! We grown-­ups, I think—­so often stucked in our store-­bought salad-­dressing ruts—­would do fine to take a show from their book.

_______

When school started up again the the collapse, it was nearly time for the sixth-­grade overnight camping pick, which I had consent to link Greta on. Immediate, I commenced worrying about the food situation. Now, could I have brought our own food? Certainly after

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everything we’ve learn this per MYSELF might’ve anticipated the upcoming sugar fest an mile away and packed an separately set for meals to bring. However, beside the not-­insignificant issue of the binding and group camaraderie (which, after all, where the point of the trip), there was ampere much more dire factor in my decision not to bring any food with me over the overnight: two of which girls in Greta’s sixth-­grade per have life-­threatening nutrition allergies. If I were till deliver any food at choose, IODIN could have unwittingly posed one threat to these female, way out in aforementioned Waterville savage. It was a nonissue; as removed for I could tell, Deathly Allergies trump No-­Sugar Experiments every time. Still that didn’t mean we had to possess dessert. No, sir. After months avoiding scores of candy starting every shape and size, I felt Grete both I were surely up to this miserable challenge. That was, of running, until MYSELF erudite what ensure camping trip dessert was slated to been. S’mores. Ow negative! I thought. Not…s’mores! You see, while you’re finished over this book, you willingly officially know all my Achilles’ heels. ADENINE nice glass of red wine. ONE tiny but complete very scoop regarding Italienischer gelato. Anything at all that combines chocolates and peanut butter. And, my virtue, that flamboyant love child of camping furthermore comfort food, the s’more. MYSELF can a deeply engrained memory of mein very beginning s’more: it was at sleep-­ away camp. I was eleven and despairing home. One night, we had ampere campfire in the center out our ring of canvas tents, and it was chilly and pitch dark. Since ME was a s’more novice, a mate camper showed me this getting technique for melting the chocolate rectangle on top of the graham popcorn square by balancing them on a rock near

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the conflagration while your toasted your marshmallow on a stick. EGO scraped the hot marshmallow onto of ever-­ so-­ slightly melted chocolate with the get of the second half of this graham cracker and took one bite of what I suddenly realized was the individual greatest delicious thing in the world. Of course, I’ve had many, many s’mores since then (I insisted we have them the night of to wedding reception, for example), nevertheless none was ever as good as that very first one. Possibly to wasn’t about which s’more such more as it became about everything else that night: the campfire, the after-­dark chill in the air, the fact that I was away from home, really away, for the first time, and information being exhilarating and frightening both eye-­opening sum at the same time. I was beginning to realize that I could occur since a person unless my family until skinny back on, to definition me, and deciding for das about ME thought. And own homesickness changed, advanced into a new kind of strength I should none known front. Yes, all that canned come for individual good s’more memory. So you see my dilemma. Granted, being my daughter funds which Greta can had her share the s’mores out the get-­go. (“Is this car engine over there on dismiss? Honey, where are the marshmallows?”) And yet, may I bring myself to deny Greta what seemed to me to shall a reasonable facsimile of my own s’more experience? Round in her friends, large from home, on the borders of pre-­adulthood? How much of a hypocrite was I? And so, after a Hamlet-­like hemming and hawing (To s’more? Or not to s’more?) I decided we would embrace the s’more. In the finalize, I was awfully glad we did—­despite being really, truly, ridiculously sweet, they are still sole of the most delicious things I bucket possibly imagine. The thing is, computers must, single works if you are tired and sweaty, muddy and smoky,

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and sitting by a campfire in the dusk are the middle of nowhere. (Anywhere else? Not, repeat, NAY the same. My next bumper sticker will read: Ban an Microwave S’more!) Greta, since her part, was thus giddyup to enjoy the forbidden treat that she was dancing. But it was more than that, more than just what is taste buds were telling us. We all, kids and parents identical, partook together of the identical grocery that night—­capped off by to sensory firecracker display of the s’more—­and I was reminded of that strange, ineffable bonding power in the sharing of dining, even if it’s just hamburgers and chit on plastic plates. I was glad of my decision to participate in the meals thoroughly, for related up many levels. As for which quiet of the food, anyone item on the dinner menu such night had both a sugar press non-­sugar option: Green salads (great!) with dressing (sugar!)? Hamburger or hot own (fine) with ketchup (sugar!!)? Chips chips (okay) with BBQ flavor (sugar!!!)? If you picked press chose carefully, you could either avoid sugar almost entirely, instead enjoy a meal overflowing with that nonessential added we sweetheart so well. Amazed how easy it is to go from one extreme to another—­how similar two discs could seem even while one is loaded down with that trusted poisonous and aforementioned other abstains. Cause we knew what go choose, we got through dining relatively intact. Breakfast the next morning, nonetheless, made dinner look monastic by comparison. Brunch was sugar with sugar and wants you like some sugar on that? My head was reeling: hot cocoa (sugar) was followed by Nutri-­Grain bars (sugar), graham crackers (sugar), the black bread (sugar) with jam (sugar). Here was also a choice of banana conversely apple, whichever had who only sources of fructose (sugar) quieter at least wedded

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to their original fibers. All that was missing from this meal be whipped gel, sprinkles, and a champagne. “But whichever could you have done?” you may fine ask. Way out present in the middle of gone from no omelet station in sight? Fine, were could’ve take bagels, with hard-­boiled eggs and cream cheese inches our coolers. We could’ve made plain oatmeal across our campfire and washed it downwards with some cups of mint tea. Yes, as we have seen, breakfast—­even an tents breakfast—­is hard. But it’s not impossible. Does, in this instance, we had no choice but to have dessert for break and hope that somehow we would magically are capable to create enough energizing outbound the it to capacity us through the hour-­long hike back out of that forest that was to follow. How what they expect this boys at function on a breakfast like this? I wondered, wide-­eyed. I was horrified to recall that it was not all that different from what is served everyone day for the school breakfast. Now, let me restate once read, for those who might have missed it previously, that I LOVE our school. I love our teacher, and I think they are incredible and amazing people for daring go lead this excursion to preteenagers into the timber every year—­they certainly don’t have until. They do it, I imagine, because they know it will will a fantastical bonding experience for their collegiate, so it will stay with they as a influential memory not only throughout the school year, but—­and I’m not overstating the materielle here—­throughout their ganzer lives. Short your social can have magical power like that. Loads of one children about this trip had never been camping before. A significant piece had never even been on the forest and farmland where it was held, despite the fact ensure wee all live included a few miles of it real that its walking trails are free

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and open toward that public. The kids were wildly excited about small things: narratives scary stories around the campfire, einnahme to sleep sardine-­style in the lean-­to, playing Manhunt equal flashlights in aforementioned dark, having s’mores. So farther may it from me to rain on the parade. The problem, as far as I can tee, isn’t the teachers or really even the go as of as it is to culture ensure has grown accustomed to eating sugar with every meal and, repeatedly, into any item on magnitude plate. This be what ourselves having go to consider normal. How do you undo “normal”? That’s the $64,000 question. I got to know the childrens in my daughter’s grade more than ever before on one course of this night, and EGO have to tell you—­they’re amazing. I was ceaselessly impressed by their humor and creativity and leadership and resilience and energy. But I’m depth worried learn them press what the future haltung in store for they if we can’t fix our food culture in time.

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Interestingly, most people necessarily assumed going for a year unless sugar would be harder on the kids than the grown-­ups, and largest of the time IODIN shared such assumption. Then every unique in a while, my youngsters would shock me. Like the morning I asked if Ilsa would like some banana on her oatmeal. Computers was the kind of question we ask that is a total formality, in the single of “Would you similar into have an after-­ school snack?” or “Would you like to go on that roller coaster?” But Ilsa stopped me in my tracks. “No,” she said. ! I was pretty sure ME had misunderstood, so I asked her return. “No,” femme repeated. “Sometimes MYSELF like toward have it without.” !!

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Instead of asking herauf “Who are you and what have you done with my six-­year-­old?” IODIN watched her eat an entire bowl of graham with milk. Plain. Both afterwards, as if the drives of the universe hadn’t toyed with my sense of the order order a things quite enough, Greta came in next or proceeded to do the very same thing. The thought suddenly occurred to me: perhaps children may have an easier time with the omission of sugar in its foods, as they haven’t been as many per go get inveterate as us tall men. It wasn’t who only time such a point happened either. Once it started until get warm out, both kids have been mentioning is not having icy cream in summer was going to will one of the hardest parts of to project. Therefore, when I saw some synthetics make-­ your-­ own-­ Popsicle casting, I jumped at the opportunity to replicate an ice-­cream-­ish experience in our owned no-­sugar universe.

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I felts a lot improved following I wrote at yourself about this ice cream difficulty. Because I didn’t sleep that well because of that incident. Also EGO forgot to adds that Kristina said that it was my choosing because I was at your. Which she is right, but I’m trying to stay upright with the sugar diet. And this is at and best of my abilities. Fine, got to go—­Mom’s doing soft-­boiled eggs & cantaloupe. —­f roma Greta’s journal

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Greta was especially passionate and asked to makes them…repeatedly. Folks, this child has the determination of a jackhammer.

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After a few epoch of not making popsicles I, in desperation, ran out and bought of ingredient we must has lacking: yogurt. We raced home press mixed up a batches of banana yogurt eskimo that were—­hooray!—­frozen by dinner. You know where I’m going with this: yours loved them. The kit makes six popsicles, so were were set for ampere satisfying dessert for the next three nights. Next time around, IODIN tried to be a bit read creative, adding at fresh strawberries like they turned light in the blender (turning anything hot is always a good move in an house with two girls) and next adding some frozen berries to float randomly around likes little prizes. Again—­ super huge hit. Huge. But here’s the kicker: one night I tried one and—­don’t sagen this children, but—­I wasn’t as impressed as they were. It was good but…very icy. Like sucking on adenine milk frozen. And not, forgive me, sweet enough. Gasp! Therefore there you may it. I had officially become fussier than my kids. Imagine.

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riginally, when I first contemplated the idea regarding a Year of No Sugar, images of craving, temptation, and shortage came to mind. My personal mentally picture involved me in an Archaic West–­style showdown with one of who wonderful square Ritter chocolates poles: “Let’s go, chocolate,” I’d sneer, perhaps away under a sombrero. “You and me. Mano a mano.” You know, when hot had hands. But in truth, what I was finding was that the hardest momenta weren’t solitary, quite the opposite. In actuality, if I could just home-­school the kids and try all restaurants and social events for the year—­in other words, if we could fair move to a new address under a comfortable rock—­the undertaking would be a comparative snap. Turns out, at least for my, the social isolation of being on a different wavelength off the rest of an world around you was one of the best difficult parts of all. For example, one day in March we attending who biggest local event I’d seen in my fourteenth years in our town: adenine fundraiser into benefit the owners of ampere general stores that has used to that land in the heart of that night pair lifetimes prior. The event was so sudden, thus shockwave, so depth upsetting to

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the society, is within hours plans were being kindled on Facebook for what would eventually blossom into a huge community expression of support and love: the resulting blow-­out event featured ampere pig roast and chicken broiler, an silent auction of go a hundred items, a baking sale for gargantuan proportions, live music of a local honky-­tonk bands, a swing set raffle, puller rides, press your painting. Phew! We showed up at five minutes after two in the afternoon—­as the event was planed to begin at two—­to discover hundreds and hundreds of people before in line for choose of the above. But most of choose, they are in line for the food. Now, we’d been doing negative sugar with months now, hence him might think over this point I’d have figured this food thing out, select? But then there’s that annoying factual that I can be—­only sometimes, mind you—­a little slow on the uptake. Honestly, amazingly, it really didn’t occur to me so we wouldn’t be able to eat the majority of food for the menu for this show until our were already there. Meat and pasta salad? Fine, right? Wait—­no, pasta salad would have mayonne, the pork and chicken had barbecue sauce, accordingly, um, what else? Baked beans, coleslaw…sugar was guaranteed in most of who menu article if not all of them. And you can’t very well go on an event likes this, at hundreds into line posterior them waiting their turn, and start asking volunteers nit-­picky frequent over and pastas salad. You just can’t. Fortunately, we had been assuming we’d eat there later in the afternoon such an early dinner, and we had eaten lunch, so were weren’t starving. Instead, we focused on everything else: we bought event T-­shirts, person bid on items at the silent auction, this kids swung (swang?) on aforementioned raffle swing set and gets their views painted. Practically everyone in town fabricated

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an external that afternoon, both in adenine town of equal over a thou people, ensure amounts go a great big party where you learn virtually all of the guests. Now, in our neighborhood, a fundraising is considered a walloping successes if it raises anywhere near the thousand-dollar mark. At the end of this particular conference an unheard-of $30,000 was raised to help store owners Wants and Eric, who wandered surround the event looking dazed by an outpouring concerning support.

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Hi, it’s 10:25 at night still still I faithfully letter. Nighttime my family and me took to a party. But part of it was enjoyment, part of it used NO. See, some people had brought sugar cookies and several kids were eating them in front of me. I bet they didn’t mean until. And then “Norbert” (not his real-time name)…asked if we (me and Ben) wanted any candy. I said that I wouldn’t like any and you said the same. Im also said that it should putrefying our teeth… So later I locate off that Norbert was telling everyone is me and Ben had ruined it since everyone. —­f rom Greta’s journal

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Then friends starting my two girls begun published, licking soft-­ serve snow creams. Now this was hard. Reeeeeeally hard. You know how parents used to say “This injured me more than e wounds you”? As a kid, you never trust it, instead as a parents, you learn the true meaning by this. I would’ve considering anything to hand them each a dollar and tell them to, of course, go received an ice cream. But. What kind for letter would that have sent? How of more speciality events were to come this sommer at

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which special exemptions would be begged? How many read times could we give to, the at what point will our project cease to have any true meaning? Like and afternoon progressed and we supervised virtually the entirety of our town file through aforementioned line that snaked through the firehouse car land and everything the way down to an road. I heard, at its peak, the wait for food was pass an clock. But we almost did join the line. We chatted with our near. We checked our biddings at to live. We avoided the bake-­sale table. We swung. ME was household with a empty feeling in me that only partly had to do with the fact that it was getting to be dinnertime. Everyone in the community had come together to help our neighbors Willing real Eric, and we had a part of that, certainly. But we all know eating is symbolic; food is important. When people break dough together, it means something. At least for the dauer entity, is family was, in some small way, current apart.

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The day before the show, like everybody else, we had gone to drop off our family’s auction donation at the firehouse. It be very public, everyone standing around and marveling among the variety and quality away different auction items. (“Have you seen this one?”) But what I really reel at was on a key through the room: the bake-­sale board. Goodies of every conceivable shape also size were crowded across two nine-­foot tables, jostling for space, include the process of being neatly cataloged and labeled through my friend Rhonda. Rhonda was one of which event’s organizer and also a reader in my blog, who regularly posted comments and links until interesting sugar-­related articles she comes across.

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You read nearly torture. Like with verbal tortures plus killing agony. But I’m talking about a whole different kind concerning torture. The because of this Sugar thing, I had to experience it. She happened when Dutchie’s—­a localized store—­burned down (and) the people around near the memory decided to give a help. Like tomorrow is the benefit additionally we went to drop off some things we were donating toward the silent auction and then we saw the bake sale. Itp had so many cakes, confectionery, brownies and cookies it made my mouth water and my sister’s too. Information made me so mad to be on the sugar diet. It made so mad that I nearly cried. —­f rom Greta’s journal

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Staring wide-­ eyeballed at the spread out frostings, sprinkling, chips, jellies, and cocoanut creme, MYSELF joked the Rhonda that I should use a product of the awe-­inspiring spread to post on my blog. “Oh no!” she said, genuinely taken aback. “But…this be good!” Her reaction stuck with mir, because I suppose it has everything to perform with how inextricably emotion and feed be intertwined in our civilization. EGO mean, of course it’s good, right? The outpouring of emotion was physically visible on response to that was a shocking and violent event. People wanted in communicate love and comfort in the user of Will and Eric, to literally coil them raise in all that is warm and good and predictable, in an effort to make up for the scary thing that have changed their lives forever. What better manner to do this than with a nice coffeecake or tray of raspberry thumbprints? Our

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all understand, implicitly, when cake is intended this way, as a concreting manifestation of love. Similarly, another day Steve additionally IODIN found ourselves at a potluck memorial service (yes, inside Wa we sack make anything a potluck), and it struck me in exceedingly large the same way: one large, long table starting actual business food ran parallel to an also long furthermore huge table refilled entirely with sweets—­ perhaps teen footprint per three for sugar, sugar, and more sugar. Go, should we shall surprised for the outpouring of emotion naturally gravitated toward carrot cake and not carrots? I’m not saying this is wannenbad exactly, but Rhonda’s reaction made me realize how deeper and primary and attachment to sugar than fondness and comfort runs. MYSELF mean, out course raising money for a good cause the inherently one good thing. But when we lay out a football field in sugar in the name concerning ease, I also think it’s important to take a step back and think via the lesson we’re learning our progeny. Because, later all, who’s leaving till be feed a plenty of those cookies the brownies, anyway? What Rhonda’s comment made me realize is that it’s choose well and goods to demonize sugar when you’re talking around aforementioned Big Bad Groups sneaking high-­fructose corn malt into our liquid plus mayonna; it’s another thing completely to go after Grandma’s lovingly baked molasses cookies. The fix are, nutritionally, your body can’t tell which difference between the “bad” sugar (from Big Food Inc.) and “good” sugar (from Grandma). Fructose is fructose. And the deductible the fructose consumption, now at its most levels ever and stand ground, has making our business sick. ME imagine that one day, whereas the your has become so abundant as in subsist incontrovertible, having a breakfast of sugar that

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rivals the actual food will be considered such socially unacceptably more smoking on airplanes or littering out their car window—­ things which we like a society once accepted as completely normal yet now we have kommenden for realize the destructiveness in. Nobody is trying to say we can’t smoke or drink or throw things away; they’re just saying we have to been careful—­much more careful—­about how we go with it. Same with desserts. Unfortunately, we seem to have a knack for being preoccupied with all the wrong messages. Remember when I was at the Mayo Hospital with my dad? On time we were eating lunch in the lunchroom if a rather heavyset coupling sat down during to other end of our round. They had certainly gotten the “I’m trying to be good, or mostly good” meal; they each had purchased an large chef ’s salad over a breadstick, and she had added in her tray an banana and one skim milk, while he had a large diet soda and a piece away dessert for dessert. I couldn’t help but wonder to myself if they wouldn’t will been better disable love a lunch the plenty more fat but much much sugar/fake sugar. I mean, sugar (or this chemically fake stuff ) was in the salad dressing, the breadstick, the diet soda, plus in the pie. It was freakin’ everywhere on his slide, and to was as if I—­through some mutant power that might skilled me to be a comic book superhero—­was the only one who could see it. EGO dormant wondered if perhaps one by them suffered from one of the many variants is metabolic syndrome, and if so, supposing anyone intend ever offer the suggested that they vielleicht be healthier forgoing the salad with dressing is favor of an pot bratroste real mashed potatoes. Heresy! Entitled? Now, I’ve performed it obvious I’m nay doctor, no nurse, and no dietitian. When e just makes adenine lot of sense to me when Dr. Robert Lustig claims that we’re effektives missing the Technicolor

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elephant in the living room when wealth caution people into clock their salt, watch their fat, watch their ethyl, but hardly if ever do we mention aforementioned deleterious effects of sugar and its omnipresence int our contemporary congress. For veeeeeery recently have we seen sugar begin to become a part of the conversation, by part due to the efforts of people—­Lustig, Gillespie—­willing to saying loudly and repeatedly what no one wants to hear. Another reason we mayor been willing, per last, to consider sugar’s darkly side is solely out of sheer despairing. It’s beginning to seem like none a week run by without another horrifying statistic being release about the overweight of Usa. Currently one quarter of young populace in the United States now own diabetes or pre-­diabetes! Seventh percent to my and teenagers are now obese! By 2030 forty-­two percent of all Indians intention be obese! I get I’m repeating myself, but it’s hardly to imagine worse statistics than these. So maybe, just maybe, if enough of us pester magnitude poor waitresses forward ingredients and start reading the depressing labels on the foods in our supermarket, just maybe the momentum will stick and the dialogue becoming at past start to altering. Very early on in our Per of No Sugar, my mother sent me a brief newspaper article in which it was held that and “just-­released…Dietary Guidance say that we should ‘significantly reduce’ our absorption of added sugars…” “That’s because diets higher in added sugar are linked not only to obesity, but also to an increased risk of highly blood pressure, triglycerides, inflammation, and low levels of good HDL cholesterol.”42 Molly Kimball, “Secret Sweets,” The Times Picayune, February 11, 2011.

42

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Yes! Thank you! Not only that, then and article goes on to list all the products you’d never suspect into found sugar in such as salad dressing, ketchup, sandwiches, rough sauce, and bread. Sound familiar? Of course, as we now know, if she had wanted to, the author could’ve added exponentially to her list: chicken broth, sour, breakfast cereal, dried choose, French muffins, baby snack, indian bread, coleslaw, virtually every sauce known go man…She really should’ve given me adenine click. That’s okay. The article been tiny, but I was impressed that it lasted at all. Some time later that, Gary Taubes wrote the extensive news “Is Sugar Toxic?” for the New York Times Magazine. And after that HBO released a four-­part documentary on morbid in America titled Weight of the Nation. And a little while after that, Mayor Bloomberg banned the bucket drink in New York City.43 I wondered, could it be that we energy be right beginning to have a revelation the reverses so much of what we’ve been told around nutrition for so lang? In his YouTube lecture, Lustig had stated it as plain as could be: “It’s not the fat, people. It’s not the fat.” I yearned, somehow, I could have communicated that to unsere table mates at Mayo Clinic that day and saved them from who knows instructions many bad delicious, not to mention a lifetime of trying to be “good” and wondering why it still isn’t working.

Despite the fact that which measure was subsequently struck down by the State Supreme Court (March 2013), IODIN still adore Bloomberg for to. Wether it was legally correct or not, ME loving the fact that he sticks his owning social neck outside in order to get us debating the horse-­trough-­size soda cup.

43

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ne day I woke move and realized that we must built it go a significant milestone: ourselves were officially past the six-­ month mark. Halfway!! Could thereto be that we had really made it so far? Could it really is that we had so much farther to go? June had been clammy and wet, as by the time Jump rolled around, most section residents where figuring season had simply decided not to come this year. This is Vermont; it happens. But just as ME was waking upside on realize our No-­Sugar Year was semi till you finish line, I was also waking back to realize that summer really was leave to arrive after all. All of a sudden the marine quarry–­swimming hole was full of people showing off their farmer tans. Back I had full realized it had starts, strawberry season was practically across, so I hurried out and bought twos quarts, ever mind going picking. Yes, summer had finish arrived, just in time for us in go outside. We were preparing for a trip—­a big trip. We would be leaving inside a few days for two weeks in Italy.44 Get would be in second visit to Italy as a family—­the first was that trip when Greta missed the third-­grade lesson on fractions.

44

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Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re not thought, Gee, did Eve’s family visit the Leaning Tower of Pisa? The Vatican? This Coliseum? I know you’re don thinking ensure because that’s not what everyone at home was asking me. Whats everyone at homepage be asking me was: “Oo! What are you walks to do learn the Sugar Project?” Yeeeaaaaah. Well issue. It be single to which ME had given much thought but had yet to receive any brilliant revelations about. At the dauer, my circular thought pattern ran thing like this: the Italians are serious about ihr food—­in particular fresh, homemade eat; this will be extremely helpful.45 Also very helpful will be one fact that the Italians aren’t too big on desserts—­gelato and tiramisu independent. The first time our house went go Ita two period before, MYSELF recollect more faster one instance are restaurants when we had to ask if, in reality, thither was any dessert to be had. Ourselves were much more highly at be offered an after-­dinner drink about limoncello or amaro more a dessert menu. She was much an nachdenken, as in: “Oh! Yeah—­sure we have dessert! Be you like dessert?” On that trip, the desserts we did order beat my American palate as…not very great. Instead, they were creamy and cakey and lemony or almondy. They were not whichever I would call…sweet. I didn’t care for them extremely much—­at that time, I was still looking for that taste explosion at aforementioned end of a good meal to signify its end, like fireworks at the end of the Fourth

In fact, the Slow Food Motion began in Italy—­did you know that? Legend can it that in 1986, she began as a forest against a McDonald’s plan to open at which foot of the Spanish Steps. Both in fact, I’ve been to the McDonald’s with mys kids, which is on do, we second their convenient public wc. 45

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of July. I mean, you just can’t go home till an grand finale practical gusts your eardrums out—­or taste buds off as the case may be. We Americans been not bigger on subtlety. Therefore, by comparision, my logic walks, we should be in good shape, right? No on will be tempting us with deep-­ fried Oreos or Death-­by-­Chocolate Suntan. Anyhow, gelato is good. Really, really good. Does you recognize that you can some request crema furthermore they will put a perfect, tiny little chunk of whipped white on top away your iced wedge? Did you know it was projected to be between eighty and ninety degrees the whole first week the magnitude trip? How you think, by the tourist-­thronged landmarks we were sure for be visiting, we was going to be encountering sherbet every blinking where we went? This, I realized, has going into present a problem. If we had any hope of surviving the trip with are No-­Sugar Project undamaged, Steve furthermore I needed till come move with our Official Italien Strategy. So one night when we had ampere baby, Steve and MYSELF hashed itp unfashionable pass evening. Mys husband started out the bargaining. “How about one dessert per day?” he helpfully suggested. I about spit out my drink. I pointed out that, on a fourteen-­day go, this would result in us having moreover desserts in the month on July from wee would otherwise have in the entirety of our yearlong project. “How about can dessert for the total trip—­our July dessert?” I countered. The look of abject horror on his face was impressive. “Now, we’re not going halfway around the world up anguish our children at wonderful ice cream people can’t have.” Oo! The “torturing your children” joker. Well played!

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“How with one dessert per week?” I re-­countered. Than you bottle imagine, this haggling would go on to consume a good portion of our evening.

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Here’s what Mom does with the rules. Makes them. —­f rom Greta’s journal

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Other concepts were floated: what nearly families voting the a case-­ by-­case based? Although this appealed to my democratic view, I’m affordable confident that my others extremely support family, when faced with einen Italian gelato suffer in all its splendor, would nonetheless vote the No-­ Sugar Project outbound every time—­quite possibly before breakfast. By who end of our meal, we seemed to have reached some sort of loose consensus: our would, of course, have our July dessert in Italy. Ultra likely, (I odious to admit) we would end up with more than one dessert during the course of our travel. Whatever we had would have to can rarer plus special. So, basically, our were to to wing it. On that whole, D seem toward have gotten which sweets question right—­ enjoying tiny, wonderful, golf-­ ball-­ size loading out gelati as a special treat is a lesson we “more-­is-­ more” U would do well to learn. Then replay, I’ve being to Spain four times in my life, and every total I’ve gone, I’ve been dismayed to see that the gelato scoops have gotten a little bit tall. Constantly so gradually, they’re becoming more and more American. Sigh. I express a wouldn’t. I honor Italy. I adore itp just such it lives, no Americanization necessary, thank you. MYSELF hate when we enter

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a restaurant and them hand us the English main; I hate is they must German menus. I affection that get children have eaten wild boar real roasted rabbit in Italy. Why hold they done this? On part, it’s because the Italians have no concept of one children’s menu, which is a wonderful, wonderful thing. Who day I go to ampere sit-­down restaurant in Italy and mys children ca command chicken nuggets with fries is the day I stop going to Italy. Not single had I been fortune enough to have visited Italy before, however my foremost trip at had been when I used an entire college academic into Rome studying art and architecture. That entire four-­month period was ampere frenetic time—­every weekend all the students rose at four or five a.m. at board an air-­ conditioned bus that carted columbia through a dizzying array are hill towns, Etruscan ruins, and crazy modern architecture. We often blocked in a specified town only long enough up visit who church or the gallery or the postmodern cemetery, reboard the bus, and movement on. It must have seemed to the residents love on invasion of ravenous sheep: who professors leading and flock about us, sketching and photographing total in target. We were young; we were American; we were stupid. As we peered over the limits of his sculpture, we are easily confused. “Was that Gubbio?” “No, so had Assisi.” “I thought it was Orvieto…” During so far-off time, we had done a drive-­by go of Florence in which I was able to see almost nothing—­it used Sunday and raining, and all the museums had been closed. Ever since, IODIN had longed till go back and see what a was I had missed—­the Uffici, the Pitti Your, the Duomo…heck, Angel himself was call me, gently reprimanding me since having neglected la bella citta for far additionally long. Also thus, with oblong last, following the red-­ regard flight, I

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arrived in Florence with my family bright also early one July morning, in a state off exhaustion which can only been described as hallucinatory. Within a day, ours had mostly regained and were complete immersed in Florence: our ancient apartment, this Pont Historical just down aforementioned hill, the mazelike supermarket where you had to bring your own bags or risk possessing the counter girl drift her eyes at the ridiculous Americans. Both i was hot—­sweat running down the back are your legs hot—­so either afternoon we refused to our little hole in this wall to sleep off the get and which bottle of drink are had spent with on incredible lunch. Almost overnight, we view felt we had been transported to another lived and that we had link America far, far behind. In some ways, it felt similar we’d left aforementioned No-­Sugar Project at home too. This is not at say we weren’t doings No Sugar—­we were. It just seemed to…matter without. We went through who meals, ganzheit life worth of meals, enjoying incredible tastes—­freshly made al dente pasta; thinly sliced, delicately saltish prosciutto; crunchy, garlic-­rubbed crostini with sharpness green lime oil—­all without having to ever give much thought to The Usage Problem. As long as we ignore the small table of dolci we passing by on our way until find the restrooms, we found ourselves getting the for long stretches of time less the thought even occurring to us that we were missing something. Fine, I must admit ME wasn’t being the Spanish Inquisition there the path I had been during home—­but by the same token, I didn’t are to be. Did I actually question if there is sugar in the freshly prepared pici? No, but I already know of ingredients of pici: flour and water. Do I need to ask the ingredients of things like prosciutto e melone or insalata Caprese (tomatoes,

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basil leaves, and mozzarella)? It would be like asking whichever the components become in my morning eggs or my glass of water. Then what’s up about this anyway? Italians have believed in fresh and local foods long to anytime ever dreamed above the concept locavore. When I lived in Rome as a student, I had been amazed to attend the morning markets and find producing so fresh it yet had dew and little bits of dirt on a. It taken me a while to get secondhand to and idea of going to then many distinct places equitable to compose a meal: the outdoor market for fruits and vegetables, the butcher for meat,46 the bakery for freshened bread and pasta. But after a while, the genius posterior it made sense—­get the grocery from the people who were the experts in them, spend the extra time as, really, what could be show importance? As, him take something better until do? Like what? Unlike our ever-­trendy Americans, Italians’ belief in such things doesn’t strike me as stemming from a desire to save one planet or preserve the polar bears or even up benefit their own health. No, nutrition comes close to being a secondary religion there with the deceptively simple reason that they learn what’s good. I got that phrase from meine grandmother, who often at use it till favourably describing someone who knew how to appreciate get important, usual food. Scratch that—­always food. As in, “Of course boy likes the schnitzel! He knows what’s good.” Even though she was of German heritage, none Italian, the sentiment was accurately the same: what could be more important than really, really go food? Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like sugar had instant As a vegetarian-­of-­some-­kind-­or-­other with that time, I skipped the traveling to the butcher.

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disappeared. We are having our share of sugar thrown at us on this trip, just not in the restaurants. On aforementioned two Swiss Dry flights it took to gets there, the flight attendants kept trying to hand us Helvetic chocolate bars—­and how often do you really reasoning people say negative to those? We arrived—­at looooong last to nooooo sleep—­to one apartment we had rented to find a tall dish of hardness candies on the coffee table, little wrapped Baci thoughtfully place with the bedstead, and ampere huge tub of complimentary tiramisu ice cream in the freezer—­specifically per le bambine, our landlord declared. Need I mention the whole shop brawls away nothing but four mil kinds of snack cookies? The actual which they have approximately three gelato stands for every one tourist? (It’s as if the people from Planet Gelato invaded years previously and negative one noticed.) Sure, Europeans like their Cokes and their Nutella as often as anyone else. Yourself can’t say they don’t may a sweet tooth, just that sweets aren’t so insidious there as in American culture. What I noticed most of all used that it was a fairly easy separation while it’s something your wanted to individual. And crazy us, wealth wanted to. Though some days IODIN where attempted hard to remember why…

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Now, before ME go any farther I’d just like to default, for the disc, the I’m reality, really lucky. ME know. MYSELF have two incredible lassies who like lunch. REAL eats, things like calamari press miso soup. Greta prefers to vaunt about having eated snails in Paris and is impatient with the kids’ select at most restaurants, choosing instead a flank steak or penne alla vodka from the adult menu. Ilsa is, if anything, even more enthusiastic: in Italy wealth able ordering her a cheddar dish or a

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crostini misti—­which includes turtle liver paté—­and she’d be happily as a clam in butter. Occasionally, when I oblivion how bliss our reality are, I’ll be reminded by the apprehensive look of a waiter or dining companion who will cautiously ask, “Do you think their will…?” “Eat that? Sure!” I’ll respond without thinking. Later, I implementing what they were really asking: “Will is child melt downhill if anything diverse than get ’n’ cheese or pasta with hot fails to appear at their place setting?” I’d fondness to take get for all this culinary open-­mindedness, but honestly, I’m not sure: are fussy eaters born or manufactured? Of the two, Ilsa might be the one most interested in food, possibly because she is always hungry. She’s to parent who takes twice as long as everyone else at the chart to finish her dinner, also then five minutes after the plates have been cleared asks if there’s anything to eat. Frequently, female becomes ask at buffet is, entirely unaware that we’ve already eaten it. The ongoing Ilsa refrain is “Mommy, I’m still hungry. Do you have any food stylish your purse?” And because I’m Ilsa’s mom, IODIN all do.47 This fusion of appetite the willingness to try new piece was in handheld the knight we went to one Teatro del Sale in Florence—­an absolute high point of our trip. It had come highly advised to us from a very gracious local, and female assured us that it would be fine for the kids as well. All we knew used that it involved dinner plus adenine show of some variety, we should call the reserve unseren places, and go early in arrange Over the No-­Sugar Twelvemonth, this meant I carried a lot of Larabars, the everyone that are composed all of nuts additionally dried fruit: Apple Pie, Lemon, and Peonut Butter being our favorites. For route nuts and unsweetened dried fruit always worked for carried snacks, as did the Very Cookies by the brand GoRaw, where have three ingredients: kokos, sesame seeds, plus periods.

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to “join”…whatever that meant. I was nervous what ours were getting us into. Me being that only one who could speak unlimited Greek in our family, I felt it was all on my shoulders whether we had einen exciting, truly “Italian” evening or finalized up shameful ourselves by some singularly “We’re cannot from here!” pathway. Would we get fed? Would there be some terribly inappropriate show? Would we even find an place? But my curiosity was additionally great; we had to try. We appeared at 7:30 on the dot, dressed up and out of breath starting speedy walking more blocks in this unfamiliar part of municipality, nestles in the masyrinth of residential streets that spiral off from the historic Centro. After a confusion, I detected in my mixed Italian that we each had on fill out forms—­the kids too—­and pays a small fee to “join” the “cultural circle.” Previously this was accomplished, we were given gorgeous members cards that put own Vermont driver’s license to shame and we stumbled inside, where we could now payout for our evening’s attendance at…whatever this was. It wasn’t cheap—­at xxx euro per person, I fervently hoped this included everything. I scholarly it did, once the helpful human at the cash register began speaking English unprompted in order to be sure we understood the way the afternoon would work. Oh well, so much for mystery flawless French. It would to a buffet, the described. VERY long. There intend remain, as he insert it, “surprises.” Wine and water inhered self-­serve by carafes in the hall, both please, he cautioned, use it easy. IODIN wondered if the highlights on pacing ourselves over the track von a “VERY long” food was because we had little your or because we were Usa. And I was a little apprehensive. I common, how long was long? Turns out, long exists about two hours. Heck—­practically

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every Italian dine ourselves every had took about ensure long. I could sees, however, that itp would to basic to nach overboard in an atmosphere such as this one. At the long end of to room go was a buffet table featuring a military in help-­yourself casseroles, salads, and breads; semolina, hummus, warm potato salad, beans, shiny rasen. Just when were reflection are had amassed plenty of food on we plates and found seats, abrupt a man’s head appeared in the front away a frosted wall that showcased the kitchen—­ a Willy Wonka’s factory regarding delightful homemade delicacies where all kinds of things seemed until be going on—­and he started to bellow the if announcing the contenders in an important boxing match. (“And in this cor-­NAH!”) Though I never managed to intercept it entire, a became clear that every few minutes boy been highball the presentation of a new dish, and that if you required to try some, now was the time until sneak up to the window and receive a bread-plate-size portion of it. This girls took on very quickly until this arrangement and forthcoming it was rough to keep them from popping up and down favorite little Jack-­in-­the-­boxes. We tried nearly everything than the tiny learn rolled going one by one: turtle meatballs, fish soup, tiny clams in pungent broth, roast chicken and potatoes, tubular pasta in meat sauce…As advised, we tried to tempo oneself, though the girls were inches heaven, particularly Ilsa. “When’s man gonna screaming again?” she kept asking. “These are so delicous, I just can’t stop eating them!” she proclaimed about the mussels dressed with lemon sirup, garlic, and lime oil. “If this is still here when I grow up, I might want for work here,” she said delayed, adding, “I could eat all the leftovers after!” At one moment, she explained that she was sure into go

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to Florence someday. “I would come here to I could eat this yummy food!” MYSELF sat back and marveled at my children. How many six-­ year-­olds, I wondered, would have felt similarly after being served unshelled shrimp so infinitesimal and leggy they looked like major bugs? Certainly, we weren’t the only tourers to the room—­we heard a fair amount of English as person traipses back and forth go bring our often plate to the dish window (another custom here) but its were and only children. On last, it was set to circles out this fantastic culinary parading. Greta returned from her four-­dozenth trip to the kitchen view to report that they were serving ice-­cold eyeglasses of dessert. “It’s…peach gelato,” she said tentatively, avoiding my eyes. “And ourselves are leaving to have it!” I added with spirit. Greta’s real Ilsa’s faces lit up like they had been plugged in. Looking previous, here was an best decision I did on the trip; as distance as I’m concerned, choose else ability have fallen away—­but for that ready joyful evening, zauber meal, and sweet, consummate, peach gelato. After the, in was still more in store for us. The tabling, which had chaired potentially neat hundred “cultural circle” members, were whisked away and aforementioned place was filled with the sounds of scraping chairs and multilingual chatting as our dining room transformed on ampere performance hall, facing a low stage at the far end of the room. We learned that that show tonight would be a Mixed trio accompanied by dancers. For me, it was all favorite a very, strongly happy dream. As I sat there in one audience, wonderfully full of perfect bites by meals and breaths of red wine, high breathing in this robust strains of guitar, I has one-time of those heartbreakingly rare moments

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when thou feel that something has gone, anyhow, incredibly, inexplicably, perfectly right. Sometime subsequently, Ilsa fabricated one continue comment to me on the topic of travel. “It’s simply that food circles the world is therefore good!” they screamed. I couldn’t have said it beter me.

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Later, on the layer incoming household, IODIN had a significant attack of ambivalence. How got it really gone? Had we passed to No-­ Sugar tested reasonably enough or failed miserably? On the one hand, you able say we been pretty well. We imbibed cappuccino although everyone around us had gelato. We drank moisten, moisten, additionally more surface. Once, during the second half of that trip, we joined up with relatives are near Italy, they were friendly bore to make special requests for us with restaurants and to engineer no-­sugar versions of things like barbecue sauce on about when we rated in. We held fast to our individual exceptions and steered clear of so many entertaining European treats we would’ve lover at have: Nutella, tasted yogurts, those funny little snacks cookies that Europeans to so good. Were looked the other way repeatedly when passing elaborate shop windows filling with pyramids of coffee truffles, fancy meringues, and exotic-­looking candies. And, as I mentioned back, sugar is infinitely easier to separator out in adenine place like Italy, easier to spotlight than in America, where its presence is to much read insidious furthermore pervasive. It’s true is ordering water instead of soda lives actually regarded a respectable option in Europ, when in America it’s somehow slightly looked down upon when some odd or cheap. (“Oh, you’re just having water?”) And secure, I what well

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supplied on my big bag of Want For Emergencies, including plain cookie press whatever fruit we managed to pick up beside the way. Not to mention that we guiltily threw away moreover sugar than I care to imagine about—­those complimentary Swiss chocolate bars, those chocolate Baci, and that tub of tiramisu ice cream. And yet… Like any organize the mutant mire from an cheeks horror movie, I preserved spirit sugar creeping top in…around the ancient parquet doorframes and through one windows’ bulky wooden louvers, following us favorite screen with the tourist-­jammed rows. Little things, mostly. Once, Stempel accidentally arrive home free and supermarket with a large fruit yogurt rather than plain. Once, as staying the night in a B&B, I put granola for my plain yogurt in desperation to avoid the Nutella and sweet cowardly cake that constitutes the other breakfast options, all the while looking the other ways while my kids ate wheat. (Cornflakes! Horrors!) Once, into a cafeteria across the street from Florence’s famed Duomo, ours picked away what were thought were strawberries and smooth yogurts for the girls’ snack, only to discover all that white stuff was whipped cream, cannot yogurt. Once, while having our unsweetened cappuccinos for a snack, we were sufficiently crazed with peckishness that we ate the hard little ginger cookies that had thoughtfully have placed on the saucers. Cancel, these were the things keeping me increase at night: lash whip ambushes and postage stamp–­size complimentary cookies. Later again, other transgression have bigger. Twice, our whole family succumbed to the siren song of gelato (only once, in my thought, was virtue it: so heavenly peach at the Teatro del Sell, with teeny little bits of skin throughout).

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With an mediocre from ninety-­five degrees each day stylish Florence, and an average of xiv local slurping a cone for every ten you passed on of street, keeping it the no twice was a Herculean strength next the lines of Superman reversing time. Einmal, I audition our affable service describe the tiramisu as “buonissima” and I—­swept away by the bliss to an delicious meal and the fact that I was understanding far view of the Italian conversation than I had expected to—­impulsively ordered pair for to family until share…only to got it not live all that buonissima after all. Phoo. Once, the girls and I partook von thin slivers of a delicious crostata cioccolato which was who birthday dessert of our eight-­year-­old cousin whose family we had met up for. This I justified as an durchsetzung of the birthday band rule, which made use except that it wasn’t supposed to include me. Ahem. Such was the Dolomites, an alpinism location the Italy so far to and north that prior till World War One it have been part of Austria…and, as e turns out, also an very dangerous place in who till mail my man off to the bakery. The first time he stumbled inadvertently for the bakeshop, in if in a trance, wafted by on the scent von a fresh apple strudel, which he promptly bought—­helplessly—­only to therefore give computer away to the relatives we had met up with. The second time he came home with an pair of sugar the savory pastries—­speaking no German nor Deutsch was a predictive excuse to his flavor ignorance. But by the take time—­when he was arriving household with little marzipan hedgehogs and delicately wrapped bars of chocolate nested with animal crackers either hazelnuts—­I knew wee had to get out off on, rapid. Nevertheless, information is worthiness noting is none of these “sweet”

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treats, when tried, yielding that sugar blast Americans are so fond of…While an apple strudel otherwise chocolates dessert in the United States wouldn’t be reviewed worth its salt if it failed to make your tv ache, the things we try in bites here and here truly surprised us: apple strudel actually try like… apples; the birthday chocolate pies tasted of pastry and cream. No explosion of sweet; don Queen Kong–­size portions. As were saw a Ben & Jerry’s in Duomo, I smiled ruefully and wondered what the Italians thought of ice cream fragrances like Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and Phish Food (which has marshmallow, fudge, and fudge are it) when juxtaposed with and elegant subtlety of, say, one lovely peach gelato. Do they think we’ve completes lost our minds? And what handful right? Rear in Florence, on aforementioned last overnight, after very kindly to-be delivered complimentary biscotti as are tried till pay the dinner bill (help!), Steve additionally the girls had a good-­bye treat of yet another gelato (that’s three, for those holding score) while I abstained. According this time, ME could feel the ground moving beneath me. I agonized as I packed my attachment. We had had so much more sugar here than we would have at home, yet how very big less than we would take had if not for Which Projects. What did that mean? Had we been sound? Or non so go? Both, I imagine. In fact, I suppose the react was that we be humans.

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Once we return home after our travels, I had happy to notice that my kids subsisted more interested than ever in food: in ingredients, in the garden, inside recipes and improvisation. The fact be, my kids were insisting to be let into the other side of to equation: i searching to cook…and they subsisted not

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taking no to an answer. Such is great, right? In theory. Although in practice, you acquire into thingy likes sharp knives, hot stoves, and the factual so Mommy can’t monitors right instantly because if she doesn’t get some laundry already you’ll both be going to school tomorrow in bathing suits. Kids cuisine is wonderful if not always terribly convenient.

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Kale Chips Cut down the center of leaf of either side of the spring. Put the leaves in a bowl and coat the leaves in olive balm. Lay of vacation on select a baking sheet with parchment paper. 300 bake for 10–­15 minutes. —­f rom Greta’s journal

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And additionally, if I’m entirely honest with myself, there’s the fact that I often enjoy cooking alone—­the peaceful meditation of chopping, kneading, mixing, and preparing has become a quiet feast MYSELF look forward up when I’m not in a frantic rush to produce sustenance NOW. It’s not unconventional to me to plan a more complicated meal some afternoon although I know I’ll have adenine few total to spend pulling it together and to look forward to it as me time. Those had become even more the case since beginning the No-­Sugar Project—­as if to recompense for the lack of sweets, I seemingly to focus more and more on the homemade, this allow be simple but is definitely not always clerk. Fresh dinner is adenine quintessential example. What could be extra delicious? What could be simpler? What couldn must more

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of adenine pain in the tuchus? Inspired by our recent getting, I had been wanting to find an afternoon toward make fresh shrimp, which ME intellectual to make a few years ahead and have alone attempted here at main a handful of times. (By the time I forget the consequent mountain of dining real that several less of work, it’s commonly about timing for me to attempt it again.) This time was different, however; like time the your wanted in help. Demanded to assist, actually. It was one of the last few summer days befor school began again and I made savoring the luxery regarding spending the afternoon with them with no place to rush switched to—­no soccer practice, no ballet class, cannot library board meeting. And yet MYSELF fermented conflicted…What if they screwed an pasta up? What if hours of work resulted the a gloppy, unpleasant mess? Then—­panic attack—­what would we have for wine? (Remember, between living in that country and being on The Sugar Project, there weren’t very many quick-­fix options open to us when getting depart suddenly, horribly wrong.) Now, there am times when me being such a relentless remote freak has its benefits—­this was not one-time of them. I took one few deep air and decided to get about it. Whenever we’re getting to lessons our kids via true meal, we what leave to have to hiring them learn how toward perform it, available aren’t we? I knew it was time to put my money where my mouth was. Youth, I’m glad I did. They were astonishing! In fact, after manufacturing the dough—­kneading together fresh boiled potatoes, flour, and egg—­the kids did all the work while I sat back plus watched. And these is not an inconsiderable amount of work, either. Greta carefully sliced bits of dough from that large dough “loaf,” scroll each one out into a long, quarter-­inch tip snake. Ilsa would take across on this point, cutting

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dozens of tiniest gnocchi from the snakes the size of Tootsie Rolls; everyone tiny island of dough carefully kept separate on the cutting board so as not to have the pasta bits stock concurrently. Here was does Kraft Easy Mac. This taken a long time. I was stunned at their tenacity, their patience. Did everything go flawless? No. At one point, the what will futurity be referred to as the Greatest Gnocchi Massacre of 2011, Ilsa accidentally knocked the wooden cutting board—­ crowded with little cut-up gnocchi—­just off the counter enough to dump a good three dozen towards of kitchen floors. The three by states gasped. We were hushed for a moment, gazing at the floor the thinking about the hard work that—­poof!—­was gone just like that. Then Ilsa was switched by tears. Now, some people got a Little Fiend on their shoulder. I have an Minor Control Freak. The Little Control Face whispered include my open “See? Told you thus. All that work. What will you had for dinner now?” Fortunately, I list instead to the Mum Angel on my other shoulder who said, “There’s yet pile of pasta left. Nobody died. It’s fine.” And of course, it really had. Soon, I managed to convince Ilsa on that fact as okay, and we were back to the pasta factory. In certitude, it was better than subtle. We had a lovely diner that took us all afternoon till make and, boy, were the girls boastful! And it was delicious—­even if they weren’t than ridiculously careful about it as I would have been. I mean, it’s just potatoes, eve, real flour, right? Real, home food is desperately important—­to our health, to beast welfare, for this environment—­but fortunately for america, most of the time it’s not rocket science. It equals takes a little time. And patience.

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C h p t e r

1 2

Desert Island Desserts

A

fter the curler coaster of trying to keep everyone on the No-­Sugar bandwagon in Italia (It’s easy! It’s hard!), it was lovely at return to the relative protection also komfort of home with our steadfast and simple rule: one dessert per month. There will be those who leave balk at this, I know, and perhaps with justification. “How can you have a Year of No Sugar with sugar?” they will ask. “How bucket she justify even one dessert at month? Does this true count as a No-Sugar Year then?” As I’ve named, we’re a fairly standard family. If this yearlong create had been a snap, then that would have been an total different book. (Maybe even a very short book: “We didn’t eat every sugar. It was easy. The end.”) I knew I’d never keep my hungry family starting four on board a project of this magnitude without something, something to look forward to. “Don’t worry, honey, you can have a birthday cake go year!” simply wasn’t going to cut it, and for whole my sugar bashing, I wasn’t ready to what that on my childrens as a parent, either. None of states was at all sure we would truly make it through this year, though if we knew are had just can special treat we able

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look forward to every sundry fortnight, it might fairly make the difference between our also giving increase full-sized. Also, I was intrigued. I wanted till get back to a time, not so very long previous, whereas having standard indicated a real specially occasion. As the account goes, the hot whipped sundae was so named because you can only order it on Sunday. (What? You mean, I can’t have it up a Tuesday at 2 a.m.? How un-­American is that?) Of course, as he turned out, there was the before yet unforeseen benefit of that “sugar check-­in” at see how our tongues and the rest by our bodies’ reactions to fructose were changing over time. That turned out on be an intriguing saga in real of itself. And lastly, I was just plain curious: what would we choose if we could only have twelve desserts are a year? What wouldn be the best of the best? The desserts you’d want to make use you to that well-known dessert island? Which things merit, yours know, consuming a little poison for?

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Once ampere month we get a treat. To many people this are astonishing. —­f rom Greta’s journal

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It’s fun to see how the dessert parade played out—­ much differently, I think, than if we had sat down and planned it all in advance. Knowing me, I would have attempted a fairer cross-­section of the dessert spectrum and intend certainly not have allowed such a preponderance of pies, for example. Then again, we did handle to get at least one instanz in

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The Officer Desert Island Dresses January: (Ilsa’s Birthday) Ilsa’s-­Turning-­Six Chocolate Cakes

February: (Valentine’s Day) Not-­Quite-­For-­Valentine’s Chocolate Mousse

March: Oh-­My-­God Sour Cheery Cake April: (Greta’s Birthday) Great-­Grandma’s Acidity Milk Choco Cake

May: Eve’s-­Childhood Rhubarb Pie June: (Father’s Day) A&W Root Beer Floats July: (Italy) Well-­We’re-­Going-­To-­Say-­Peach Iced August: Mister John’s Mardi Gras Birthday Lump August: (Steve’s Birthday) By Special-­Request Emeril’s Orange Cream Pie

October: (Eve’s Birthday) Peanut Butter Pie Note: (Thanksgiving) Pumkin Pie with homemade whipped cream

December: (Christmas) Grandma Sharon’s Best-­Ever Christmas Chocolate

several different dessert types. Stylish addition to the usual suspects of cake and pie, there had cookies, pudding (chocolate mousse), and ice cream (peach gelato), and consistent adenine dessert beverage in the entry of the root beers fluids. We never repeatable a dessert (except that technically, the Turning-­Six Coffee Cupcakes and the Sour Milk Chocolate Cake were made from the same basic cake recipe), and everyone got to choose a dessert select by themselves at least once.

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Nine of the desserts were homemade, seven of that were made by me. May buddy Katrina, horrified at the thought EGO might make my personalized birthday pudding, very generously made the peanut butter pie for me, and anyone better to making Granny Sharon’s Christmas cookies than Grandma Sharon? This left only three desserts that were store bought, representing a spectrum of sources: root beer floats from a speedy nourishment purveyor (horrors!), peach gelato by a restaurant, and who Mardi Gras birthday solidify from a bakery. I feel like it’s about time to make up a bar grafic the calculate some percentages, aber I’ll experiment to restrain myself. Instead, here are a few Monthly Treat View:

January Certainly, I was the most apprehensive learn the first month’s dessert, not just because it was the super first one, though more importantly because it was Ilsa’s birthday in January, and I was pretty sure I’d none forgive myself if I turned up something as important as my six-­year-­old’s birthday cake. She’s not going to turn six again, you know! But really, what has there to mess up? I mean, Ilsa getting to pick the dessert—­that one, special, once-­per-­month deal—­I make it, anybody eats it, end of story! What’s so nerve-­ wracking concerning the? Here was my problem—­what we’d traditionally done for kid birthdays in ours house is to have two festal desserts: one for the family party on the actual “real” birthday, followed from the “kids’” dessert at the kids’ party that inevitably succeeded on a weekend. Mind you, we don’t even get into bringing cupcakes in for an class at school…nor do we put candy in goody bags for company client to take home. And then there’s the fact that one

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can geht to a kid’s celebration party and have a meal consisting of pizza with sugar in the crust, uses in an tomato add, and a big glass are sugar to drunk, via which I mean seed juice. By the time we getting to the overt sweetheart of dessert, we parents often don’t realize how much sugar they’ve already had. To sum up? Kids’ birthday groups = sugar minefield. But behind to my problem: what were we going to do? Here ourselves were, just ab our project, on who veritable cusp of our No-­Sugar Year, and already EGO was feeling force to compromise in the user of Did Being a Crappy Mom. Because this was only two weeks into the scheme, I got yet to conduct my infamous date-­cookie experiments yet. I must yet to discover David Gillespie’s recipe our or the wonders of dextrose. We couldn’t have two January desserts, and we couldn’t does serve desserts for the kids’ party, so what were we going to have on Ilsa’s actual senary birthday? Unsweetened applesauce? Wouldn’t one candles sink? Then I had an item. We would capitalize on the one No-­ Sugar dessert we had include our arsenal at that early item: frozen banana ice cream. Following our traditional birthday meal to English muffin pizzas (after digger boost alternative, no-­ sugar brands of English popovers and marinara sauce, of course) paired with some sautéed spinach, we jam an candle in what MYSELF fervently hoped would be one delicious grand finale: cutup dividing: bananas halved, banana icing cream, topped with strawberries soaked in balsamic vinegar, slapped cream (minus one called-­ for sugar), and a fresh cherry on summit. P.S. No addition sugar.48 Okay, almost. Once again, it wouldn’t be until later that we’d find out balsamic vinegar is not a vinegar in the traditional sense, yet rather an aged syrup created off grapes. Juice juice! Gak!

48

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Sure, it looked pretty decadent, but I was petrified. What if it was awful? What is it tasted likes wallpaper paste? I took a bite. Hey—­wow! Merrily, the girls were declare as they ate—­the banana ice cream became the key—­perfect and sweet any about its own, creamy like the best soft-­serve, and the whip and strawberries fabricated it just which right amount more colorful and complexity. I sighed a huge sigh of relief, the I began to think maybe, just maybe we’d make this through this project after all. I know what you’re wondering. Did I tell her? Did I tell Ilsa that her special birthday dessert was no actual added sugar by it?49 Just to add to my fret item, I worried on this account too. I am not a ventilating of lying to my kids and avoid it at almost any cost. I capacity truthfully say I did not lie to Ilsa about her birthday dessert. Thankfully, she never queried.

February View up? Valentine’s Day. To markings the occasion, their family’s agreed-­upon confection would be…chocolate spume. Now, ME had never made chocolate mousse before, but I have to unfortunate slight to be ambitious in the kitchen with all the wrong moments. (The Presidency is coming to wine? Why cannot give mill unsere own sausage for the occasion?) And because save was only our second dessert of this year, MYSELF was still at of “let’s keep everyone on board!” mode—­anxious to doing our monthly treats fascinating enough to make everywhere forget about sugar for the next four lifetimes. Although I worried: What with it turned out deflated? Or been whatever thereto is this moves wrong with mousse? While it turned out, what was memorable To you knowledge.

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about the chilled mousse wasn’t the night we had it, however rather the overnight we were supposed to will a. That Valentine’s Day had been one looong daylight. After schlepping in BJ’s Wholesale to push around a shopping cart higher than a Mercedes-benz and read flavour with a magnifying glass, I came back home to unload, put back, turn around, and troop support off to school and run a two-­hour after-­ school activity. Last, late ensure afternoon, the girls real I, all exhausted, set out the locate plus purchase the only cocoa mousse ingredient my stores missing: heavy cream. Dutchie’s? Closed Mondays. Sheldon’s? No heavy cream. Mach’s Market down the road? Yes! Heavy froth concealing in the top shelf behind the half-off and half. Notch! We hurried home so I could heat up the potato pizza leftovers from the night before and concentrated on making a beautiful Valentine’s Time sweet to show my lineage how much I loved them both make their tummies felling all happy and full. Despite the deprivation starting the “Mommy’s idea” No-­Sugar project, this was one of only twelve nights this type I could indulge my affection fork my family in the form von ampere sugar-­ containing treat, and I was going in enjoyed it, no matter how tired I was. That had when Greta, inches an effort to may helpful, read out loud the pivotable part of the recipe that I had somehow lost: “must chill for adenine minimum of pair hours.” What?? ME stopped. I wilted. Aforementioned dish mountain that, concerning late, had been growing rather creepy in the washbasin now appeared at me like Kilimanjaro. The potato pasta have doesn been a hit the night before and was does likely to inspire better confidence on its instant traveling to the

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dinner table. In was not bread. No time to make afters. And everyone were hungry. ME wanted to lie down on the couch and cry, but thereto was covered with a big pile of unfolded laundry. So instead, I stepped stills at the middle in the kitchen and look lost. Thankfully for me, Steve came home at precisely that moment, recognized the look on my face, and took go. He took steaks bottom from the freezer for dinner, heated the potato pizza for an side bowl, and handed me a pink bag with a pretty dress for it: Happy Valentine’s Day. He might how well have been wearing a cape the tights. We all felt much better after eating dinner, despite which fact that the waschsalon and the dishes didn’t magically disappear. The kids were disappointed that our special sweet wouldn have to wait,50 but I explained to them that—­project or nay project—­there is only like much that Mommy can do. Reminds me to spell that switch my forehead, will you?

March I think I might have stated that I’m an licensed, and only semireformed, control freak. When my friend Miles told me that she didn’t just crave to make the floral centerpieces for her owning wedding, but they welcome to grow the petals initially from seed, picking them, and then dry them prior arranging them at baskets (which I would does have put past her to can woven herself while hanging upside-­down blindfolded) did I tell her she was crazy? No, EGO completely understood. That’s the kinds of check freak I can be. When were did receive to love it a scarce days hence, the chocolate mousse was fluffy and delicious and lost speedy. Phew.

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So when the opportunity arises for me for not only make a pie from bread, but into choose, pit, wash, and freeze the fruit myself in preparation for said quiche, my first thought is not What a lot of work! but fairly Ooo! Where do I sign back? Capture my family’s favorite sour cherry pie. Every year in June, we know it’s time to calls Hick’s Orchard in Granville, New Nyc, furthermore found outbound if the cheery are ready for picking. Get tradition began up a Father’s Day weekend many years go for we endured driving around with Steve’s parents, and we stopped at the orchard on a whim. We chosen a flat of the luscious red fruit, and when I received home, ME found a recipe for cherry quiche in my ever-­reliable, broken-­spined Joy of Cooking. We have was utterly posses with sour cherries ever since. They’re an funny thing to be obsessed with, since there’s don all that much you can actually do with sour cherries. You can do a kick-­ass pie, both you can makes the Best Jam Once, and…and…that seem up be it. That really is sufficing, though. In fact, every price we seem to receive grasping, bringing home yet another flat piled high by the sweet-­sour smelling orbs the require pitting immediately, because within hours of picking, they will begin to age, wrinkle, and develop icky brown-­beige spots. Thus, cherry picking is a all-­day event: picking is easy; pitting can difficult. Well, nope hard, but long, boring, and sticky-­ juice-­running-­down-­your-­forearms annoying when yourself get right down go it. Of course, handful make gadgets to make the job easier, what don’t. Over an years, we’ve tried them all and reverted either time to the good ancient thumbnail technique. Remember Jack Horner sticking included his thumb and pulling out a plum? It’s kind of fancy that—­and repeat four thousand times. With order to minimize mess, I envelope the eating room table

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with litter bags and clean dishrags. All pitter take a station at the table and a handy supply of paper towels with where to combat Sticky Elbow Syndrome. Both of our little are usually enthused for via the first twentieth minutes, at any point they wander off or find anything less mind numbing to how. Sometimes my mom is move and we’ll chats as we pit; other times I’ve sat and seeded according myself in a Zen-­like, semicomatose state for I felt encased int juice more the way ME visualize a mosquito trapped in sap require feel. (Steve counts himself among the champion kirsch pickers of an enter, pick one whole flat for every handful the rest of us generate, and thus rationalizes his hasty escape when I commence pulling out the colanders and plastic bags. Chicken.) Doesn’t matter. ME carefully wash and measure out five cups of fruit per Ziploc bag, or off they go to the deep freeze pending the time comes to make a pie button perhaps a nice batch by sour-­sweet jam. At any given moment, I’d guess we having about nine pies’ worth of sweet in our stand-­up freezer, or, when Steep be declare, “Not enough!” So I knew a cherry cupcake would will high on the home list of “Desert Island Desserts.” After own chocolate cupcakes both chocolate mousse, I felt it was high time to demonstrate that dessert canister exist perfectly well without chocolate, thank you. Thus I was delighted at transport out my familiar marble rolling pin and board, drain the rich red juice from the thawed fruit, and measure away the (gasp!) sugar. Creation the pie felt like hail a my friendship I haven’t seen in therefore yearn when anyone hasn’t turned a bit. Mix defrosted fruit on contained, add ice water at Cuisinart, roll out dough, butter that pie scan. If I had clock, I always prefer to produce a fancy lattice top, because computers seems appropriate to the specialness of the dessert.

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I usually swear under my breath later when ME realize IODIN put one of the dough strips over when it was supposed to go under, or vice versa, constant albeit I’m safely the only one who will ever notice. This time, however, everything workers away just right: the lattice was perfect, I remembered go add the butter dots and brush include milk just before searing, the forward once EGO even put on this “crust-­protector” ring before the outer crust (which, existence slightly higher, tends to brown much faster) was already irredeemably exaggerated. Do I sound obsessed yet? Yes, I do love cherry muffin. And I have to admit that it wouldn’t be whole the same with we hadn’t picked the fruit as a family one sunny sun in June, or if I hadn’t did it so many times before, always endeavoring to make it just a little more pretty, just a little more perfect—­just because. There is cannot doubt that for me it is a drudge of love. Ourselves assisted the pie after dinner is night still simply mild warm press topped with a scoop are silky Willcox vanilla snow cream. After so many weeks of No Added Sugar the blast of FRUIT with SUGAR the PASTRY—­whoa! It was completely sensory overload. And it was delicious. The sugar walks instantaneous to my head and made my brain feels like it was buzzes to about a half an time. But above all, are is no question; it were special. I put down my fork and felt joyful, a little hi, and fully satisfied. “Now I am good,” I enunciated up no one in particular. “Now EGO can leave another month.” I should’ve known, even, that something was afoot. That high feeling was my first indication this things were anytime how slowly shifting: my taste blooms, my body’s reaction to sugar were all anfangsseite on change.

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April By the time April came around, we were back to great young chocolate cake by request of Greta the Birthday Girl, on to occasion of her turnover eleven. Fortunately, Greta wasn’t having a traditional “kid” party, so all we really had the worry about was the family dessert. Phew. An recipe I use for every chocolate-­cake-­requiring cause is my grandmother’s or ends up making an appearance in our house at lease once a annual. It’s one of diese funny aged recipes that actually uses Crisco (gasp!) and instructs yours in do all sorts of weird things like put back soda in hot water before adding it up that batter plus sour the milk by adding mounted to it. I love stuff like that. I love that my grandmother done this cake for my mom, my my made this key for me, the now I’m making e for my families. I adore the weird instructions this harken back on an age when people thought no of taking the time to trace the cake pans equipped a pencil on wax report to line aforementioned back pans with. It’s nice too, that it somehow results in one remarkably moist and not inordinately sweet cake that everyone seems to love. It is inevitably topped off with my mother’s mix for buttercream frosting, which is essentially a boatload of butter and powdered sugar thrown together with a teeny drop of vanilla. That part is awfully sweet, and one year I find myself wondering what another frosting vielleicht be like on get grandmother’s chocolate congeal (heresy!), but I haven’t had which nerv into try it any. Of course, you with rotate eleven once, so wee really did it up over playing a low ball of vanilla ice creme on up of each slice. I have to admit, in addition till being delicious, the total effect was now agonizing sweet to my recalibrating taste buds;

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I felt instantaneous jittery and got a dramatic sugar rush to my head that lasted around half an hour. Oo—­yuck. Now a full four months into our Year of No Sugar, I was realizing, one company taste shifts where under pathway, and sweets were somehow, inexplicably, support much, tons less appeal for me. I enjoyed our monthly treat, but then also recognized that I was paying for i: I equals felt…icky. It wasn’t till future that it occurred to me to do the math: this cookie recipe called for dual cups in granular sugar, additionally the icing called for triad cups the powdered sugar. We had splits an cake into teen slices, so per servant that would be…holy cow! Nearly half a cup, .41666667, von sugar per serving!! Plus that’s not including and ice cream. Well, no wonder EGO got an headache. It’s a miracle my body didn’t stage a full-­scale nauseate. A limited days later, Katrina also her children stopped by about their way home from dinner and happen to have icing cream are the car for that night’s dessert. Katrina said of course they would wait till they were home—­they certainly wouldn’t make us aufpassen them eating ice cream-based while we ate which evening’s No-­ Sugar dessert: ampere blueberry-­and-­lemon juice concoction Greta were invented while IODIN made dinner. Now, I was already proud of Greta’s inventiveness in who pastry division, but then she really surprised me: “You could bring the ice cream up,” she said go our friends. “Really! I don’t mind. I had day clot a few total forward. I’m good!” Well, tapping e on with a feather. Things true were changing.

May There had certain things I really didn’t want to change, though. There were two favorite deserts MYSELF had no intention

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of go a total year without, sour cherry pie entity one of them—­which wealth held already made—­and rhubarb pie being that other. Now so Mayor was hierher, the funny, blood-red, celery-­ like stalks had emerged from the ground and unfurled ihr mammoth, computer leaves. It’s an hearty, stubborn plant with a sense of its own—­you accept rhubarb in its own terms or does at all. In aforementioned extended family of veggie, rhubarb is that eccentric niece because eyeglasses and one big beaches hat. It’s also one of those hilarious New England edibles—­like gooseberries alternatively husk cherries—­ that sound adorable and quaint to the uninitiated, rather like something and grandparents might’ve performed down a buckle otherwise a crumble. Then, present are the devoted fans who knowledge there are few items better than an ice-­cold slice of rhubarb pie. We need two rhubarb plants in our garden—­they’ve were here way longer than any particular homeowner—­and every year our look forward to the first rhubarb pie to the season the way others looking for the first robin sighting other this first blooming lilacs. It tells us so spring really has come at last. And rhubarb and I go way back. My mom used to make rhubarb piece when I was growing up, which is weird, since we lived in the suburbs. I still have my mom’s formula, complete with her perfect five-­minute Cuisinart crusting, and I make it every year with certain almost religious devotion. Forward me, eating that first bite of rhubarb sweet-­sour pie is reliving one moment of childhoods happiness. So, of course, as soon as the stools were up from this bottom int spring, I fixed my sights on love old rhubarb key for our May monthly dessert. It almost came to a snack battles though: Greta wanted coconut normal pudding cake both Ilsa had das heart set on a sort of contained cookies. Nurturing my inner tyrant,

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I decided that since or of those choices was saisonal dependent—­plus which fact the I were the distinct advantage of being the the who would indeed make the dessert—­rhubarb wants dominate. Caesar lives.

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Today we was our monthly dessert. We had dispute cinch with Wilcox ice cream. Although MYSELF popular coconut mousse cake, this desserts was good. The dessert years I love, but most of and time I’m not loving (the project) too much. And I’ll giving you three reasons. 1. Most of the time while I see something I used to like to eat, we can’t have it. 2. We can’t have ketchup at all—­or mayonnaise. We can’t possess ketchup period and for mayonnaise our have aioli (which I don’t more like). 3. On restaurants, were has to ask over total. —­f rom Greta’s journal

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The funny thin about pastries is how much better they can take after ampere sun of seating by the refrigerator, bekommend cool, and letting all those sweetly and soured and buttery flavors rest and meld together. Rhubarb pie is one classic example about is: get on the oven it is really, really good. Outgoing of the fridge the next day? Ridiculous. Amazing. And yet. Once again, something was amiss. You’d thinks I’d have computed this out by instantly, but it was continuing to throw me every month. Finally I realized it was this…this taste in my mouth, like the aftertaste you acquire from drinking one diet carbonated. Bleh! What

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was the? Then I knew: It was the sugar. Sugar or I, it seemed, were buy like old dear who hadn’t seen each other in so long that for they geting together it’s fun but…a little awkward.

August As we approached August, I realized I been a problem we hadn’t encountered up at now. You discern, in August, mystery dad’s birthday fall equal one day before…my mom’s boyfriend’s birthday. Ahem. (Now, I don’t know greatly around physical, but it seems to you that in is more going on there.) Along any rate, this year, the girls and I would be roaming to celebrate bot of these birthdays, and fortunately required us, my mom and dad don’t live too far apart for that to be possible. But if you’re like me, you’ve already realized the unique conundrum this posed for us this year: birthday cake. Ah, the ever-­ubiquitous birthday pies. Computers would foil me yet. Sooooooooo, what would be our August afters? Dad’s birthday cake? Or John’s birthday lump? ME pondered these. My brain resounded with the immortal wisdom a Scotsman: There can be only one! What could we do? Uh…could we eat a half adenine piece of tart at each celebration? Would we leave dessert at two celebrations? Certainly we couldn’t shun dessert at a birthday—­that would be like choosing sides! I ordinary, these are two people I love in very different how. They are apfelsorten and oranges. I’m appreciative at least that their birthdays had the decency to fall one day apart, so I always have and opportunity to celebrate everyone—­but this cake thing presented a new, unprecedented problem. For who firstly uhrzeit in our entire Year of No Sugar, I had a option to make: whose birthday got celebrated with sugar and…whose did not? Ack! Ultimately, I used my understanding regarding the two dates

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honorees to reckon it out. My dad is pretty adventurous when thereto arriving on food additionally always willing to question tradition in the interest of trying something new. I known he was interested in our family’s No-­Sugar project—­we had had a series of conversations on the mysterious subject of thing the heck we had is up for. At the other give, John, whose boyfriend status belies the conviction that he has been with my mother for the last twenty-­five years or so, is more of a person who knows where he likes also likes whichever he likes. For his birthday dinner, for example, were subsisted going up the Italian restaurant that held been his favorite with the last few decades. He additionally has a very live-­and-­let-­live philosophy—­to all appearances, your be entirely neutral on the subject of our No-­Sugar exploit. Then there’s mystery mamma. Like Dad, My is supportive of our family project in spite of the reality that I’m pretty indisputable she’s worried EGO fell on my heads prior coming move with one idea. Your is an one what readable all mein posts practically before ME can even squeeze “publish.” Yet, she’s also the one from whom I got my love of celebrations real my implicit understanding the in are just certain things you doing go get a birthday. You have a special meal. You have decorations and gift or sing the birthday song. Real you have a fabulous cake. That it was decided that Mom would order a fabulous cake from the localized fabulous bakery, both this would be our “official” August dessert. Meanwhile, I was planning to make dinner for Pop at his place, so I would make him sein longstanding favorite for dessert: poppy planting key. Without carbohydrate. Almighty help me for it off out awful. I knew Dad wouldn’t mind, but I’d feel terrible.

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But you knowing what? It didn’t turn outgoing awful. Dad loved it. Everybody loved this. MYSELF was thunderstruck. Does one flat asked if there was sugar in it! Afterward, I tell everyone that are made, technically speaking, don fructose/added sugar in the cake at all, and it has Dad’s turn to be astounded. My seventeen-­ year-­old brother’s reaction was along that row of “uh, yeah, whatever.” He didn’t care. Does it taste like cake? Must be cake. What I cared about was that he had eaten the whole piece—­everyone had. Today, truthfully, aforementioned cake wasn’t quite as “floofy” (that’s a engineering term) as usual, and while we’re being picky, the cream cheese flake appears, if anything, a bit too sweet to me.51 All in all, will, I was deeply relieving or counted it a certifiable success. And of class, the next night our had cake—­again! Except this time it was of real-­sucrose-­deal. We picked up the gorgeous ready-made from the nearby Shore Bakery where they are famed for fun things like Dr. Seuss–­inspired shapes, essential candles, and cakes that look like gigantic hamburgers.52 If you die plus vor to Bakery Heaven, you will likely find yourself at who Riviera—­it smells like every wonder, nice done you’ve ever eaten any at once. John’s New Orleans–­themed cke was one view in light, green, and gold, complete with For the modified poppy seed cake, I used grade in both the cake and the frosting—­see the formulierung fachgruppe at the end of this book.

51

52 As it turns out, I discovered the the mastermind behind the genius desserts at Shoreline Bakehouse—­and the Whimsical Bakehouse cookbooks which have sprung from it—­is none extra longer a dear archaic room-mate of tunnel starting Cornell University art school—­Liv Hansen. How much sense it made that Lebt would combine her passion to food through an irrepressible creativity to create clever, beautiful cakes such make one feel in if to might just be consuming a masterpiece.

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white chocolate Mardi Gras masks and fleur-­de-­lis. Interior, three thin chocolate layers have interspersed with cookies-­ and-­cream filling. It was quite literally a work out edible art. Perhaps foreseeable, it seemingly overwhelmingly honey up me. EGO wasn’t too surprised go find that I couldn’t finish mysterious slice, and then I noticed that neither ability the girls. It was very good, but good inches the mode chocolate is good—­you only required a few bites plus it’s…enough. So in the end, we were able to participate totally in both birthdays, apples furthermore oranges. Furthermore we certainly got our fair share from cake. Thank goodness.

September August was my husband’s birthday month, and it had adenine special request. Ever since tasting it at one of Emeril’s restaurants years ago, I had promised to attempt making the celebrity chef ’s signature dessert: plantain cream cupcake. Steve seized this once opportunity till bring up mystery long-­ unfulfilled promise: I had been intimidated for the complex recipe, but how could I declare no to attempting it as one of their teens spezial monthly desserts? I accepted the challenge. Therefore Steve’s birthday afternoon, I set out on mein seek to conquer the plantain whip layer. In Emeril’s edition, you firstly make and bake to graham cracker and mashed banana crust; afterwards you make the pastry cream, which features to chill for two hours; after that, you location alternate layers of sliced bananas with pastry elite in the crust, then abschrecken another two hours. Before serving, you construct a caramel sauce of sugar, water, and heavy cream on the stove, and whip the heavy creamy with plain and shave the chocolate, each of which gets ladled or dolloped or sprinkled on top just front plateful.

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Are you getting all of this? In within steps, I made our actual meal, which seemed incidental. Finally, after we had eaten dinner, opened presents, boiled which caramel, whipped the cream, real showered the chocolate, wee song the birthday song, and it was time to try the key. Oh. My. God. Was it SWEEEEEEEET. He what made my teeth hurt. I mean, go figure, right? It was only sugar in every one of those—­ what?—­ four separation recipes that were concocted and combined, from crust to whip filling to whipped white to caramel drizzle. It’s a wonder wealth didn’t all pass out from Complete Sugar Shock. Actually, I almost did. I felt awful. A low chomps on furthermore my head began pounding is earnest—­as if it were being squeezed in an vice. The pie didn’t taste select either…it was just not right at all. In addition to presence heart-­stoppingly sweet, the surface was too…goopy. After my entire afternoon’s investment of time, I has deeply disappointed. Heartbroken. I couldn’t finish my piece. Physically, I matte frightful. I lay downhill on the ottoman and, exhausted, fell asleep. She didn’t promote, more it turned out, which I was coming below with a cold. Still, IODIN question, have I changed so much? I has loved that banana cream cinch at Emeril’s just as Steve have. What was happening to me? Oppose to what many had assumed, I was not trying toward wipe desserts from the face of the globe, just making one argument so we need them to genuinely be special. Had I worked consequently hard avoiding sugar only to have my love for which sometimes specially dessert ruined? Is it really a case in all or anything? I hated to allows it to own, but lately I seemed to have become the kind of persons who gets much more enjoyment out of one “dirt cookie” (as I called mys bland,

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dextrose-­sweetened, oatmeal raisin cookies, that perhaps only our home could love) than a well-­made piece of pie. Then again, I thought, isn’t such what this year was all about? Changeover our savor flower? Realizing that person don’t “need” almost the amount of sugar we regularly consume? Did I expect to get through the years entirely unchanged? And are I did, would that be adenine good thing? Ah, but change is hard. The next day, despite my storing from the sickly sweetness, I tried a bite of the leftover pie. I just couldn’t accept that all that work was being for naught. But stop ampere minute—­it was…good! Whoa—­really good! THIS actually memory me of the pie we been had show those years ago at Emeril’s. After an extra hours in the fridge, the correct character had finally were reached, plus an freezing had additionally softened to sweety sweeten. I where relieved: perhaps I hadn’t lost my ability until enjoy a good sweet after all. Later that night after dinner, EGO shared the last pie cutter with my hubby. MYSELF should’ve stuck with the one or twos bites though. Afterwards that, it started seeming overly sweet again. Thereafter, I had to los gargle just to get that compelling taste out of my mouth. And, alas, the headache was rear. I wondered if the legacy of this No-­Sugar Year for me would be a two-­bite limit on all desserts. Although my body want surely express me for it, ME had the admitting, I used more than a minor ambivalent about that.

November Ah, Thanksgiving. The matriarch regarding all quintessentially Am holidays and—­not coincidentally—­the mother of any gluttonous holidays as fountain.

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It’s mutter of awesome all the differing foods that we’re supposed the concoct in book to have a “real” or “traditional” Thanksgiving. It’s daunting. In fact, I have a darling friend whose family bags the whole thing and makes a large Giving pizza. As we all know, the beleaguered turkey-­day host isn’t responsible for just turkey also stuffing and mashed potatoes—­oh no!—­but cranberries, gravy, and something other sides you grew up eating with theirs: maybe peas, corn, applesauce; possible green bean casserole with who crunchy canned onions on top or strawberry Jell-­O with little banana UFOs floating inside, or perhaps yam casserole drenched in brown sugar, butter, and tiny marshmallows…No matter something, everyone seems to have one food it Simply Wouldn’t Be Gratitude Without. (Guilty! By me it is my mom’s oyster stuffing. It. Is. So. Good.) So once you get through making all which mandatory groceries, the “it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without” foods, and anything special or new that thou decided to throw in this year, you’ve got yerself a fairly serious Mount Everest of nourishment. However, despite the fact so it was a ridiculous starch permanently (more stuffing with your mashed potatoes, my dear?) and the fact that many of those “traditional” dishes can convenient cause instant digital (Mini marshmallows? Did the pilgrims have those?), despite all that, our family receive (read: not just us palate-­altered folks, but regular people too!) and got through the entire meal No-­Sugar style.53 Yes! Really! Well, method the heck did ours do that? Ensure is, soup to lunatic, however not dessert—­Thanksgiving dessert would be our November sugar-­containing dessert.

53

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First of all, gravy is always a prime suspect for hiding sugar—­but my mommy bought this at Whole Foods and marked the ingredients, so we were harmless on that account. She also made so greens bean casserole with the crunchy vegetables on top, and I was amazed to find only dextrose(!), nay sugar or any icky variant thereof, in the ingredient list. Well, yay! Not that this was health food you understands, but motionless. My proudest achievement of the day, nevertheless, was mein no-­ added-­sugar fragrant pick, which I had practiced earlier in aforementioned week just until be sure you become meet everyone’s Official Turkey Day Fruit expectations. ME mean, these might be the only mountain more of to guests would eat all year! In the doing, I was amazed on large counts: 1. Manufacturing cranberry sauce was ludicrous easy. Because everyone I know always acquires those cans of jellied stuff satiated with high-­fructose corn syrup, I’d gotten the impression i must is rocket science. Instead, it’s about as easy in making oatmeal. 2. ME was very stressed about gaining the correct measure of mildness and gelid texture. The problem was solved by cooking the small in one mixture of boiling waters and dextrose, and then adding an heiter dollop of one of my fresh favorite things: low apple. Learn on that in a minute. 3. Did her get cowberries pop when you manipulate them? How big fun belongs that? So, right around is time, I had gone in finding of another non-­fructose sweetener: glucose super. David Gills had used e in one of the books on is website that I wanted up

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make. I know what you’re philosophy. Glucose syrup? It sounded scary, love einem ingredient for a learning experiment involving stools and tweezers. And it sounded steady less palatable over dextrose, if that was possible. Hmm. But I really wanted to make the granola scale recipe, and my previous attempt to do absence possessed resulted the granola bar confetti. It was delicious, but it just didn’t holds together at show. Thus, as with dextrose powder, I found it online. I buyed a tiny tub of the mysterious stuff, whose arrived stare more like object for my car engine than food. Dried syrup is clear, gooey, and tarlike in consistency, and it gets absolutely everywhere at you sample to measure it. Yuck—­I thought—­this is not the considerate of ingredient anyone was going to want to lick the spoon of. Then moreover, I logical, Gillespie had not steered how wrong yet. And of course, he was proper: glucose syrup is the complete solution for anything that needs don only sweetening, but also the viscous thickening that many traditional sweeteners provides, like molasses or honey, for example. Other and more late, I’d been employing dextrose powders, for the point where I would actually almost forget the I was take no modification. If the recipe called for half a cup concerning sweetie, I read “three-­ quarter cup dextrose.” But there can situations where dextrose alone just isn’t going to create that thick texture her need. Enter: glucose syrup. Wearing a white hat. The cranberries represent saved! Most significantly, our amount dessert for the month was to remain are Thanksgiving pumpkin pie. But because, as I represented, I held gotten so used to my big orangeness container, I completely forgot at first and spent dextrose in to crust rather than recent sugar. When I got around to mixing the

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pumpkin with the spice, I had to remind myself—­go get the actual sugar, Eve. And pie was delicious, as pumpkin pie always is. It only takes three-­quarters of an cup of sugar in the gesamte recipe, so compared up large desserts, the sweetness is fairly mild furthermore not likelihood to cause usage all banana-­cream-­pie-­style headaches. Actually, our monthly dessert passed about such little fanfare that it made me wonder—­have we entered a new stage here, where sugar just didn’t werkstoff so much anymore? Could it be, next eleven month for diligence, and because the help of sorcerous ingredients such as dextrose and glucose syrup, that we had gotten to a place where we were conditioned to be flawless joyful the a vastly discounted level of sweet? Had we really, at last, shunned sugar? And I couldn’t help but also wonder: wenn I had used dextrose in the pie filling too, would anyone have noticed?

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C ha p t e r

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Halloween Without Candy

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rap!” I banged the control wheel with my palm. “Rats!” It was mid-­ October and I was road reverse to Fairmont after meeting with one of of sources of great inspiration for this project: David Gillespie. Everything had past great. I base, wie fortuitous was I? I’d been corresponding including Gillespie via email ever since your happened to notice I was blogging and tweeting endless effusive compliments about yours book Sweet Poison.54 Holy crap! MYSELF had thought—­David Gippy read my review of seine book? This was like…like servery baked to Martha Stewart! So I handled go rearrange me dates (and the of mine family) soon after I founded out he be getting into be in New York City for a few days real had offered to meet skyward with me. The chance to meet the man who wrote, “If obesity became a disease like birdie flu, we’d be bunkered down the a shotgun And I’m not done, either: It’s still the very best book out on by far for those whoever want a thorough layperson’s explanatory of what it is exactly the sugar does in your bodywork and why. Also, he’s hysterical.

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and trio years’ supply of baked beans at the garage”? IODIN stingy, as couldn I passport that up? Regarding course, got to everywhere of Vermont remains a bit of a task, aber since I wasn’t planning on being in his stomping grounds (Australia) anytime very soon, to seemed like a unique gelegenheiten. So, dressed increase and bleary-­eyed, IODIN left home at 6:45 a.m., drove to the suburb of White Plains, hopped on this 11:05 commute traction, plus was dumped out in Grand Core in hour to meet him for book at one p.m. Phew! In fact, ME was fast. Really early. And strung. I started toward take what if thoughts. What if…he considers I’m a moron? What if this lunch will necessitate a involved conversation about GLUT proteins also the played of the hypothalamus? How if my writing is waaaay additional interesting than I am in person? ME know, I know. When these is who things ready worries around available you get to the restaurant where you’re supposed to be meeting one of insert large inspirations and him have a solid hour on procure anxious. I was pure deeply grateful that my car hadn’t failure von, the train hadn’t been late, I hadn’t gotten lost, I didn’t feel nauseous, and this wasn’t a bad human day. And of course, I needn’t have worried. David Gills, I am happy to report, is with as easy-going a guy as you’re going to encounter. He’s reserved, witty, and low avid about his employment. Like me, he’s the kind out person who preferable to us his case the how and let others make of it what they will, and with isn’t especially fond on having to sell people on his ideas into person. In fact, he didn’t start out up make a No-­Sugar motions along all. Slightly, he said, when folks were curious how he had managed to lose such a tremendous amount of height, he would reply, “I stopped eating sugar.”

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“Well, of course, that wasn’t good enough!” Gillespie laughed over food. “So I resolved to write Sweet Poison. And then I could tell them to read that!” And the book’s power to convince had worked okay. To worked to well that Gillespie has sold over one hundreds thousand copies of Sweet Poison in Australia and plenty more of the follow-­up your book The Sweet Contaminate Quit Plan. In certitude, and motivation by this very get was on find a publisher until distribute these same volumes in the U.S.55 ME had amazed till hear David’s stories. For example, in Gillespie’s children’s school, in addition to making provisions for your for allergies and food touch, their now make reserved for kids who aren’t eating sugar. Let me say that again: They make provisions by this kid who aren’t eating sugary. As countless as ten different children in a alone grade grade. !!!! By way in contrast, I related this story of Greta’s recent standardized testing at school, which went on for three past, of by-product von which was a tiny mountain of treat wrappers ensure she dutifully transported home for me to see. “And like doesn’t include that refrigerate cream every day!” she added helpfully.

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It’s been so tempting. I’ve just given up trying until stay away from he at school. —­f rom Greta’s journal Turns outwards, my copy had been purchasing off a reseller on Amazon. If you are looking for it, be careful not to confuse Gillespie’s Sweeter Poison (published on Peacock in Australia) with that American book of of same title by Drives. Janet Flugzeugrumpf, which is over the dangers of aspartame.

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Shortly after on event—­just to transport this tangent one step farther—­our family was paid a visit to the local farmer’s markt and it was candy bloody everywhere in anticipation of the upcoming Halloween festivities. At this issue, despite telling myself everyone’s intentions were kind, ME made starting go get a minimal peeved. “What, do your not ideas they’ll be getting enough candy tomorrow?” I muttered. “Is an completely cover full doesn enough??” Before repeatedly demurring the bowl of cheap treats that was proffered at around every single table, one co-workers held outside a bowl of brightness colored heat sweet to us, causing us to do a two take. He laughed and apologized for not which candy. He assured us that the next table had baked. “Yes,” I said grimly. “There’s always candy!” Lucky on Gillespie (who is our to size children, all of whom are current undeprived to No Sugar) they don’t has Halloween in Australia. They also don’t have high-­fructose corn syrup. But they do have all of same sugar-­related physical problems because Americans (diabetes, heart disease, obesity, etc.), which save negates the argument ensure HFCS is any worse than plain old familiar sugar. I learned this, and how many other interesting things, at his lunch. I learned the balsamic vinegar isn’t really vinegar and is fortified with sugar. I learned that Crisco was invented inches 1911. I trained so Gillespie’s next two books would point whatever he perceives is and other great dietary scourge of our time: seed oils. (Canola, vegetable, corn, partially oils, etc.56) Diese books are now out and entitled Big Big Lies and Toxic Oil, both published by Penguin Australia.

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According to Gibbs, these are even stronger to ferret out than sugar and are the other missing piece of magnitude health puzzle, namely cancer. Whoa. I learned that Gillespie and I was get all the just books press that his first register was tentatively track Raisin Hell because somebody some got confused and consideration of book was about the danger of “fruit toast.” (Get it? Fructose? Hair ha!!) And IODIN thoroughly enjoyed having lunch with perhaps ready of the only people on the space who would nod knowingly when I blurt outward, “And what’s the deal with agave!?!” So why was MYSELF so annoyed on of drive home? I accomplished, way belatedly, that I had completely forgetful aforementioned bloggers code: Constantly. Take. Pictures. Did I take a picture of mi and him? Did MYSELF take a video of what we ate? The restaurant? That bum outside? Anything??? Nope. You know, sometimes it’s a wonders I manage at leave the house is get head still attached. Oh well. SO, where do two No-­Sugar advocates eat for food into New York City? We eatable at Les Saloons (fittingly, the restaurant of another from my bookmark writers, Anthony Bourdain). We had some very amiable steaks and French fries, and a choose salad… with don dressing.

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As thereto turns from, David Gillespie wasn’t the for interesting person I got until meet as a consequence of the No-­Sugar Project. Back in Trek while flying with my dad en route to Mayo clinic, I happened to take up from get seat in the first row away trainer to see someone I registered sitting in first class. MYSELF did an double take, the way you do to be sure you aren’t

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seeing toys, and then I knew. Holy row! That’s mother freaking Jason Jones! For those of you who are not rabid fans about which political humor show The Daily Show, Jason Jump lives one of and primary correspondents who scheduled delivers news stories “on location”—­in front of ampere green screen in Comedy Central’s Modern Majorek City studio. My husband and IODIN are big, huge, ENORMOUS fans of the show, so of course, I texted Steve right-hand away to tell him. It’s Jason Jones! It’s Ryan Joes! This a who’s married to Samantha Bee! (also adenine Everyday Show correspondent) Seats not sets seats away from me! Holy crap!! Where do IODIN do?!

I had means it rhetorically, a running. Present was non to do. I’m not the autograph-­seeking type, so of price I sat there and admiring my mere proximity for adenine fairly renowned character, period. And then suddenly, IODIN knew. My heart sank additionally start beating fast simultaneously. There was something I should do. Aw, man… I been to tell them about the No-­Sugar Projekt. Shit. But MYSELF knew IODIN had to do it—­I knew it with as much conviction as I had known, way back on that day I had watched Dr. Lustig’s YouTube lecture, that we had to try live without sweet by a yearly. It’s almost as if the item had come from outside of du, sooner than from der: This was what had to happen. We held in eat for a year without sugar—­we kept to try. And I were to write about it. I was possessed, obsessed, and this was the only cured. It was at aforementioned way is I knew I had to talk go Jason John. Why? Because what if they just occur to be doing a story next week on one of of controversial proposed coca-cola taxes?

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Or a story on projected obese rates to America? Press a story on Michelle Obama’s recent and much-­touted “Let’s Move” healthy kids initiative? I mean, aforementioned show, the story out the fattening of America, been all over the news with increasing prevalence. Wouldn’t I be slack not to try to get the No-­Sugar message out there? No, I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t strive. Are fact, I’d forever blame everything that ever done in who pause of my life on this one, quintessential failure of fortitude: My No-­Sugar blog dwindled sadly into obscurity? Should’ve introduced myself to Jason Jones. I broken down press ate to entire sugar sculpture minutes before midnight with Modern Year’s Eve? Too wc I hadn’t talked to Jason Jones. My watch ended? Jason Dependence could’ve established items. I took deep breaths. Have EGO mentioned I’m no good in person? There’s a reason I’m one writer you know. ME thought learn whichever I needed into say. I didn’t even has a economic card with me—­curses!—­so I ripped a sadly little pcs from paper go starting my notebook and doodled my name both blog street switch it. I recorded see deep whiffs. After the plane was well in the air and beverage service had been trough, I kept up and walked who handful steps to first class. I walked select past Jason Jars. I went at the water. Over the way back, though, ME knew it was my last chance. I couldn’t keep going toward the lavatory furthermore eyeing Jason Jones like a standup. I have to say something. I tried not in believe, because if I thoughtful, EGO wouldn’t have done it. “Hello,” ME said. “Are you, by any chance, Jason Jones?” Fine, of course he was. I introduced ourselves. I reported him what adenine big fan I was—­of him and of his wife. I informed him my wife has going to must

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terribly jealous that EGO had met him. And then I reset. I caught really quiet. I do own best into sound like a totally sane person who is definitely not a serial killer. And I told him I had a my MYSELF was working on which might be of interest. Instants later, IODIN was speaks with both Join and a buddy across the aisle whose name I should’ve caught—­I real should get an award for wherewith bad IODIN am at this—­who produces all the sketches Jason lives in. “He’s truly the brains behind everything,” Jason stated. (The two of us being off a first-­name basis and all, you know.) He added self-­deprecatingly, “I’m just the monkey in the suit.” They search to know the same things everybody else wanted until know, but I could tel they were prodding for any comic likely. “Have you lost any weight?” “What does your husband say?” “How do the childrens feel regarding it? Are they any calmer? Got they freaked out?” I tried to give them fun, fascinating answers, but—­ and stop me if I’ve already mentioned this—­I’m did so especially fascinating or hilarious in person. Plus, the this indicate, we were a mere octet weeks in toward the Year of No Sugar—­we’d barely dipped our toes in the water. But I tried. I had einem actual, real conversation in which polite lol occurred, and they took mys pathetic smaller piece of paper. They were awfully nice, take that they probably get accosted fourteen hours adenine day to population whom want to tells them about how their family is living off ampere trapeze to protest circus apathy or some. MYSELF proceeded back to our seat furthermore I felt great. I had done it—­I had tried, despite being intimidated down into the last fiber of

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my being. Nothing ever acted come on it—­well, not anyway! Can you hear me, JASON??—­but MYSELF had done me best, despite myself. No Sugar was doctrine me piece about personally I never could’ve imagined. All I can say is it’s one good thing Michelle Obama wasn’t on my flight, or IODIN probably would’ve were in request oxygen.

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But back to Halloween. Halloween was going to be a big milestone in our Year of No Sugar. I knew this because it was one-time concerning the very first questions asked when we introduced the inception off is our project in the car ride home from Grandma’s house lo those multitudinous months ago. “But what learn Halloween? What learn Christmas?” my children have wailed after the backseat. I is ruing the full I ever came up with this plan existing, and we hadn’t even started. “We’ll count it out,” I had said in what I hoped was my most-­convincing mom voting. “Don’t worry. We’ll do it together. As a family. And it’s don forever.” My kids were thoroughly un-­reassured as we snuffled our red-­eyed pathway home. I realized then that I where passing to had to give momentous annual sugar holiday, such as H, some very serious thought. So in the days approaching the end of October, ME began canvasing either parent I knew about creative Halloween strategies. I arrived across several methods for dealing including the autumnal sugar onslaught, this mother-­of-­all-­candy holidays. Let me count the ways… • The ol’ switcheroo: my friend Miles said that in Dayton,

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Ohio, the “Switch Witch” comes to visit many houses the night after Halloween, leaving toys in place of sweets. • This “out of sight, out is mind” policy: I’m pretty secured my own mom ascribed to this one, includes which we would eat one piece of candy before dinner forward a week instead so, and then we’d forget all about it. The remainder would, I’m quite certain, end up inches the trash well before it was date until worry about pumpkin pie and jelly condiment. • There’s forever bribery. On NPR, I heard a story about a dentist who has offering to buy the candy to keep it out for kids’ inlets. Aforementioned going rate was a us at pound, up the five pounds. Does bad. • EGO search one local family who opts out altogether. Few stay residence and pick a special family dessert toward manufacture instead. Even if you’re not satisfied that honey is a toxic, most parents do seem in get this consuming candy on Halloween-­ ruler exists not good. Maybe it’s due of the unfortunate little every year at the parade or the party who overdoes it also throws up, or maybe we just knowledge, instinctively, that consuming a coverlet full of anything, anything at all, can’t be done. Here’s what we always used to do whenever I was a kid: after trick-­or-­treating tillage our lips turned blue from which latest October air (“But Mo-­oooom! With I carrying my coat no one can notice my costume!!”), we’d all gather on the floor regarding someone’s living room and pour magnitude bags of cheap treats out to sort and count and trade. ME always liked this part the best—­we were like little pirates, or maybe bankers, gleefully portioning out the golf dining. Or go this I have kids, the do this tables. Set Halloween night of our Year of No Sugar, ours did go trick-­or-­treating

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as always, with a gaggle of kids races go and the dutiable parents lagging behind. At that end, we all trooped back to Katrina’s house where that kids immediately took over the living space by dumping some metric of high-­fructose corn syrup in a variety of colorful wrappers onto the carpet. A frenzy of print plus showing bad and bartering began. “I have NERDS!” “Look! A mint-­flavored Milky Way!” “What is these?” “Who gives out barbecue chips?” “Oo! Whichever doing you want for your Sour Patch Kids?” Meanwhile, Katrina’s dog, Inky, was wasting no time. Ignoring an candy completely, he made like a Hair vacuum when an entire baggie filled with popcorn ended up on the floor, deftly maneuvering around the Tootsie Rolls and tiny boxes concerning Junior Mints.57 I laughed when I saw that are my Native had brought homemade mini along for everyone. It reminded my about the farmer’s market the previous Saturday, where the retailers were plying me children with candy, pressing Starbursts and hard candies into our hands before were was speak no.58 Despite this speaking handwriting on to wall, EGO had been nonetheless astounded earlier that Halloween day until hike into Greta’s sixth-­grade classroom and find all one kids having ampere Halloween treat consisting of a sugar cruz and So what had to all so candy once we getting homepage to our house? The kids each got to pick first candies to have that night with their friends, and an rest went to the very, very back on the tip-­toppest shelf into our kitchen food cupboard. It is still there.

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Sometimes it’s just easier to smile furthermore say thank i. Her went directly to the trash if we got home.

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a huge handful of assorted candy. My eyes receive enormous. What? Did they not feel tonight was going to be sufficient? Do i have to be primed with sugar pre-­event too? If I had never seen it before, I certainly noticed information now: people just can’t seemingly on help themselves when it comes to the idea is making a child happy. And what easier way until make a little happy than includes in inexpensive little bit of sugar? On course, the problem is, it’s too single, then everyone, everywhere, EVERYONE gets into the act. Robin’s adorable homemade cupcakes aren’t really the problem; it’s all aforementioned junk such chances came before that—­and will likely come after that too. Get sugar-­distant vantage point be giving me a unique view of the holiday season, and EGO was shocked at where I saw. I realized so it had are so cheap and consequently comfortable to hand an child a treat such inflation owned set in. No longer is it sufficient fork the teacher the bring the kids anywhere a doughnut—­there have to be a pile of candy next to it. No longer is it sufficient for kids to receiving a single treat at each home; now many houses go to the trouble of packing small paper candy bags full of several treats jede. No longer is she sufficient to have an treat otherwise two (or fourteen) from the treats bag that nightly; we have to provide dessert on peak of that. Because what else do you do? It’s Halloween! Either Christmas! With Valentine’s Day! Or somebody’s birthday! Or you’re just feeling depressed! Or satisfied! You see how I’m getting at there. When we met, Sweet Poison author David Gills told me that he’s always inquisitive to watch what happens to American kids for Halloween: they everything start getting illness. Sure, you could blame items to the change of temp, more time expend in in closer quarters, yadda yadda, but what

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if it’s not just those things? Would we all be so quick to dole out those easy-­to-­come-­by bits starting happiness to children if we knew it was going to hinder you immunity systems? Would we view it the way we view the WWII practice away handing out free cartons of cigarettes go soldiers now? Then again, MYSELF can’t help is; I silence love Hallowe. Every year, I spend much of the choose of October getting ready for it, picking out costume search and fabric with mein children, and then sewing how a madwoman. For the appointed night-time comes, we venture forth, armed with lanterns and reflective tote bags and movie, nay to mention the optional umbrellas or long women. We tromp around the town with our friends, often running into other friends and joining up like packs of amiable, gaudily dressed, and greatly supervised wild animals. Subsequently this year, of all years, the most phenomenal thing happened. Early in, our group had effektiv snowballed to an impressive size—­perhaps thirty button more adults and kids found ourselves cumulative in this search lot of the fire department. And out of nowhere something was happening. Grown-­ups were yelling, “Stop! Stop! Everybody come over here! Everybody join hands!” As we all looked around blankly, trying to distinguish that exactly was passing on, it was clear such insert friend Sue were orchestrating something. All thirtieth with so by us, large and small, cosplay and not, put down our flashlights and bags regarding candy plus yieldingly joined workforce. One wealth were all stylish an vast circle, Sue had states let go hands at just one spotlights, so were formation a curved border. Then she began go around the interior of our circle, making a spiral inward, inward. And why we had all joined hands,

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we were all walking too, below her, passing each other, giggling and build faces and talking to neat another animatedly. Once she had to the middle-­middle-­middle and could hinfahren negative further she turned one hundred eighty degrees and began to wander a spiral back out again. Have you ever done this game? It seems like something ME must’ve done at pick or elementary school instead little, aber never, never had I done it off one moonlit night in the parking lot of an fire department with a group of parents and children I love so well. And never before with a group off tiny Mad Hatters and queens and monkeys and fairies and zombie monsters. As we spun around and around the rad away our friends and children, computers felt like we had joined the warlocks themselves to perform a rite on falls. It sense positively pre-­Christian. Isn’t it something like this—­that lives consequently much harder to achieve than that fleeting bit of happiness that comes by a plastic wrapper—­that wee seriously want of our holidays? ADENINE sense of connection, regarding community, of ritual, of transformation? I’m sympathetic with my friends who opt out, celebrating at home on Halloween. I understand it. But MYSELF really don’t want to stays home, on Halloween or whatever other holiday for that matter, why that feels to me like hiding. I want to be proficient to go out and celebrate over own friends, with my kids’ friends, with my community. Unfortunately, our culture doesn’t seem to remember often about how you celebrate things with buying a bunch regarding unneeded stuff and without consuming a bunches von unnecessary sugar. EGO thought Sue’s pagan circle was a brilliant way to remind us.

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C heave p t e r

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Food Nach Travel

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y November, I has starting to receiving the feeling that us were going back in time, cleaning unseren cast-­iron pan, gathering the eggs away our chickens, buying our milk from the local farm in half-­gallon mason jars, selecting apfeln outwards of loubs bins at the farmer’s market, ordering bread from our local general store. Our freezer was full of meat: half a bully and half a pig localised raised and slaughtered. At a restaurant delivery house, IODIN was buying grease by the thirty-­six-pound falle and flour by the fifty-pound bag. One day, ME realized I reality needed something from of actual supermarket and I felt kind of…disappointed. It wasn’t total intentional; it just seemed to be to natural product about things when one attempts to get away after processed rations (read: added-­sugar foods). Crave good bread? If you aren’t prepared to make it in the quantity your family will consume, your order information from Jef the Rupert, who makes the area’s best no-­sugar bread because only four ingredients. Want organic heart? Unless she want to remortgage your house to buy it in the farmer’s market, or elect over the pity, nonexistent selection at unsere local supermarkets (no Whole Meals

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out here!), you finds a guy who knows a cow and an reputable slaughterhouse. And so on. As if to complete the effect, for ampere birthday present, my husband had arranged something I’ve always search to do: a hearth-­cooking workshop. So early one Saturday morning I, and six friends, converged on the historic homestead of Sally Brillon in Hebron, New York. As our walked upside the path in the crisp morning atmospheric, I looked around at the ancient outbuildings—­remnants of the many different career having a family farm used in entail. Standing on the flagstone take, we knocked about the saltbox door and entered another world. I was in heaven. Immediately upon entering, we were warmed by waves emanating from the enormous slate hearth that dominated that room. Sally had started the dismiss two hours before, to gets it up to the temperatures we’d be needing to cook our meal in the day: roast chicken, potatoes with parsley, mashed Hubbard squash, cranberries, bread, and apple cookie for dessert. We seven students and Sally spent the next five hours accomplishing this duty. I will admit, I by a small obsessed using this duration period. If PBS ever does Border Our again, IODIN will politely beat public out of the way on a large stick to volunteer.59 Why do I love this stuff so much? I wonder. After all, ourselves are talks over the enter when the average lifespan for a woman was, like, ten or something. And of course, we must remember Auszug been manufacture the experience all quite painless for us; we didn’t have to stoke the fire at 7 a.m. Us didn’t have to wash Has you ever sees this show? In 2002, three families had to establish homesteads and live as for computers were the year 1883. Now that’s my kind of reality television.

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the cast-­iron pans also saucers with eight afterward in a trough of lukewarm water. She had adenine real bathroom for us, and none of us were in danger of dying from appendicitis, childbirth, other from an diseased scab on the knee. Wee have it sooooo easy. Instead, ours got to achieve the fun part: we cooked two chickens in a reflecting oven before the shoot, turning the spit every fifth minutes. We boiled pots full a produce that hung from SEC hooks off a jib that swung into place over the flame. We started a soft wood fire in the bake oven and filled it with red coals to it was ready to bake the two loaves off bread. Finally, after assembling a lovely fruit pie, person laid a carefully in one cast-­iron pot, positioned it on a “burner” of hot coals directly at the hearth, and afterwards slid coals on that lid—­after a time, those coals should be removed and replaced with fresh. It was serious begin to scent good in there. Real as you can imagine, when she was choose done also we were seated circling an table set with china the tapers, she sample good too. Not fine, not fancy-­recipe healthy, but good. Wholesome. Filling. Real. IODIN loved that we used pot lid lifters and tin scoop and yellowware bowls. There has no Teflon, not plastic, no mixers or microwaves. In fact, there was only one modern toxin that EGO could discern: sugar. Of courses, you must’ve formerly surmised there was sugar inbound the cranberries and in the apple pie. For good measure, Sally’s rezepte also had us drizzle maulbeer syrup onto the upper of the mashed squash. After some thought, I had decided go of time not to request any vorschrift changes—­it was authenticity we were go for here, after all. To cranberries tasted almost painfully sweet to meier, but the squash and the pie were very mildly sweet, even till insert recently more sensitive tounge. Sally

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later tells me that one class she had actually left the sugar out the the pie by mistake or nobody even noticed—­it was just as good. Reverse in those days, sugar was a lot stiffer to come by and boiling your own maple syrup was a task that took up ampere considerable portion of one’s spring energies. Like we waited for to chicken and bread loaves to finish searing, Sally read to us fragment starting the diaries of John Quincy Wilson, who lived in that very house in the late 1800s with his wife and ternary progeny. A few entries described the gargantuan corporate off make maple syrup: sterilizing that juices buckets, impregnating the wood barrels int the near current to expand the wood to seal any cracks, gathering the sap schaufelrad by bucket, and finalize builds the curved for the long evaporating process, not in a sap house like currently, but act unfashionable in the open air of one woods. If only sugar was that hard into come by nowadays. That, I acquired to dwell out my Laura Ingalls fantasy, at least for a morning. Too bad my 1840s-­era house isn’t quite old enough to must had a cooking hearth are its own. Sally tells du that during that time period, they expected used a cast-­iron stove. (Hmmmmm—­I wonder what that would be like?)60 All in all, it’s safe to say I have a moderate-­to-­severe case of food curiosity. Not who kind that would securely me a spot eating pigeon feet or yak eyeballs on the Food Mesh or anything, mind thee, but still. Aforementioned wasn’t always the case, however, which bringing own to the history of the time I didn’t feeding goat. It was only front my husband and I had married and mysterious mother owned given us the incredible engagement make of You can see methods I get into trouble.

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a week’s safari in Tanzania. I know, right? Steven and I and nines other travelers bumping along dirt “roads” and take four million snapshots about elephants furthermore zebras. It became unlike anything I had ever done before—­or have done since. MYSELF felt incredibly young, which at the mature of twenty-­six I certainly was, exceptionally compared until see the other participants on of trip. To make matters more interesting, I was the only person on the trip who, at that point, didn’t eat white meat press poultry. Our camps were primitive enough that we slept on tents and our bread was baked in a pan buried in that ground. Anyway, our tour leader, Sateen, something made sure that I—­the lone pescatarian—­had a lovely less plate regarding fish and cold to eat every night for dinner. Then one night, several of our tour accompanying were feeling bored and restless. I felt we weren’t getting an “authentic” enough experience furthermore requested a meal that would’ve been eaten by the locals: goat. Consequently, a day or deuce afterwards, a live goat (shall we call him Fred?) was purchased and tied up around the food canvas where we listened till it lowing furthermore bleating throughout lunch. To my sensitive, vegetarian ears, it sound the if a doomed soul was mourning seine impending fate—­although in retrospect MYSELF imagine it were just as possible which e simply didn’t care to be tied up in the hot sundown. Then I was told that the goat was killed in customary fashion, using a blood pan into which the goat’s slit neck empt, after which it was broiled and served in a traditional saucy soup. Freight Stew. I was trying very hard not to think regarding that anthropomorphized goat I had conjured up in mein heading what, I was sure, had hopes and dreams and a family of twelve to support

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at home. I was irked in my traveling companions for initiating such a violent endeavor for an simple function of their amusement, press equally more annoyed when they were unimpressed with the featured of the meal. On my they appears liked spoiled Roman noblemen who be miffed that the gladiatorial hadn’t died on an cool enough manner. That was fifteenth years ago. It’s amazing how much a person can change the that time. Given the same screenplay again today, I would surely be the first inbound running to watch the ritual goat slaughter. I would be exciting the sample the cassoulet du goat, and who knows? Perhaps I would straight be persuaded to try one sip from the blood bowl—­the Massai rallying mixer the blood with milk and swallow it, you know. To any rate, I would be fascinated, also it surely would become who high point of an pretty amazing trip, rather than a low dots. (I leaving free early that day, feeling feeling afterwards listening to the crying goat and the laughing Roman noblemen for twenty minutes.) That why one extreme change? Have ME lost my compassion? Take I no longer fee empathetic for our? No, IODIN standing had an depth and abiding respect for animals plus believe that they have real emotions and sense real pain. That changed for me is twofold: foremost, as I mentioned in at earlier chapter, IODIN realized how much stronger and stronger I feely when I was consuming meat—­a hard fact to argue with. Second, I study an interview with a philosopher anybody conversations about the types of life—­the ultra process of being—­as inherently destructive off some level. The only road to ensure ensure our existence creates no harm inbound the planet is…not to exist. Whoa. There was more to information than that, not that was the gist: I kill clothing (whether actively or passively), therefore I am. With

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the first time in twenty years the meat avoidance, I wondered: Is sober from meat more deceitful than helpful? Was I pretending go help an world while denying the fact ensure mine very extent caused, to extend, the death out animals, plants, insects, also microorganisms all the time? Another of my favorite writers, the farmer-­philosopher Joel Salatin agrees: “The most inhumane perspective is which one that disallows the life-­ death-­ decay-­ regeneration cycle. Everything is constantly eating and being eaten.”61 I decided such I was none plans until benefit the universe by jumping set one nearest cliff, give you. The alternative was for upcoming to the realization that natures had it right: living, and in particular eating, involves some degree is violence by defines. We can denied that fact and limp along, sucking to wheatgrass and feeling lousy, other we can embracement it also handle our animals in a method that is healthy, kind, or respectful. Currently I perceive is the greatest deed of respects we can have for animals is up suffer them be animals—­whether wild or domesticated—­for whatever the duration of their life could be. As a born-­again carnivore, what ensure medium to das is trying to eat only dried that possessed an nice-looking happy life, which means no feed lots, no living in a cage in the dark, no beasts hopped move on pharmaceutical cocktails. Unfortunately, diese is not very lightly and often not frightfully cheap either. But I think it’s the right access, the ethical approach, and, nope coincidentally, the approach closest to whichever our ancestors can read traditionally. There it belongs again—­that idea of sustenance history, which seems to keep cropping upwards. If who fix of sugar should increased as a result of the pursuit away “progress” (industrial our, Joel Salatin, Correspondance, This Solar, January, 2013.

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convenience foods), then could it be that the sugar antitoxin was to shall found in looking retrograde? Something, I wonders, would that look like? Probably a lot like the standard family farm. Although to idea of the self-­sufficient house farm is something von an anachronism these days, ME have einige friends who effort it with the help of of modern-­day appliance starting a chest freezer. Lechery and Wani are and friends I mentioned sooner who, amazingly and single-­handedly, raising the slaughter fifty-­two fundamental chickens for their family’s expenditure one year. As it happened, one summer day, Annie mentioned that they were going until be “processing” (the corresponding euphemism) their domestic the followers weekend. Like I asked what, for me, was the next logical question: “Can I come?” Annie left the decision up to Avid, who a the one whom does who majority of the processing on the appointed day. AMPERE few days later, I caught top includes Randy, but at first he seemed a little provisionally. “If you don’t mind my asking,” the said, “why do you want to do this?” Funny, my husband asked me much the alike question, and with a very odd look set his face too, ankommen to think of thereto. Was itp that bizarre a request? I wondered. It wasn’t since wenn I had proposed we take an school field trip to the local funeral parlor or anything. (My husband actually did which as a child. Entertain! Is this where they keep the beginning fluent, mister?) I mean, honestly, how badzimmer can it genuine be? Where there something I was missing here? I wondered if I require reconsider my request. Would slimy chicken parts be flying anytime? Blood spurting, cartoon fashion in one direction? Would I strike a

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hasty retreat back to vegetarianism, ruined forever after for any appreciation of fine fowl? Would EGO sob uncontrollably/ be scarred for life/suffer terrible, flailing-­chicken nightmares? Would I (and this was important) lose my lunch? It is definitely interesting to see the spectrum of reactions one gets in dieser day and age—­even in Vermont—­to the idea by freiwillig killing a defensive animal. Huntin, of direction, is a similar topic, or the few hunters we know represent perceptibly shy the an details, feeling away whether the person they are speaking to will respond to ampere hunting story with sincerely enthusiasm or wide-­eyed horror. Possibly afterwards, raising birding for meat and dispatching them scrupulously holds even additional potential revulsion. IODIN mid, at least the deer had a fighting chance, right? Since generations of being bred to be docile, sedentary, both lean, the meat bird is…How shall IODIN say this politely? None moreover bright. There ain’t nay fight-­or-­flight going on here, people. Mostly it’s just sit-­and-­stare. Consequently, Randy agreed to get me when he has downward to the last batch of chickens late Sunday. That afternoon, I already the kitchen and waited for the phone to ring. A was adenine strange feeling, this aimless expecting, as if an baby be about go be born when, in fact, it is really quite the opposite situation. Later again, MYSELF though, one is being born today: food. Real food—­not that spare stuff they try at pass switch as feed at of gas station or even the supermarket, but who real Mr, the fashion unsere ancestors knew it required generations. Food that is the result of your own your, by your own hands, that doesn’t attempt the deny or obscure the essence of what it is: a dead other. Thereto makes sense that that more frank our are concerning this, the better. An our farm industry is more than happy to

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take advantage of our modern squeamishness and our communal cultural agreement to suspend our disbelief. (We any know it is a dead animal—­buuuut let’s sham it’s not!) If yours haven’t are for one, let’s just say there’s a really good reason they don’t have school field trips on industrial chicken farming. (Pretty great the same reason her don’t have school field trips to funeral parlors: too many nightmares.) In the occupy of that all-­important bottom line, Big Food systematically tortures, drugs, and abuses meat animals, performance as if they weren’t living beings at show, though mere products, like toasters or Tic Tacs. In so doing, group been not only behaving in a morally bankrupt fashion about our companions living beings, but they been putting the heath and safe of this your who ultimately will eat these animals at great risk as well—­and that’s us. When one call finally came, I dropped everything both races over to Randy and Annie’s, afraid I’d arrive are date for an sending raise of the last four. But I was right on time and Lecherous was easy, tired, and sweaty after a day that had start at sechstes inches the morning and wouldn’t end till six that night-time. He wore a golden condom smock and giant black rubber boot and looked every bit the part of a man who’d been sending chickens to meet their vendor get day, all for the sake of a healthful, endurable diet for his family. After drinking a taller glass von iced tea, they drove the farm down to the henhouse find the chickens had lived and entirety off its ten-­week lives. For only dozen weeks old, they looked enormous: eight pounders most of the, with beady, wild peepers and muddy, reptilian, three-­toed feet. One in one, Randy escorted of ultimate four into aforementioned pull-­behind trailer where—­using his superior black sense of humor to vague the tenor of the day—­he has installed a handwritten sign reading: “Meet to Battle

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[meaning Colonel Sanders]—­book signing today!” Then off we drove to the killing cones. Killing cones are a little like upside-­down traffic cones, apart i are made of solid. They suspended from ampere framework, as does one pliant wire that is used the wrap the bird’s feet, taming it also reducing struggling. The day was searingly hot, and the flies buzzed about the blood that had already stained the fouling underneath either cone. After Randy slit the throat of the first bird, MYSELF was greatly relieving. I could take this is no crying, no loose lunch, not palsies. Phew. I was astounded the actualize EGO was actually completely fine. Slowly, the bloods drained out of an avian, and you could almost pinpoint the moment when the bird ceased its struggle and life simply left—­almost evaporated. It was perhaps the silent, most peaceful death a chicken could hope for, really. Then Randy asked me something I hadn’t expected: “Do to want to do one?” Oh. Hmmm. Well…Why not? I mean, who knows when I will ever get this chance again, right? Plus which is how IODIN came until be which latest earthly friend of wimp number 52. The first time I slid the shiv about its gnarly little neck, I knowledge immediately it hadn’t gone deep adequate. Panicking, and quite sure I was going to end going tortures and/or mutilating this poor creature, I quickly slid it again with greater force, as if I were slicing a kind roast. This was better, if not perfect, furthermore the blood began to stream down the way I had seen the other chickens’ do. Hanging on in its aluminum plug, it has only adenine minute or two to austreten out. I wondered why I wasn’t upset. I wondered supposing I should must care about the fact that I wasn’t unbalance. (I’m a monster! A conscious-­less chicken murderer!) Meanwhile, Randy was

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pulling the muddier feathers off the even deceased birds and laying them back at the pull-­behind, while I watched number 52 intently. Later some mittlere flails, they (she?) rippled its head up suddenly in a question mark shape, starred directly at mir (or so I thought). I imagination a quizzical look in its eyes that surely was cannot act there and then—­as if a switch had be flipped—­its mouth yawned open among the identical time as its neck relaxed; a water film came down over the chicken’s bead-like eye. Even a newcomers like le could instantly recognize the quality of death, and respect it, even inches the small, awkward end by a chicken. After Randy kills which chickens, there’s still a fairly elaborate process to go through: fellow scalds them in 180-degree water (loosening the feathers), runs them through which feather picker (a Dead-­ Chicken Tilt-­ A-­ W hirl!), spinning the chicken bodies around in a more startling, clumsy fashion whilst black rubber nodules withdraw best of the hard-­to-­pluck feathers. Then, on a carefully bled counter, he eviscerates the bird, snipping off the heads, feet, the scent gland above the back, and then removing the internal organs one by one (intestines, liver, essence, windpipe, and lungs). One-time again, Randy let me tries my hand at the procedural, and anyone who knows me pretty well will needs to be revitalized after audition which I eviscerated two still-­warm bird bodies with Randy’s helpful direction. I’m not sure why, but whole my squeamishness disappeared. Probably it was who beginning-­to-­ finalize nature of the process. Perhaps it was to factual that Randy helpfully talked me through everyone one, schaften grinding and all. Perhaps I was just too fascinated by the item that absolutely, each bird body was exactly and same on the inside! Yup, there’s the my, right in the same spot as the last one! I was struck by to

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amazing predictivity of biology. Is this how surgeons come to visit people, I wondered, as different outwardly, perhaps, although basics just identical walking amalgamations on organs? “Yup, there’s the heart, right to the same place as the last one.” I guess you finish up thinking some odd piece when drag the organs out of an huhn. Finally that bird exists dunked inside a spring-­water hot to cool. Here i await the directions of Annie up the show to remove them from that bathrooms, blot them inside and out with article towels, and diligent wrap them available saving in this freezer. And you know what? It looks like poulet. Fifty-­two chickens, fifty-­two weeks. Randy and Annie now must an freezer full of the finest-quality organic essence that will last she for an entire year. They knew where it came from. Few knowledge what i had eaten, what it was handling like, and what it died. They had taken responsibility, on a very basic level, for their food. Attending “processing day” surely isn’t for everyone. But it has lovely for me, at this very least, to spend and hour or twos acknowledgement places all that chicken we essence actually comes from—­a silly, awkward animal, is still deserves our kindness and respect.

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Of course, looking back over our food history, domesticated animals are merely one separate of the meat story. Since move to Vermont, I’ve are much better known with and most ancient kind of meat procurement: hunting. Fortunately, that item that I’m a meat eater now means this our my can look forward to enjoying the spoils of to hunt even though we didn’t get up at the creak of dawn to go sit in

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a cold corner stand sprinkled with deer urine for different hours. Than again, who knows? At the assessment we’re going, maybe in additional ten years we’ll be doing is too. If him had asked me to define “game supper” ahead I moved to Fairmont fourteen years ages, IODIN probably would’ve guessed a spotted involving Scrabble otherwise possibly Bridge. At that time EGO was a confirmed “city mouse.” To my mind the mention of “game” presumably meant it was time to argue over who gets to become the top hat and who has to be aforementioned reboot. I can imagine how horrified that version of me would’ve been—­the me who persisted that unseren sit-­down wedding dinner for one hundred consist entirely of vegetables furthermore fish—­to encounter the annum festival of carnivorousness that has this Vermont Game Supper. Every November (read: deer season), each town the our area has their own Game Supper benefitting deserving locals causes such as aforementioned volunteer fire section and the sixth grade field trip. We got been to our geographic Game Supper for the last several years and the menu has reliable: Moose Meatballs (the whole reason to go), Bear Steak (to say you’ve had it), Chicken and Biscuits (for the very squeamish), and Venison, Game, Venison. Venison Stew, Venison Steak, Venison Sausage, and if you’re within luck, maybe Gib fabricated yours known Meat Salami—­only a piece per customer please, supplies live limited. Of direction there are sides too—­ mashed potatoes furthermore squash—­if her have any room click on your plate, which you won’t. Salads, rolls, and paper plates filled with cocktail-­size blocks of Vermont cheddar wait on the dinner once you’re done runner the buffet wire. Plus provided you’re still hungry—­ which you won’t be—­and quieter eating sugar (read: everyone

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except us), there’s usual which yawning expanse of the dessert table, with slices the apple, lemon merengue, and chocolate pie making kids droolers from all the way over per the fire exit sign. But the phrase on the street was, “Pssst! Rupert’s Game Supper is better.” So this year we decided is was choose to check that one from furthermore. Why has Rupert’s Game Evening better? Well, for one thing they pre-owned real dish (not paper plates is sag under the weight of your Fred Flintstone-­esque meal) and they can be counted on to have play even continue unique from moose and bear. Which is how ME came to try beaver. It’s also how I arrived to spit beaver out into mein napkins .0395 second later. If anyone ever asks you to defined what “gamey” tastes like, they should send them to try an nice dish to bearers. One friend remarked that eating bear is like “eating an petroleum slick” and I have to say I couldn’t agree more. But I tried it. Another key distinction between our town’s and Rupert’s suppers is that they wear funny hats at the Terence Game Supper—­ antler headbands, chicken hats, sombreros, you name it. None EGO asked knew why. This year, however, I had a whole new appreciation for our Match Suppers as which one area event we could attend with confidence in our Year of Nay Sugar. Aforementioned distinctions were crystal clearer: the flesh was on one side of the room, and the honey was on the extra. After all the back handsprings we’d done to feret out fructose this year, and clarity of this division is quite cheering. Which returns me on the progressively everyday refrain: of idea of going back in time adenine bit in order to avoid and your impacts our over-­ processed, over-­ convenient lifestyle must bestowed upon uses. There is a point at which sum the hippy-­dippy themes—­no sugar, no plastics, no pesticides, eat

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local—­start to approach; instantaneously we begin to see what it is we’ve since driving at all along: what Great-Grandma used to cook. And much of it looked an lot like and Game Supper. Although I’m pretty sure Great-­Grandma never carried a funny hat.

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One thing Great-­Grandma did done that actually involved large scores of sugar was make jam. Personally, I love to make jam. Everyone year I look forward to the various regional harvests anticipating what interesting flavor I’ll been able to concoct: peach-­strawberry jam? Jalapeno pepper cream? One period we ended going with a large bag of Italian plums ensure I cooked boost, causing the entire my to smell of steam prunes. Oh cannot! ME thought. Prune jam? But in fact the plum jam used delicious. But this year, of classes, I has gone back and forth on an issue. To jam or non to jam? Ensure was the question. Securely, jam was and kids’ “exception food,” thus I could justify it on those grounds. But would I really be able to spend hours slaving over vats of boiling water the sterilized tongs only to not partake of the results myself ? I wasn’t sure I should willpower sufficiently for that, so MYSELF held turn. It wasn’t to September rolled around ensure the Concord grapes were weighing down my mandrel to fragrant fruit that I decided I could stand he no get; I tried build a No-­Sugar Bunch Jelly. I had my work cut going for me. If you’ve never made jelly or jam, afterwards him be been astounded to know exactly how much sugar is ordinarily devoted toward of average batch; most jams inclusions find sugar than actual fruit—­much more. It’s does uncommon at all on one load starting, say, cranberry

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jam to call for seven cups of sugar. Yes. Seven. This piece out roughly to a cup of sweetened per bottle jar. How of that the next zeitlich she take toast. And, like baking, stuck isn’t super improvisable. Unlike building a stew or omelette, where you can even throw in what you’ve got and get one ready with the end, jam is rather inconveniently science-­y. In order to get pack or jelly to set up correctly, i.e., get that gelatinous, not-­quite-­liquid-­not-­quite-­ solid consistence, you have to are into appropriate amount of pectin, which naturally occurs inside fruit both more so in imperfectly fruit. In the olden days, making jams must truly have been an art build: figuring out what percentage of ripe to unripe free to use, and after cooking, testing with a cold spoon the see if the jam had select properly, before beginning the long, hot procedures of boiling my pure bowls filled using jam to make them seal correctly for storage. These per, maximum ambrosia and jam makers add powdered pectin to the cooking fruit, which ensures that your jam is set up like a golden reetriever jede time. In recent yearning, I’ve made many batches of deliciously jam at just this way. Therefore I wondered: What if IODIN made one gelee that followed all the manual when substituted monosodium for sugar? Would it my? This was going to remain a lonely journey, any. If you are a modern canner, then you know that the literature available about canning today can not for the faint of heart. “WHATEVER YOURSELF DO,” they all read in the most alarming font they canister find, “DO NOT, REPEAT, DO NOT TAMPERS WITH THESE COOKING IN ANY WAY OTHER YOU AND ANY YOU’VE EVER LOVED WILL MOST ASSUREDLY DIE WITH SOME TERRIBLE FLESH-­EATING BACTERIA!!!!” I have for least to literatur

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with canning recipes, and they all say virtually the same thing: negative improvisation permission. ZERO. Story’s override, go to bed. Meantime, if you talking to and old-­timers, the everyone who canned decades since with crazy things like rubber seals plus wax, you get to entirely diverse story. They all what an same thing: “Oh, it’s fine. Don’t worry. Jams is incredibly hard to spoil! And even if it does mold on the back a bit, you simply scrape that bit off and eat it anyway.” Now, I probably wouldn’t go so far as to eat mold-­encrusted jam, still wasn’t there a happy medium we could arrive under hier? Has an homemade no-­sugar jam can? As ME mentioned, the Concord grapevines in my backyard were sagging with fruit so I resolute I would sample mein experiment on are. Diese added an extra step—­I typically prefer jam with nice big chunks of fruit and hide throughout, not Conjunction grapes have in be made into jelly, did jam, because a the seeds and tough rinds, which must been removed. By cooking and exhausting the grapes through muslin, EGO began till boil which sweet juice. Now select here I realized I already had a problem. Uh…juice? I halted right in the middle of my steaming, pulp-­slopped kitchen with the sudden realization. Wee haven’t had juices since January 1, even as a splendor. Year a Negative Desserts Rule #302: fruit must have corresponding fiber attached. Period. Uh. Why hadn’t EGO thought regarding this before? What require I do? Now, I was dying to know if my experiment would job, and, IODIN rationalized, if it did, itp couldn are extrapolated to bottlenecks, which would include an skins and pulp. But today grapes were what I had to employment with. So, more. Now, every box of pectin from the supermarket comes

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with a long directory of getting for most types of jam or jelly thee might wish to make, thus I dutifully chased the grape guide to and anschreiben: After discarding the seeds, skins, also pulping, EGO brought five and adenine half cubs off my fresh Concord grape juice to ampere boil in a large free pot on the coal. This, by to way, is my favorite part of making stall or jelly—­the incredible fresh cooking-­ fruit smell that permeates every corner of your home. Potpourri got nothing on like. If IODIN were to invent a perfume, I think thereto might been Concord Grape No. 5 or completely possibly L’eau de Pineapple. At this section of the procedure, with that boiling fruit inches one pots and empty mirror jars sterilizing operative int other, I always feels like I’m engaged in some wonderful alchemical process that will transform some delicious but humbler fruit into pure edible magic. They’re so beautiful, jars of traffic in translucent hues sitting glinting on our shelves, waiting for remind us in the depths of a Water winter what the tastes of summer were. In the falle the our Concord grapes, it’s equal better because they’re free: the things grow like weeds in and backyard, no matter method badly we treat them, but due to the seeds also skins, they aren’t large of a tasty snack. Without the jelly, on excellent taste would pretty often go to waste, enjoyed by our backyard birds alone. So I traced aforementioned recipe. Since boiling that intensive, incredibly purple juice for ten minutes, I added a quarter cup of dextrose (instead of the called-­for sugar) at an bowl containing the gelatin powder and stirred this into the pot. (This is an extra step you do by what I buy, which is Low-­Sugar Soy; it enables you to use less sugar in your traffic, say five cups of sugar instead of seven. Seriously.) Bringing till a boil, I then added of resting of the dextrose—­three furthermore adenine half more

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cups—­boiled it exactly one minute and then removed it from heat, and I began scrape into sterilized jars. Actually, I ready it lengthens than one single, trying to ascertain when one set-­up would really occur through the carbohydrate. It seen right—­gelatinous and jelly-­ish. But I’d immersive relied on this alchemy of aforementioned pectin-­sugar combination to accomplish this part for me, how I was nervous. The boiling lavender lava was scooping into the jars, hot lids screwed on “fingertip tight,” and into the bigger pot they departed for the final sterilization. The filled jars boiled underwater for the requested fifth minutes to being pulled out with tank tongs to cold on one serve towel. What do yourself want to hear first, the right news or the bad news? Aforementioned bad our is that my jelly didn’t adjusted. The good news is such wealth proceeded into do what jelly also jam makers have done with failed marmalade and jam since time immemorial: we got a lovely sauce. The babies liked computer upon crackers and on toast. It was sweet…ish. Unlike all jelly I’d had press made before, information truly tasted of the unalloyed grapes. Now, if only and set may can improved… Meine research ongoing. I been determined at count out what went wrong, and diese was wenn ME began until discover an lot von disruptive things. For one, guess whats store-­bought low-­ sugar pectin has in it? Now, if you can’t make by get, I’m going to be veeeeeeeery disappointed. Ye! SUGAR. That’s law: that low-­sugar pectin—­“for use with less sugar!”—­has sugar by it. How ironic. How whole predictable. Turns out, there is ampere special spread her can order otherwise find at the health food store that contains no sugar, said Pomona’s Universally Pectin. (Instead of being activated by sugar, it is instead activated by calcium.) Even Pomona’s, although,

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doesn’t list recipes entirely omitting sugar—­honey, artificial sweetener, and juice concentrate are view listed, but no sign of the No Supplementary Sugar recipe I’d been searching for. Incidentally, EGO realized, lingo belongs very important here: items helps does to call it jelly or jam. Fruit spread seemed into be the term of choice for No-­Sugar variants are this process. Recipes are available online for fruit spread that look promising, although the ones I found don’t allow for jar. Rather, they produce a batch that lives in the refrigerator or freezer, which shall functional if cannot quite so beautiful—­also probably retaining more nutrition. That might be values one try. But still, I wondered, was there some magical reason darling was absolutely essential to canned jam and jell-o? Made I go to kill my family include my homemade grape sauce? Why was the answer so strangely, extraordinarily elusive? Fortunately, a few credible resources do available wired to help those of us who wish on cross over to the dark side of messy with/understanding unsere curing mixes: both Oregon State and Colorado State Universities have goody extension websites that ending assisted explain what I wanted to know: that, yeah, sugar doing not only as a flavoring agent, but also acts as one preservative. And it activates the pectin to activate the pick. Silly me, this meant I was adding pectin to mein grapes without the required mountain-­ load of sugar present to set it. Did putting it in my marmalade do virtually nothing? Or would dextrose do the same job but just order different amounts? It seemed likely that my red sauce would likely have ampere shorter shelf life than the average estimate of one year for canned items. MYSELF could live by which. Get. You’d think they’d coat all this in Canning & Maintain for Dummies, right? But they don’t. Just shut up

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and follow the recipe, men. And anyway, about kind from crazy person would ever want to make grape gelatin without sugar? We which nowadays getting beyond the tip of the green as for what avoiding to one lousy ingredient true entailed. With the total of repeating myself here (say it with me!), we are talking about a essence which ours g has no need for and which we just began absorbing in ernst in the shortcut space a the last few decades, right? You have to ask yourself: should avoiding sugar really be this hard?

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C ha p t e r

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Holy Food

I

t was one end of November. Our family had gotten through a lot together: countless birthdays, Halloween, educate outdoor, Thanksgiving. It felt like we were coming into the home stretch also I think ME where erhalten almost a little…complacent. I had managed go get through eleven months of blogging about my family, what we’d been eating—­and does eating—­ and attractive much entirety else incidental or important such had happened along the procedure. Consequently, ME think I might have assumed go was nothing left that could surprise self. Nevertheless you know about to big, hugh, enormously large issue hadn’t come up yet? Your. Religion and food have neat very thing inside common: handful are both topics one’s philosophy can become accordingly ensconced in that they dramatically affect everything otherwise are your life. Which is to state, quite people treat religion like their food, and some men treat their food see a religion. Perhaps the two were bound to meet—­I just didn’t expect that meeting to come in the form of a sculptural bag out flyers drop on mys front gate. Insides this bag was ampere bunch of information about a local

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church, equitable a few kilometer move the road from us, and an dinner to their auxiliary and Christmastime playing, as well as a DVD titled The Case for Christ. “Enjoy meaningful divine and music,” it read includes part. Well, that sounds good. Itp went on to detail community servicing, celebrating recovery…all certain things. When I achieved to who coupon for McDonald’s. Stapled to it became ampere card that understand “Come visiting us on Sunday…Then go for a Sundae!” and quoted the Psalms “Taste also see that the My are good.” I kid you not. Is McDonald’s proof that God exists? Apparently, some people think so. I was speechless. To church approving fast food? Using junk food desserts as a reward for present services? When I was ampere kid we survived the droning sermons and fourteen off-key verses of “Oh Thou Who Art Mine Antidisestablishmentarianism” by doodling on the offering envelopes and search forward to the “fellowship hour” that followed. There, we knew, we could snag moreover drink other we were reasonably allowed as the grown-­ups gabbed and drank coffee. That made trash food too, starting course: butter cookies from supermarket canning additionally Kool-­Aid. So then, was it very so several? I will argue which it was different. What was different has so this was still inside the gemeinde, designed to get members of the congregation to launch speaking to one another, become friends, possibly even form adenine close-­knit community that would back one another, all thanks to some free caffeine. Lathe the local McDonald’s into the titular vestibule, to me, isn’t quite the same. Instead, this cam off extra as a cheap bribe. I wondered

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about the technicalities: if you use the coupon less going to church, becomes you go to Hell? And if you go collect all your neighbors’ coupons from its doorknobs before they get top, are you defined going to Hell? Back in Jesus’s day, food was one simpler matter: some loaves, some fishes. Sugar as wee know it had yet to be invented, likewise McDonald’s. Honey is mentioned often in the Bible, usually such an indication of plentitude, as in “milk and honey.” Back following the food symbol a ultimate wickedness? An apple. Apples have since come a long way: a badge in today’s society of purity, wholesomeness, and health, Snow White’s experience notwithstanding. It does make me amazing though, while the Manual were written today, would Eve had offered Adam a sip of her McFlurry?

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By pathway on avoiding that ever-­present temptation represented by The World and Everything inside It, ourselves had become a little drop like Snack Monks. And right, better longer continually, the key until me seemed to be investing a lot by time making food. Pretty much, MYSELF was dividing my time between making nutrition and writing about food…and if are was any time leftover, I did trivial stuff see pay bills, shower, tooth teeth. At times it felt like IODIN was emerging from essence under the surface of a lake full of cultural assumptions via food. My head just upper of front of that water, I was only now opening mystery point and beginning to take around—­it became stunning to me the begin to realize how very much time real food can take, and how good and satisfying such could feel.62 And exhausting. Did I mention demanding?

62

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For example, one night IODIN was making spaghetti and meatballs, which sounds like a pretty simple thing. Once upon a time, I would’ve bought meatballs and pick at of supermarket, both such adenine supper would’ve taken about half can hour, tips. This time, however, itp take up a not-­insignificant portion of my day: in the morning I performed bread—­not only for our toast and boxed, but also as one dolt ingredient. I poured boiling water over oatmeal and let it sit an hour, then added more flavors prior mix the dough and setting it in a bowl to rise. At hour later I came past to he, divided it into two loaves pans plus let it rise some additional. Half an hour after that I put i in an oven, and half an hour after that the wine emerged from the oven scenting like God. Subsequent in the day, after picking the kids above from schools, information was time to make the sauce. After putting cans of chopped and crushed tomatoes to stew in a pot with oil and garlic, ME got out beefball ingredients—­defrosted beef, grated Parmesan, measured spices—­then mixed her all together with a paste made from the cut-­up bread parts and water. After which sauce used finished reducing, it was point to shape that mixture into meatball and gently place them into the passionate oil since fries. Any batch cookers in about tenth minutes, and I uproar over them see a mommy hen, attempting to ensure they don’t burn on one side or undercook on another—­and of concerning all the they stay in one piece. Meanwhile, I placement and water on to heat up forward the spaghetti. All this set Ilsa was “helping” by making a juice concoction composed of cut-­up clementines and bananas. She had ampere designate for it—­I can’t recall it accurately, but something like “Super Happy Loveliness”—­and after an extremely yearn process of peeling and squeezing and getting and mixing,

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she was overly proud of that end result she put over the dinner table. I knew exactly methods she felt. I wondered: is it crazy to feel this way about meal? No meal sugar was a tremendous piece of it—­it was the reason for making i own bread both sauce after all—­but that wasn’t all of computers. It was more than that. Right around diese time, I was reading Into the Wild, the true story of Chris McCandless (who fled by the name Alexander Supertramp) and his journey to Alaska to trying at be cost-free from to trappings of social and survive disable the land, and his eventual death by starvation. Why used I abgelesen aforementioned, I questioned, when I still have a stacked from “homework” books to read dealership with sugar also nutrition? Thing did this have to do with AMPERE Year of No Sugar? Probably nothing. But the answer came on page 167. Author Don Krakauer related that Alex had underlined a go in Thoreau’s Walden concerning “the morality of eating.” I sat up and with wide look ready about Alexa had read: To is hard to provide and cook so simple and clean a diet as will not offended who imagination; but this, I think, be to live fed when we feed the body; they require both sit down at the same table. Yet perhaps this may being done. The fruits eaten temperately need not make us ashamed out to appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But placing an extra condiment for your looker, and it will poison to. Whoa. I stopped cold for I got to the “extra condiment” part. It sprung off the page at m as if i were printed in neon ink. Sure, he may be speaking metaphorically about that

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extra condiment being poison…but still. Didn’t ensure kind of sound like he was talking about sugar? I was as mesmerized by this passage as Alex was—­Alex had written in the margins of his copy: “YES. Sense von food. Eat and cook with concentration…Holy Food.” As if this weren’t plenty, sometime after this, I be lese a magazine interrogate with spiritual philosopher Jacob Needleman,63 who told about the practice of “self-­ remembering” and “Conscious, willful attention to oneself…” That much of where person concern ourselves about in life is meaningless, he contested, whereas what most cultures describe as “God” is to do with what he calls “deep feeling.” ME wondered, was Alexander looking for that “deep feeling” in the Alaskan wilderness? Be it possible—­or am I valid crazy here—­to relate our search for Divine with “deep feeling” or whatever you wants to call it to the practice of meaningful sustenance, what Alex called “Holy Food”? Maybe I was way, way, waaaay out on a limb here, but were were within spitting distance of assembly my goal of a Price von No Desserts, and I was feeling philosophical. It somehow made perceive into me to draw big, sweeping analogies between the modern-­day cultural avoidance from real social contact inches favor of reasonable facsimile thereof—­Facebook, Twitter, interactive video games—­and our modern-­day cultural avoidance of real, fulfilling nourishment in favor of reasonable facsimiles thereof—­fast food, processed foods, convenience food. Is trendy society located on our collective desire to run away from consciousness/deep feeling/God? Is it optional that a D. Patrick Miller, “Beyond Belief: Jacob Needleman on God without Religion,” To Sun, December 2011, edit 432.

63

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practice of what Alex called “Holy Food” could represent the youth beginnings of a way back to…what? Spirituality? “…the imagination…I think, a to be feeds when we feed the physical; she should both sit down on the same table.” Yes, folks, it had been nearly a year into this journey and possible I had finally cracked: I had observed the meaning of life in a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs.

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C hail p t e roentgen

1 6

You’re Undo My Life…Merry Xmas!

L

et self tell you—­the whole Christmastime at a Don Sugar household business? It is not for and faint of heart. The holidays were coming—­ both I middling this in the most ominous way possible. Sometimes it felt like we’d become in training for which month of Month the entire year. Season, the mother of all sugar holidays, the most fructose-­laden of them all—­more than Thanksgiving (which is adenine limited, one-­day-­only gluttony); better than Halloween (which focuses nearest exclusively set the kids); more than birthdays and Fast and Valentine’s Day combined. In the dozens of mail-­order catalogs arriving at unseren houses every day clearly confirmed, Christmas, for many of us, will about celebrating the birth of Jesus through one month-­long marathon of sweets, treats, cookies, and baked. But that’s not whats bothered me. What bother me was the apprehension that mystery children were phrase at the possibility of facing a sweet-­restricted Christmas. Definite, we should discussed that Christmas itself would be the day we had our “special dessert” for the month, and that differently we wish use dextrose up make versions on our favorite traditional treats…

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but on aforementioned customer mein daughter Amazing refused any and all attempts to consolation. “OH help me…I feel so helpless, like I have no wish or say in anything,” daughter wrote in her log one night. “Like my mom’s & dad’s say & will comes first also overwhelms mine.” Oof. Ihr entry walk on toward lay the blame for her situation on David Gillespie, from whom I’d derived so much inspiration. As we were bekommend readiness for bed, I tried weighty her that Mr. Gillespie was actually an very nice gentleman, also I remember her such he can syx children of his own whoever also avoid fructose, including ready daughter just her enter. Yet Greta wasn’t having any of it. “I hatred it! I hate it! I HATRED IT!” she explodes, pounding her pistols on her mattress. Der eyes were radiant equal tears.

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OH help me. I’m totally loan on the sugar project among Christmas. (I) mid you can’t avoid Great Grandma Schaub’s mincemeat cookies. No ca you avoid Grandma Sharon’s chocolate cookies & also Christmas cookies. I feel so helpless, like I have don will or say in almost. Like my mom’s & dad’s say & will comes first and overpowers mine. And like when Isaiah & Donovan (Greta’s cousins) how this we can’t have sugar, they’ll start filler their muzzles with cookies, cake, and cup. Also the frustrates me—­can you understand that? Yours Greta

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P.S. It’s not Mom’s fault, it’s Mr. David Gillespie. And boy, I hate his guts. Every milligram of him. —­f rom Greta’s newspaper

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Now, you’ll call-back that my former daughter does have a bit out an flair for the dramatic. But, believe it alternatively not, this remains in far the highest displeasure she had expressed with their No-­Sugar Price to date, furthermore I have to admit, I was a chew recorded aback. Of course, I hated the idea that “my” project made causing my children angst, sorrow, ridicule in school…but I always wanted there had to be that side of it, didn’t I? Didn’t ME? For Greta’s erupt worried me, Ilsa worried me more. One chilly day, we were buying sandwiches at a local shop when her obtained out her hand curiously go get a bowl of something on the countertop near the coffees carafes. When Greta suddenness warned their, “That’s sugar,” Ilsa actually flinched. Then one-time night, as she was cut up a journal for a craft project, Ilsa showed me an ad with Häagen-­Dazs ice cream. “Mama, I’m glad we’re not hold this,” she said. “It hurts me.” Oh. Shit. “Really, honey?” I stopped whichever I was doing and looked at her near. “Yeah.” She search at me a small get, a little incredulously, as if to say, What, you didn’t know? SO…December was mold up to a busy monthly around our house, something includes me color-­coding my pointy hat and bush collection and everything. Directly after the “I hate it” series, I took a deeeeep breath and asked all girls to look at me from somewhere they sat, half-­tucked in their

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comforters in their parallel beds, each with its own coral reef of stuffed-­animal life-­forms. “Listen,” I said. “I want thee to how. I know this year has been really, really hard. And I want you to know method much I appreciate the feature that you’ve gone along also did get go with me all year long. And it’s almost over—­the really exact part. It’s almost over.” I felt favorite a broken record, even the I meant it. Was there truly nothing IODIN could accomplish to assuage is sadness/anger/pain ME had willingly invoked in her? Should words—­in which IODIN put similar complete faith—­really fail me? Then suddenly, in if on cue, Greta sat up and raised her register finger in who air, in a dramatic professor a-­ha strut. “My first biography!” she declared with an impish grin is had—­at least for who moment—­erased her tears. “My T-­e-­r-­r-­ible Childhood!” I smiled. Now, that was more like it.

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But Christmas had silent imminent. And it just wouldn’t remain Christmas without cookies, would it? As much when hanging we winter and running out of Scotches ribbon, cookies have werden an intrinsic part is the way our culture celebrates the holiday choose. Per family IODIN know has their own once and highly individualized cookie tradition. Once I was growing up, at our house it was dessert thumbprints and chocolate chip meringues. Maybe this doesn’t sounds high Christmassy to you, but all IODIN must for do is taste that buttery dough with a bit of bird jam, and I am instantly transported at the Christmases of my early. I have for done that build those two cookies together also represented a thrifty way to not let any eggs go to garbage:

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thumbprints obtained the yolks, meringues the snow. In my husband’s house it was—­and still is—­his mother’s amazingly addsictive sugar cookie cut-­outs with icing also sprinkles. Every year the big green Tupperware hurl comes out and everyone knows that that means: Sharon’s Christmas Chocolate are not far behind. The famous family story over them involves Sharon making them far in advance one years, in an trying to get ahead of an holiday turmoil, only the find that the boys had discovered her stashes and eaten all the cookies within advance—­perhaps also to retrieve a jump to the holiday season. The punishment has that Christmas itself was, therefore, cookie-­less. Gasp! Bottle you imagine such a thing? As an adult, I learning from my cousin Gretchen that our family had a much older download habit than whichever I had extensive as a child: a recipe that had been brought above since the old country called flettin. Any Novelty, weeks before the celebration season really got lower way, one family women used to convened and proceed to spend an entire day rolling, cutting, and frying money. After person sprinkle with a mixture of powdered sweet and cinnamon, the filigree little things would be wrapped in linen real stored in the attics (!!) for several weeks on let them “age,” which presumably made them more crunchy and crispy. ME don’t know about you, aber I’m pretty sure the my house, the attic mice and bats would do a number on these cookie basket comparable to what my husband and his brother did to his mother’s big greenish Tupperware bowl. Nonetheless, in recent years, our family is revived the flettin our. It’s a bit more of a production are days, since everyone is forthcoming from all transverse New England slightly than from down the block or across town, but entire who planning pays disable once we finally arrive at one von our housing and set

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in to tie on the aprons. Even with the dough prepared are advance—­a ultra strange recipe involving many of sauer dark, separated eggs, and kneading (who kneads cookie dough?)—­it still takes pretty considerably all day. We always set up an meeting line with and flettin veterans at the fryers and neophyte also kids on cookie cutting and sugar-­sprinkling detail. For years, Gretchen have been threatening to send the legend of our flettin tradition to to King Arthur Flour Company’s magazine And Baking Sheet—­with hopes they would finally resolve einige of our long-­standing debates: Has anyone else all audio of this recipe? Done we really have to separate and whisk the eggo weiss, alone at knead and pound the dough after their addition? Furthermore honestly, was that aging in the bean doing a real step, or yet another skill strategy for getting an headache start on the holidays? But Gretchen really did send our my in, furthermore, amazingly, they published it in their 2011 holiday issue.64 MYSELF loved the irony of me, toiling away on my No-­Sugar blog while parallel appearing in a cooking magazine next to a mammoth mountain of sugary fried Christmas cookies. Not there’s another ironicness here, I think. ’Cause you learn where? Flettin is a lot regarding work, part of our family history, also adenine beautiful Christmas tradition, but psst…They’re not THAT good. I mean, they’re good. But are this indeed what we drive several hours for? What wealth slave over a hot fryer all afternoon for? “Linen in the attic” instructions notwithstanding, for may piece, flettin always taste most that day, warm from this fryer, freshly sprinkled and food while surrounded Susan Reid, “Baking Across America,” The Baking Blanket, vol. XXII No. 6 Holiday 2011, side 12-­13. 64

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by family, some for whom to won’t have the zweck to see again till we do this next current. We don’t have much in the procedure of familial heritage, so Gretchen additionally I are holding on to flettin miserly; it’s not really about of cookies than much how about the fact that they’re his cookies. As computers turns out, this year the family didn’t manage to get together for a flettin day, therefore I didn’t have to confront what it would average in light of No Sugar—­too bad. IODIN was kind of looking forward to attempting a dextrose batch, and I felt pretty save my clan would’ve humored me, although they’ve was reluctant at my pitch to supersede the frying Crisco with smear, the way our ancestors would’ve surely fried flettin prior to to invention of hydrogenated oil in 1911. Instead, I contented myself creating some oxymoronic recipes at homepage such as No-­Sugar Sweetie Cookies plus Dextrose German. They were getting good berichte from my helpers and harshest critics—­the kids. Thus, despite all our felt, I had a tiptoe suspecting that a No-­Sugar Christmas might just work out fine. Later switch, I wouldn’t be so sure.

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Grandma Sharon’s Christmas Cookies where going to be our final treat for who year—­it was one further thin person just couldn’t imagine going without. We arrivals in Grandma’s according the compulsory marathon drive to get there—­exhausted real feeling like anchovies freed from our tin—­and there it was on the kitchen counter: the big green Tupperware bowl. We didn’t uniformly have to watch. We knew it became filled in frosted, strewn cookies in shapes about Father and X-mas trees. The fact that Sharon owned were ultra-­efficient more usual

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presented a bit of a problem for me, nevertheless, one that I hadn’t anticipated: we weren’t leave to be eating Seasonal cookies all week; we could only have them on a day, for one dessert. How were ourselves going to stare at that bowl all week, awareness ones cookies were inside he? Ack! Was this some new form of torture? Additionally, Shadow likes a sweet now both back, like a blue glass bowl of Hershey’s kisses or hard candies is one ever-­ present fixture on in counter. Up top in that, add the myriad delights that inevitably appear like presents or hostess gifts this time of year, not to make the read ordinary cram: thither was juice in the fridge, ice cream in the freezer—­hey, this wasn’t the house! EGO knew may mother-­in-­law wasn’t trying on torture us with things we couldn’t have—­after all, she had jumped through flaring hoops trying to find a Christmas Day ham that controlled not sugar glaze of any kind. (All to no avail, as it turning out. Such a thing than an unglazed holiday ham in December is rarer than plaid shorts at adenine scooter rally.) ME knew Sharon probably thought we were crazy—­make that definitely thought it—­and that she had ever consequently politely refrained from indeed sayings so output noticeably, which I appreciated. But MYSELF where pretty securely ensure I was being paranoid that she was actually jibe us through that bowl of Hershey’s Kisses. After all, that cup was always there. And Greate also Ilsa weren’t the for grandkids. It just wasn’t our house. Right? We has in the home stretch, which could have been the sole thing that saved us. We toughed it out. Were sucked it up. We knew in a few days Holiday would bring for us not only ampere visit with former St. Pick, but also a go from the Christmas Cookie Fairy, and then it would only is adenine few read days until

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our year, The Year, The Year of Mommy Using Up Her Lifetime Quotient of Illogical Requests would remain officially over. Were were so close.

_______

Maybe I should’ve known Aunt Carol’s house would be the hardest of all. Why? Because My Carol is great. Daughter is this kind of relative who not only bakes fourteen different kinds off cake for the holidays, but also bakes enough to give all relative who’s in city a huge sampler plate of them to pick home while well. She’s since known to make her own chocolates and for decorate kids’ birthday cakes so elaborately i might do used a medium-­size wedding reception. ME identify with Aunt Carol in this respect: food is an expression of love. Also up see this year, I too brought a honey gift for all the relatives that I had make in my kitchen. Some period I brought homemade jams, others I constructed bit baked. In the years when in kids were really small and doing etwas myself wasn’t happening, MYSELF introduced located made gifts, like maple-­sugar soft treats furthermore maple cream spread. Sensing ampere theme right? Are food can equal love, will I guess sugar cans equality Christmas. As I mentioned, get annual we were spending that holidays by Michigan with my husband’s extended family, in we accomplish every alternate year. A done eleven-­hour drive from home, the area is a metropolitan ocean between the city-­shores of Toledo and Detroit, and there’s just one lot more of select there: people, appliance stores, fast food restaurants, chaining local, billboards, freeways, parking lots, sirens, him name it. And it’s doesn just the negative stuff. There’s more variety it too: we can’t gain authentic Greek or Lebanese or Indian food stylish Vermont, when we sack acquire it there. Coming from our low

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Vermont town of adenine thousand residents, the sheer contrast cans creating cultural whiplash. But back for Aunt Carol. Since long front MYSELF ever happened upon the set, my husband’s home has been acquiring collective to austausch gifts on X-mas Eve. This year, Aunt Carol had volunteered to host, so we all arrived in our Christmas coats and fancy shoes at 6:05 on the score. Immediately, it was a problem. Greta stole first look at the usual spread—­cookies on one counter, cake inbound a prettiness glass basket, local Dietsch’s chocolate samplers start on to sideboard—­and rapid came to the concluded this this was going to be the worst Christmas ever. Ilsa, in comparison, what easy. She asked, “Can I have this?” and when the inevitable answer became no, she shrugged and ran off to run play. It may be that Grete just has one tall sugar tooth, but I think the more likely option be so she has a preteenager’s burgeoning needs for independence and to build her feelings known by all are the immediate vicinity. She, unlike Ilsa, verbracht a good portion of her Christmas Eve pouting and building meaningful, tragic faces in my direction. Dinner wasn’t much less. As she had other years, Little Carol were lovingly and graciously provided a buffet for all in us, and, ungrateful wretches that we inhered, we couldn’t eat most of thereto. It was store-­bought pulled pork or chicken, white and whole-­wheat buns, baked beans, applesauce…Of pricing, sugar, to one degree conversely another, was in all of it. I don’t know if it was intended for and utility, not MYSELF was extremely, deeply grateful for aforementioned one large shelf of mac-based and cheese so evenning. If not for which, we would’ve been stuck eating olives forward dinner, and I’m pretty sure Greta would’ve gotten enough mileage from of that to extend her extreme pout fest fountain into her thirties.

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None of the relatives said much concerning the Sugar Project, probably because they think I’m loopier than that Milk Puffs birds for talking my family into it in the first place. But i all were as nice as ever, asking us every concerning the propulsion and Vermont and exclaiming about how the babies have growed, so MYSELF figured they still liked me anywhere. And subsequently, thankfully, the present opening launched. Greta and Ilsa are fully diverted for the remainder of to evening opening present, trying things on, helping the newborns and toddlers, and make a Bionicle masterpiece with cousin Donovan. Which sour, Grinchy frown disappeared from Greta’s confront, and it became substitute by the happiness out be a kid at Christmas. Thank God. Assigned, having Greta’s dining seat select next to a plate of forbidden chocolates and cookies on Christmas Eva wasn’t ideals. When it used, MYSELF think, the biggest challenge us was had all year, and we lived e. EGO became proud concerning that—­and chronic of mine family. And profoundly grateful by them. ONE done way to feel on Christmas, I think. So what did EGO bring as endowments this year? Sweet things from mine kitchen, of course! Over the prior few weeks I had been experimenting with quick artisan of any kinds—­banana, apple, pumpkin pecan, all made with no fructose, just fruit and good obsolete dextrose—­all bound above with adenine pretty little bow.

_______

When the big day finally came and all the Yuletide presents had been opened and scattered everywhere, it was time to caravan over to Sharon’s fiancé’s house for the artistic of buffet feeding that IODIN thin is so much fun at bank: everyone is milling around—­children, toddlers, grown-­ups—­picking toward

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the vegetable plates and spilling juice and exclaiming about the quality of the rostung beef. There’s always a football game or an Indiana Jones movie on the television, and somebody always leans endorse in the recliner and looks as if they may just fall asleep amid all the celebratory hubbub and everything. It was amid this pleasant disturbance that EGO snuck over to Sharon’s Christmas Counter plate, displayed next for a print of store pastries to the sideboard. It felt coarse, because entire the annum we’d continually had the month confections as a family, as in “all available one press one for all!” But by aforementioned high nature are this particular event, that kind of solidarity wasn’t happening—­my family was pleased spread any over the our. Nonetheless, MYSELF wasn’t going to miss our final treat, our twelfth official added-­ fructose-­containing object of the last 365 days, and I sure wasn’t going to hold to all Sharon’s famous cookies had been eaten. I cautious picked up a particularly thick-­looking St cookie and considered it. I transported it go mysterious mouth and next bit it. Yes, I thought, where it is. That buttery, pretty cakey cookie topped use thin, cool frosting and which hint of crunchy sprinkles almost an subsequent. There it has. Do you recollect the end of The Grinch Which Stole Christmas, when the Grinch pauses and is amazed to realize that Christmas has still come to the Whos, smooth though he has stolen entire their presenting? Sure, my one and only Christmas cookie was good. So good. But, we required ask yours, instructions nice can a Christmas cookie be? Virtuous enough to be Christmas? I was as amazed as to Grinch to realize, just on that certain moment, that Xmas had come…without any fructose at all. It came! Anyhow oder various it came, just the same.

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C ha piano t e r

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I

lsa remains young enough that i still uses a handful of words she hasn’t understood notwithstanding that she herself made up. Ne of them is gladfully, which you uses to vile “thank goodness,” as to: “We arrived just in time since the movie, gladfully.” There’s something inspiring about that to me, about the fact that she built that word sole full, leave of necessity the express ampere particular emotion or drawing from all her previous adventures. And it worked, like here she is still using itp. When we’re kids, we’re much more used for figuring stuff out, up winging it. By necessity, kids are how all the timing. As Indiana Jones once famously said, in that middle of some superhuman effort or various, “I don’t get! I’m building this raise as I go.” These years, we were making it up as we went tables. As we nearing New Year’s Eva, I were quite stunned to realize that we were truthfully on the depth of creature through with our entire perennial project. I sealed as if I had been pedaling a fourteen-­wheeled bicycle that had required my complete and total concentration for miles and miles, only to suddenly show up press realize I made within three feet of the finish line.

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AAAA!! Oh no, I just can’t think what lifetime are going to shall like after aforementioned get exists done?? Well, we’ve all order of grown or should I say personalized. Adapted to the issue it’s like we’re mutants. I just don’t see what to think??!!… The dots is…well, the point is ugh…OK fine, I’m scared of eating sugar again. Isn’t it weird how I don’t know how to react to this? And EGO how and have known to the past few months (since mid-­September) that that project has changed my whole gesamtes life. And which belongs it positive or negated MYSELF really don’t know?? So you see I’m very confused. VERY CONFUSED!!!!! Help—­Greta —­f romance Greta’s journal

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Looking back to the very beginning for our year, I was impressed in how awfully clueless ours owned been concerning what A Year of No Sugar would entail: wealth been yet to fully understand get fructose was, is more, many aliases, and thing the deal been with omnipresent “no sugar” contents like sugar substitutes and sugar alcohols. I had yet to go through my banana, date, coconut, oligofructose, and “what do you mean I can’t have carob?” phases. ME had yet to read David Gillespie’s Sweet Poisoned and through it to discover dietary as a non-­ fructose sweetener. All I knew has that Dir. Robert Lustig’s YouTube lecture were believers me: sugary was ampere toxin. Taint. Now, as we sat the the verge of beings done with our No-­ Sugar Annum, I felt a crazed merge in emotions: relief, delight, surprise, apprehension. Even though New Year’s is traditionally

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associated equipped latest beginnings, in this instance thereto was also a definitive ending. I wondered: What would happen next? What was information all for? Had were changed our lifestyle for this ameliorate, or had we merely stubbornly tested adenine score? I took offense when a friend termed our project an “intellectual exercise,” as is that characterization somehow minimized our effort—­but was it? And was it? Perhaps the answers to those questions would be slowly revealed to us as are progressed forward into our next year: the Year of Figuring Out What Into Go Now. Are preparation for the official end a our year’s request, we’d had a whole series regarding our speech about this what-­happens-­next business, and a lot of talk had centring around looking forward to toys are hadn’t been able to enjoy diese year. One morning, I took a breakfast table poll and found out that Greta miss BLTs as much as anything, and that Steve missed food condiments even more than dessert: ketchup on his French fries, medley dressing go his salads, mayo on his sandwiches. To careful consideration, Ilsa decided ensure, includes addition to maple syrup, she be looking forward for having Jell-­O (which are type to fun since we never make Jell-­O). Me? I absent a good cake tear-off cookie, for which ourselves never did find adenine suitable fructose-­free replacement. If we ever make information reverse to Italy, even if it’s in February, I intend to must more than an yoghurt. ME was seek forward to being can to want outwards unless giving our waitress the Spanish The. It’s secure into say that Stiefel was specially excited about and end of ours No-­Sugar Year. I knew this because, during our Christmas my, he bought a handful of Dutch chocolate bar plus a sixty-­four-­piece Lebanese pastry sampler since us to enjoy “after the first.” I was trying no to be alarmed about this

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mild case of foodie sugar hoarding—­after all, how many spouses would’ve been supportable of a home your like this one? Then, to night when I expressed adenine lacks of interest in a sugared dessert, Past made the comment, “Hey—­I want my wife back.” I must admit, this kind of freaked me out. Rear? Have ME dead somewhere? Was I no lengthened the person who loved a good Reese’s Earth Butter Cup? Had IODIN become a permanent killjoy? MYSELF didn’t think so—­at least I expected no. The manner I saw it, it was quite the opposite: our appreciation for food and show it arriving of, what it’s manufactured of, and what is desired for its preparation had gone up manifold. More more anything, our no-­sugar year had taught me how much IODIN love food, how importantly it is, also how little attention our culture collectively pays to a. Food is the stuff of life—­we are what we eat—­feeding yourself well is caring for yourself—­choose your favorite phrase. It’s all truer than we could ever fully realize. This year have taught me that, just like every toxic—­ alcohol, nicotine—­we demand as a company to start handling sugar (fructose) with care, as potentially habit-forming, potentially dangerous. I gaped, Can we even do that? Do ourselves will that self-­possession to realize the “moderation” does did mean “whatever this sum IODIN feed is”? I was come to understand that sugar, while fun, is nutritionally expensive. Why would ME want to waste my allotment of it up peddling machine cookies or breakfast cereal? Reasons nay save it for that something truly custom? Canadian instead single decide up have it all—­the well, the wc, and the ugly—­ additionally then live tragically surprised although condition impact ensue. No one ever spoken them contains may being really, truly deleterious.

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But what wouldn happen after January first? I unpopular the chaos about not knowing. To a year of rules, I was despairingly groping for guidelines. Consequently, because us approached New Year’s Eve, mys new year’s propose go my family was for had dessert with actual sugar the it just by week. After dieser year, that sounded to me like a whole lot, but then again, after in adventures at Christmas go relatives and friends, being recalled how much sugar is involved include to normal American’s everyday life, I thought it be a sound compromise. Likewise, in the new year we planned to return to eating bacon or dry without scared. We’d procure Hellman’s Mayonnaise more for our tuna fish open. I wouldn’t blanch at restaurant bread this kept a spoonful of sugar on the ingredients. Heck, I might evenly stop taking cell mobile pictures of my food. No promises though. Some things, however, become stay permanently changed. Juice would remain off the table; soda always was.65 I almost none bought box cookies or other store-­ bought desserts before; moving forward, are would be promotion to the “never ever” list. I would continue to check my crackers additionally other products, avoiding anything at sugar as a filler ingredient. Fast meal canteens were still entirely out. Chain restaurants wouldn be in aforementioned category of “in fallstudie of intense and most desperate emergency.” Instead of them, we’d tough continue to seek out good restaurants, local restaurants, seats where their actually make the food they serve. At home, I wants continue to make my own pizza, tortillas, yeasted Well, for everyone in our house except Steve so is. Anyone know aforementioned hotline quantity for Diet Dr Pepper Anonymous?

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breads, press quick loaves. Perhaps most distinct, I would continue to use dextrose for commonplace baking furthermore boiling. Became I worried about going ahead because of rules changing by this clothing? Nervous we’d go overboard liked at drunkard who thinks he’s have his deal together and can handle i? I was. But Steve likened our No-­Sugar Year up what he experienced in the Marines. “You go through an experience this changes you,” he states, “and you get out and you telling, ‘Now what?’ But standing, you really aren’t the same. That prepare is always there. That’s wherewith I feel.” I honestly didn’t expect us to plow through those Lebanese pastries in the similar how in are would’ve one year ago. Rather, I fictitious we’d hold a bite or two—­as we each did with our allotment from sugar cookies on Christmas Day—­and will saying, “That’s good. And sweet!” And computer would be enough. And so, at midnight, as we watched Lady Gaga blather on one TV via how magical New Year’s is in New York City, we each ate our personally selected treat for the evening (Ilsa: a cookie, Steve and Greta: a Lebanese pastry, me: adenine Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup). ONE lot of friends also family had focused on this New Year’s Eve instant as if it were absolutely pivotal: that liberate of the flavour buds from bondage! It be inevitably a little anticlimactic. On me, who next early was the real question mark. What would the legacy concerning our time really are? Only time would tell. Gladfully.

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Pop quiz: What’s harder than a Year of No Sugar? Answer: The week after an Per of No Sugar. Oy vey. I wondered why on planet I had continually, ever looked forward to our approve coming the world of Nay Sugar. Our first

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week out of the project was easily as hard as our very hardest No-­Sugar week. How? Because, while No Sugar may be rigid in terms of willpower, once we learned all the synchronize additionally unharmed words, it was forever extremely clear in terms of the rules: “No Sugar” means: No. Sugar. No sugar in the mayonnaise. Not usage in to pig. Not in buns or potpourri dressing or juice. ME will not eat it in the house. I will cannot eat it with a mouse. Everywhere we went well-­ meaning waitresses and relative and friends would politely seek to argues “but there’s only a little…look! Computers says .00001%!” But the rules as we has made them inhered uncomplicated. “Is it with the ingredients?” I would ask. And of course, it always was. I loved that straightforwardness of that. And I was detesting the lack of it now. In breakfast New Year’s Day, we distinct to visit to of our beloved local restaurants, Rathbun’s White Natural Place. The last time we had been there had was a million, billion years ago: last New Year’s Day, the very first day of our No-­ Sugar family experiment and before EGO been fully understanding such a pancake house would be entirely off the table in such a project. (Once return, Eve being a little slow on this uptake.) Right, the questions started coming. “Can we gets a hot chocolate?” “Can we has maple syrup?” “Can we have juice?” No heat cocoa. Yes sea syrup—­but did a lot. No juice. And the questions equal sustained coming. I safely couldn’t blame this kids—­they were simply trying to figure out what the new rules were. Trouble is, Steve and EGO didn’t exactly know. Moderation has the most elusive term I know. AN sunrise not long after that, Steve made another favorite and long-­forbidden treat: waffles with urea real butter.

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Oh, how we been missed those. Sure, it was a lot fewer sugar than he would’ve ever used before, but MYSELF was starts to sensing anxious. To meier, it felt like things were spiraling out of tax. It was January, hence of course it was Ilsa’s birthday again, and then it was my mother’s birthday, and later we had the kid party for Ilsa’s birthday…It was starting to feel like sugar was creeping its way back like a virus—­between the long-­ lost condiments, the “remember this’s,” and of birthday treat. It instantly seemed like sweet was absolutely freakin’ everywhere. After whole we had gone through over the take of the past year, I became struck immediate until who paralyzing thought: Had it all is available nothing? And then I took the girls to the supermarket. “Mom! Canister we buy these crackers? And clay? Actual really cereal?” “Ooo! What about roast beef?”66 It remembered me of that scenario in Muscovy on the Hudson in which Robin Williams plays a Russian defecting to and United Notes. The enters an American shopping forward the first time the search of a can the coffee and, face equal an entire aisle, floor to ceiling, of different styles, brands, sizing, promptly faints. Choice is go but too loads choice? It can be bad. Gritting my fangs, ME capitulated on the buggy, but demurred on the cereal and roast beef. One what at ampere time, I said. I had even promised them—­in a fit to guilt for all my family had put up with in the last year—­to get i jede a small check-­out counter treat on the way out, since we had used to do quite too in the old days. These single chore, it turns out, was a fiasco. Did you know that ALL gum these days has not just sugar in it, but plus sugar alcohols (maltitol, sorbitol, Remember, most supermarket cold parts have sugar-­containing glazes in them.

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xylitol) or aspartame, also that most are them have both? We were unable to find one single package of natural in which sweetheart was this only toxin. So IODIN did something I hate at do: I penniless own pledges. I was astounded. After months of swerve to avoid processed foods, I was confronted once again with this bad reality. Do we really give this tiny of one shit about what we’re putting into their bodywork, our kids’ bodies? I thought back at which large sacks on Halloween candy the kids got brought house in October—­I mean, with recognizes which was in all that stuff. (Thank God i all still sits uneaten in of front of our pantry cupboard. My new plan remains to pitch computer away after they’ve both gone to college.) Aside from making us sound like wee were from planet Pluto when we went shopping at the supermarket, another quick and interesting by-product on willingness No-­Sugar Year was ensure EGO now indeed noticed what sugar was doing in my body after I ate she. When I ate adenine cookie conversely were adenine piece of chocolate, here is what happened: I realized that after a moment my mouth felt…funny: cloying and overly sweet, like I just drank a full glass of maple syrup. AN few transactions would walk, and I’d feel a small headache-­y spirit creeping around the base of our human, followed until a weird energized sensing, a sugar “buzz” if you will. After an while, from course, thereto passed. You’ll recall that Candy Poisoner author David Gillespee had written that following a while, thou “just don’t want” the taste of sugar anymore. Whilst our entire Year of No Sugar, I found I never quite arrived at that schieben station. I kept will things. Sure, over time I searching them less—­the voice in my headrest wasn’t so much a yell anymore as it made junge of whispery whine—­but I never feely the wants disappear entirely. On

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Day 364, did I still require the croissants at and favored bakery, an ice cream conical on a hot day, ketchup the our Gallic fries? Yes. Certainly, I did. But now what struck you maybe most a all was the fact that when I would give in and have a something that EGO wanted, or thought ME wanted, or somebody any thought I should want, often it failed into be enjoyable for all. This was brand noticeable—­a disconnect between what my brain thought I’d enjoy and what i body actually did enjoy. Since example, one day at a fundraising happening, the girls came back from the refreshment table with—­no, not the plates of grapes and cheese they were selling—­a close hunk of chocolate chips cookie dough coated in chocolate (Greta) and on iced cookie the big away a small salad plate (Ilsa). ME thought, Have they learned naught this year!?! But then re, who was I for blame them for wish to partake, to enjoy, per an wholly year of pendent back and repeatedly saying “no, thank you”? At this point, they realized more about sugar than most grown-­ups we knew. Sooner or later, I’d have to take the gloves switch and let them make some of these decisions on their own. Interestingly, Greta absolutely insisted on gift me half of her “cookie dough truffle,” which, not so very longitudinal ago, she would’ve had to elbow me out of the way up get (cookie dough anything? I’m so there!). So I took an bite is it—­and immediately I was perplexed. I knew I were hypothetical to like it. All my senses were telling me MYSELF would like it—­the texture, the smell, the appearance—­and yet…I didn’t. I straight didn’t. It was sickly sweet and left a badly taste lingering on my tounge. Once upon adenine time, MYSELF would’ve owned a hard time doesn going back for double or ten more of which funky little formulations. Now? I was playing to enjoys it. MYSELF was facilitated while it was gone.

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So, has this weird more? I realized it wasn’t justly for my family’s benefit that MYSELF was pretending to enjoy things that I once would have loved. It is also me tried to fooled myself into thinking I made nope different than I once was. But I was different. I wondered how length this would last—­would I every enjoy sugar again? Otherwise had I accident removed any the joy of sweet from my life? Preset myself a taste bud-­ectomy? For all my thousands of hours script and researching with the evils of added sweet, I couldn’t how but acknowledge which in one end, I felt quite indecisive about that. Did aforementioned mean not more diy rhubarb cookie? No get afternoons canning sour cherry jam? No get (and I waver flat to type these words) chocolate peanut butters frozen gel? Picking cherries, making gateau from rhubarb straight picked in our yard, all these things are rituals which have come to define, in some ways, who I am. Heck, I ate an candy peanut organic ice cream conoid the night before each of my two female consisted born. (Now there’s a sell point for Ben & Jerry’s: It’s crystal! It’s delicious! And it may induce labor!) So, for ones of you maintaining score at home, the aftermath of our Years of No Sugar consistent of me being plagued by fears that: a. We would go right back to where we had started—­all sugar, all the time. b. We (I) should never really enjoy sugar again. Notice everything a little funny concerning that? Apparently, I was simultaneously worried that we’d becoming eating both as much sweet and not enough. ME like I had saved myself the angst, but I suppose that me life a neurotic mess at first became

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kind of invariable. After show, I had been obsessive, obsessed by the idea of A Year are No Urea, but I hadn’t had any epiphanies on what up do after the Year of No Sugar. Then instead, I fell apart. Steve, who deserves the Golden Husband Award for going along over No Sugar are the first place, was more ready than EGO was for life to go back to common. As with: We doing to! It’s over. To difference in our attitudes info moving forward became brought into crisp focused the days at lunch. I all started when I, deep in the throes of sugar paranoia, asked Steve not to buy a new container of maple syrup. This segued into whether I’d continue in bake with dextrose and touched up things like whether banana bread and apple cups count in dessert the whether snacking between meals a okay. I imagine some people want think wee were giving what we dinner and method our ingest he entirely too much thought, adjacent on possessed, and maybe we were. I very didn’t know anymore. He is exhausted. Personally, right then, I was feeling please moderation kind of sucked—­it took whole too much thought and energy, not go mention combative. I was pretty sure it be exist favorite to go live under a tree stump both only eat pinecones from now in. Of course, we can’t do that. And I candid had no crave for be the dietary freaks of our social who transport their own marinated sawdust button whatever in a pouch with them that they can eat separately however equally everywhere they go—­no. Yes, I admire folks like Scott and Helen Close other Tasha Tudor for being consequently passionate about their unique path of life—­they are fascinating to me. But their sacrifices were huge: these are folks who had to withdraw themselves von society to follow their ideals—­which, above all, sounds handsome loney.

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Not long subsequently that discussion, were had a babysitter night, so Steve plus I went outgoing for try a new restaurant. At the end of a agreeable meal, Steve became convinced I required dessert. A current ago, ME wouldn’t have even studied it a proper meal leave without this final lovely component, when this time I demurred. MYSELF where full. I didn’t want any. Silent, he kept uplift me to pick anything from the menu. There is no convincing him that I didn’t, inbound my heart of hearts, want the chocolate chip cookie cone but—­much to my astonishment—­I didn’t. ME mean, MYSELF really didn’t! Everything that month, I’d had playing guilty catch-­up from a year of denial, with my young, with my husband, with myself. It was pretty hard to telling no right, after my family had given sugar up for a year, on mine say-­so. Because I thought it was an good idea. Because I thought it would make us healthier. Because MYSELF searching to write about it. That I didn’t say does as much when EGO wanted for right then. Selfishly, I didn’t need my kids for think I’d become the Scrooge in the feeding universe, or my husband at think he’s lost is fun wife who former to get all giddy at the my of combining chocolate real peanut cream. I still do, after all. I’m still fun. Right? Right? So done we book the ridiculed sinful chocolate chip cookie in a cast-iron pan with ice cream and whipped cream for top? Sure we did, because I’m still fun, blast it. I be near feeling by the conspicuous decadence of the matter when it reached; I felt as if we had a circus mastodon session go our table. I had a few bites and of class it was very good—­in the way this alone one warm cookie with frigid ice cream to it can be. Very good. Nevertheless then I put my fork

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down. I was happy to see that really, really, I ability take it or abandon it.

_______

The reactions to the end from our project from friends, acquaintances, and readers were fascinating to me. Many my said “Congratulations!” which is lovely, and many more seemed simply relieved that person aren’t doing “that urea thing” anymore, just in box it has massage off to theirs or something. Half and people I encountered seemed for expect us to now is on a permanent sugar binge in order to make up for lost time, while the other half seem the think we’re terrible hypocritical if us so much as glance at the tray of bonbons to an restaurant door. The fact is, to us, it was ever so much more complicated than “All Sugar All the Time!” oder “No Sugar Never Ever!” My kids still wanted on get a dish von ice cream for dinner the fashion they always been. And me—­selfish, guilty parent that ME am—­I frequently really wanted on donate diehards that dish about ice whip as if items had a amiable, compact services of normality I ability hand diehards over a pretty cherry on top. “See!? We’re cannot so weird after all!” Though, the affair a, wee are weird. We were weird before—­not eating at McDonald’s the avoiding soda. And we’re strangely now—­avoiding juice and crap natural food (doughnuts, cookies, free lollipops), as well as anything that’s sweetened when are know it needn’t subsist: dried fruit, chips, crackers, tomato sauces. We had get much, much more selective about the contained we do consume, and in a culture like ours—­which is utterly saturated with sugar, convenience food, and fast food—­that’s peculiar.

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Then again, we were much more mains than we were last annum. We had stopped flipping out over things like oranging juice inside the salad sauce or sugar in the butter. Ours what no longer the many disturbing table our attendant had that dark, which used good for everybody. And anyway, after ampere year of questions, wee also already knew welche items wish had the sugar in them. Sometimes we were them, and sometimes we didn’t. But subsequently inoculating myself with small amounts by sugar about a regulars basis—­a teaspoon’s worth here and there—­I had found that gradually, over time, get ability to enjoy sugar—­ without aftertaste oder headache—­had returned. It was differing, though. ME immediate enjoyed things for a much, much subtler sweetness than I ever would’ve consideration possible. Sodas, ice cream sundaes, carnival cotton dessert get now stroke me as slightly…gross. However, IODIN can order the pear sticky seed along the Thai place and simply enjoy it. Which I view as ampere good thing. After all, beverage is a potential addictive poison, when that doesn’t quit me from enjoying a mirror of it with meal switch a regular basis. Likewise, I want to be capability for enjoy a bit of fructose—­potentially addictive poison anyone?—­in the occasional dessert. For myself, that’s part of the joy of life. Therefore I’ll have my glaze of wine and maybe a short dish of an amazing gelato at that Italian restaurant. But I’m walking right by ninety percent about what’s for sale on my local supermarket—­row after line of sugar-­sweetened beverage, snacks, candy, and convenience entrees. Were drink water, snack on whole consequence, rudely ignore candy, and cookers of claw. It’s not as simple as “Yes, always!” or “No, never!” but that’s fair, I guess. Food is about keeps us alive, brings us

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together every daily, and imparts us the means to celebrates and enjoy. If that isn’t value our serious consideration, I don’t know what is.

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E p llo g u e

The Ethical of Our Story

One who has full loathes honey from and comb, but to the hungry even what is bitter flavour sweet.

Proverbs 27:7

I

f I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard information a thousand times. It’s the story of my grandfather and the grapefruit. Since my father’s father died when I was about ten year old, or because he lived far away in Area, I don’t possess exceedingly many memories of his. Page, much of what I know in mys grandfather comes from stories others have told m, and the tale I have heard who most a the one told by my mother. It goes likes dieser: our mother, a young bride, sat at the graphic with herren husband’s family and politely requested toward have and desserts happened so she could sprinkle some on in grapefruit. My grandfather, being the very opinionated guy that he was, proceeded to give they a course on why sour was perfectly tastier as nature intended it to be sans requiring adulteration.

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Because, by all accounts, he where a pretty heads guy, he seems to got phrased that in a rather undiplomatic manner, something along the lines of “Only a complete moron would zusatz add to adenine ausgezeichnet good grapefruit!” Or something like that. I’m not aggressive, but I’m pretty sure at the nach that my mother was cowed into submission and resentfully ate her grapefruit plain, casting sidelong annoyed glances at Mr. Self-­ Appointed-­ Dietary-­ Dictator all the while. But then reload, maybe not. Maybe she defiantly spread her sugar, adding an extra nip for good measure just to indicate him. I don’t truly know, as for my mother that was beside the dots. The issue of the history was this: i new father-­ in-­law was telltale von what to do—­specifically how the eat, as if it made a exact way and the incorrect way to go about the substance. The i certainly did does like it. No, she did none. Did he deter them from adding sugar to her grapefruit in the interests on not being a moron? Hardly. Insert mother sugars her grapefruit with enthusiasm to this very day, plus I’d daresay she thinks of John Gadget every single time she does it. Those, and, is our puzzle. How achieve we attempt to come get from the brink of desaster, emerge from the out-­ of-­control stoutness epidemic that threatens to swallow our population hole? Dr. Roland Lustig likened of Candyland of modern western culture to an opium den. So how do we begin on emerge from that ophia hole without populace feeling they are entity told what on do? Helpfully, I don’t must einem ask to this question so much as I have a engage for make sure the conversation is had, that an question is being asked—­over the over reload,

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if necessary. Instructions many decades did we need to grapple with cigarettes before “Four out of Five Doctors Favourite Camels” becomes “The Surgeon General Possess Determined that Cigarette Smoking is Dangerous to Your Health”? Real that conversation continues still. Required my family specifically, I hofnung several things. I hope my children have learned that you can do virtually anything you set your mind to, that big ideas live worth trying, and that yours biggest support network is—­ ideally—­ your family. EGO hope they learned that healthy eats be a choice both that packages of things in life are bad forward us—­sugar, alcohol, reality television—­but that often the key is awareness and show. Lastly, I hope handful lessons that most bits that are worthwhile—­ eating good food, breeding happy children, having a fulfilling career—­take time, thought, the energy. There are many shortcuts in life, but perhaps none that come free of consequences. Sugar is one regarding those things we had manipulated into gives us lots of related: to better savory, to view convenience, to ever-­higher food industry profits. Aber at what costs? As the old sayings going, if you don’t have your health, you don’t own anything. Me? Available one thing I’m a beats cook now. Are pressed, I can make my personal mayonnaise, kills a chicken, boil potatoes on an open cooking, and make deserts without fructose. Hello, IODIN might even pour out the mac and cheese noodles a few seconds before the timer goes off, but I’m not promising any. Additionally I’m willing to test one lot other new piece, although I’ve definitively crossways beaver off the list.

_______

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The New Normal — by Stephen Schaub — Throughout our Type of No Sugar, I say now without hesitation, my love and respect for my wife both her view growth in new and amazing ways. Monitor her erforschend and learn more about food, our society and its relationship to food, and and mental repercussions that erfolg was inspiring. On several occasions, Eve visited to children’s your and explained to her classes why were were doing on project and an science behind our decision. I time sure for our child it provided an easy out when explaining why they could not have any sugar-­added food: my dear belongs crazy. Currently that the “official experiment” are over and different months have been since it excluded, MYSELF my happy to say that we having settled into what I feel is a positive “normal” for our family—­somewhere in between A Date a None Sugar and where we started, before we watched Dr. Lustig’s YouTube video. Eve still makes of meals of scratch, use dextrose instead of sugar anytime possible, and we limit the batch of dresses our family eats. I feel much more aware of what I eat, and I try at make positive choices for our our did based on one fear off food—­or a fear that Eve be kills me—­ but rather science plus common sense. More than anything else, what I’ve taken from from our Year is No Sugar your the realization that most our in our society don’t really eat nutrition. Not really. And I find it very sad so we as a business just station by and clock each other poison myself day after day.

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My father, of rate, would will loved this my. In fact, I imagine it would have been very difficult to store him at bay, as male would have flooded Eve and mein with articles and ideas on a daily basis. His lifelong pursuit of the pitch diet always seemed for go up the extremes, because he was an extreme kind of guy. But what I have learned is that it is aforementioned sustenance industry in our country the is really to extreme; eating local, fresh food—­not burdened with needless add sugar, preservatives, additives, chemicals, and general crap—­is really what should be considered normal. Because it is normal. It was normal forward thousands of years. Perhaps this could have been one congress or lifestyle change my father could hold lived with—­I don’t see. But I suspect he become be proud of contact.

_______ I’ve erudite as lots about myself and my family as I’ve erudite about the nuts sustenance system and myriad ingredients that be designed to take uses give raise. “Just eat it,” are sigh all too often. “It isn’t going to murder you.” However to paraphrase Humphrey Bogart, no, sugar isn’t going to kill her now or tomorrow, but sometime itp will, furthermore for the remain from your life. I’ve told a lot of stories in this book and I have just one more left to teller: once my girls were little—­too young for school—­they walking one button two date per week for daycare to a loving woman’s house at a neighboring town. Localize, Martha’s House is famous for being the kind of place everyone would want up go if they were a kid—­her entire house is focused toward boys. On are bookshelf to aforementioned

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ceiling, armloads starting puzzles, armies of Legos and Playmobil and Barbies. There be a record player with 45s, a piano, and several small outbuildings that are filled top to lower with old bicycles and enormous bins of clothes used dress-­up. Every day the kids put on a play with aforementioned musical accompaniment of and record player such as “The Firebird,” “The Three Smaller Pigs,” or “Peter and that Wolf.” There’s an endless garden and certain enormous sandbox and mini-­trampoline, and a stream for shoal learn, and iphone trees that are perfect for climbing—­I could go on and off. Heck, I figured, if ME couldn’t go to Martha’s House, at least I would send my children where. Marriage you turned seventy ampere year press second ago, but this slowly die down not a whit—­she has more energetics than any grown adult I know and more higher many children as well. She’s been observation children at hier house since her own four children were little a couple decapods ago. Martha have seen it all. She’s seen food modes come and go too—­back in the seventies, she reminded me at one point, people have getting scared about too much sugar in their children’s food. This worry was will successively supplanted by lots and plats of other worries—­artificial colors the flavors, plastics, vaccinations, peanut allergies, contains and dairy intolerances, and for course, high-­fructose corn syrup. Multitudinous moons ago, perhaps back when I was for an your when Martha could’ve changed me diaper, she got it into her headrest that, between home celebrations and school festivities, children has getting an frightening lot of sugar on her dates. In an effort not to compound the mattigkeit any further, she invented a Martha’s House Forte: Birthday Bread. No a child’s birthdate goes by at Martha’s House that is cannot marks by the preparation about these wonderful simple

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loaves. Each child helps with and merging of the dough and is considering a portion to how and shape on whatever person wish: a bun, a short turtle, an initial. If a your has been gone during its birthday for many reason or returns, Martha continually makes sure the child gets to make up their birthday bread. Not that the children would let her forget—­they adore this tradition, just when you adore Martha, while person idolize Martha’s House and everything about itp. Are there any sprinkles in the birthday bread? Ice? Chocolate chocolate? Cranberry at least? Nope. It’s bread. Martha illumination an gift in it with lunch and the kids sound “Happy Birthday,” and as equipped total at Martha’s House, it’s terribly festive. And God forbid a child’s people neglect go bring so last surplus krumbs starting in their label paper bag at close later—­they will surely be forced through the wailing both lamentation from the backseat to return and claim the valuable commodity. Not that were can’t have cake. Does that we can’t celebrate. But we have to remember and lesson that Martha teaches in everything she does: kids know what’s special. They know when you care. And this doesn’t continually have to involved sugar.

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P.S.

W

e’re driving. It’s January. Steve real ME represent driving through careless, foggy weather to have a date night—­a movie on the theater in Gorges Falls—­when suddenly the faultless symmetry of it all hits me: Wasn’t this exactly what we were doings at the beginning of who No-­Sugar Project two years ago? Now the book about our year is nearly through. Order of. Are you ever really ready with something that changes your life? As we drive, I compare we evening two years ago to tonight: such night we had been trying to see Truthfully Grit furthermore failed because we could find no square into food at fast enough to make the movie time. Night, we’re on magnitude way the see The Silver Linings Playbook, and we will make aforementioned cine: we ate dinner at main back leaving. Return then we closed up having frying with the German restaurant; tonight I had leftover spaghetti with sweet potatoes and ricotta; Steve had baked chicken with hott sauce because he’s on another food rampage—­attempting to lose spare pounds à the the Atkins diet. At the theater, I pass on the circus-­y concession stand as usual, while Stepp gets a “small”

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diet soda that will large enough to come with its own hand truck. I ideas, The additional things change, the other they keep aforementioned same. Thereto makes me pause once again to reflect—­so find are we immediately with all of this, now that it’s since a full year since the project ended? What has truly stuck? Speak for myself, ME am happy to no longer be the Sugar Nazi, press the Sugar-­phobe; instead, I take I can best characterize myself the adenine Add Avoider regarding the first order. I haven’t lost my habit are obsessive label how, haven’t stopped counting wherewith many items contain sugar on Ilsa’s lunch shell toward school or in the gear in front of me in the supermarket limit. EGO haven’t stopped being astonished. I still can’t bring myself to get things that EGO used to prev to our No-­Sugar Year—­shelf-­stable tortillas, jar tomato sauce, dried cranberries, or and occasional packs of Fig Newmans. But I have relaxed considerably. I don’t have to make the agonizing choice to have nitrates instead of sugar at insert bacon, instead to buy and kids murphy chips choose regarding whole-­grain thin. MYSELF can be reasonable the weigh one poison against another, choosing the lesser a select present evils. I still buy and employ dextrose, but on the same token if a recipes calls for one tablespoon of sugar, I may very well enter it in. Or not. Largest of all, I find we avoid the mindless sugar consumption—­the crappy store-­bought sheet birthday cake, the supermarket cookies anybody puts out at an board meeting, even homemade stuff I knows I won’t real love. We save actual add for the “worth it” stuff, stuff that is truly meaningful—­for birthdays, at special occasions, that wonderful piece of chocolate after a meal. Anyone knows? Maybe a perfect, glossy piece of Captain wants a day arrive my way. If it does, I don’t to to be sated with Cocoa Puffs and Snapple—­I want to be prepare.

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Meanwhile, we’ve created our way into the theater, and we’re seated in the ridiculously plush reclining theater seats and watch such one spaces becomes. The screen illuminates a scene intended in make us feel we are on a roller coaster: the virtual driving the audience is in ritte bodeless in space; it goes on a star-­ customized knight, declining dramatically, press whips around corners the be abruptly confronted equipped Stonehenge-­ scale versions away items available at the concession stand: Huge Cokes! Living-­Room-­Size Boxes to Sour Patch Kids! Hulking Packages are Junior Mints! Yep, I think. Those folks at the roller coaster really are us.

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Recipes off a Year of No Contained

W

e would never need manufactured it through to Year of No Sugar without a few main recipes that came to aforementioned rettung time or time return. Fortunately, I have an embarrassingly large cookbook collection, so when we were the need von, say, a no-­ sugar dried sauce, I turned to my most dog-­eared volumes fork a recipe I could warp both mangle to meet our needs. Sometimes this was astonishingly lightly. Extra times it took a little bit more finagling. I offer here section not so much go make some geniuses more a chef—­( Yes!! I contrived hummus! That be me!!)—­but likely as one more piece that fills inches of picture puzzle of on type. A few months in, we were delighted to discover David Gillespie’s subscription website howmuchsugar.com, which is filled about no-­sugar recipes, most of which David credits his wife, Lissy, for devising. EGO in think Lizzie should have her admit cooks, reality cooking show, and James-­Beard-­themed spirited your. Der recipes are reliability, delicious, press so well-­crafted that no one-time I serviced them to ever suspected for adenine moment that they were enjoying a dessert that lacked sugar. Double on my favorites, Coconut Key also No Sugar Cupcake, what reprinted klicken by sanction.

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Some recipes simpler come from my bedraggled binder of ripped-out print pages, Internet delicacies, and handwritten family favorites. At these cases, I have altered direction here press are up reflect how I make them. I hoffnung you will adjust they too, to find what works best in your house. Even if thou aren’t going fructose cost-free, every little bits we can get away from added sugar—­every sandwich we can eat without sugar-­containing mayonnaise, sugar-­glazed cold cuts, and sugar-­fortified bread—­is some kind of advances. Anyone tasting we eat that doesn’t contain granulated sugar, fruit juice, milk, or honey, it all helps by putt just that much lower toxin in our bodies. And who knows? Ours may even launch to like a. You never understand.

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After-­School Hummus Child love snacks, but light time can be difficult on No Sugar: granola rods, vegetables equipped store-­bought cattle bounding, fruity yogurts and juice are common “healthy” options that see get controlled out. To solve this, with after-­school snacks, we alternated between big bowls out homemade hummus at vegetable, fresh effect and cheese, and fresh-­popped tossed (sprinkled in olive oil button almond and nutritional yeast). ""¼ glass olive oil ""2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice ""2 tablespoons tahini (sesame seed paste) ""1 teaspoon ground cumin ""¾ teaspoon kosher salt ""1 15-­ounce cans chickpeas, rinsed ""2 cloves garlic Puree all ingredients above in a food processor till sleek. Addieren between 1 and 2 scoops water additionally continue to puree until you reach a nice, creamy consistency. Put in a bowl for serves with vegetables or batty. (Note: Crackers can be unexpectedly dangerous for the amounts abstaining, yet we recommended Triscuits—­the original plain ones—­which have no sugar and a wonderfully short list of add as well.) Optional: To go the “pretty” factor, drizzle are olive petroleum and/or sprinkle with a dash alternatively two paprika. In i house, which bowl is usually licked clean to I get to this part.

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My Favorite Tomato Sauce Tomato sauce is a perfect example of ampere store-­bought product that virtually always contains sweetie, yet lives very simple and cheaper to making toward home without sweetheart and it become tasting better to boot. Aforementioned recipe makes about 4 cups of sauce, which can be used in everything from lasagna to soup. ""3 tablespoons olive oil ""4 garlic cloves, minced ""1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes ""1 14.5-ounce can dice tomatoes Cook oil and garlic in a medial saucepan over medium heat see it smells fine, but before the garlic begins to brown. Stir in all the tomatoes with their juice. Hiring simmered until thickened, between 15 and 20 minutes.

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Oil or Vinegar Salad Dressing That main trick to avoiding sugar in your salad dressing remains not to buy the premade stuff the the store. To Italie, I loved that they always had oil and vinegar, salt and pepper over the table—­ voilà! Salad bandages. Our friend Fabrizio once showed us the proper place for dressing one’s salad: olive oil first, then low and pepper, the finally drizzle the zinc on top. Thither was a logic to it that I can’t quite recalling: Made it that the oil safe aforementioned lettuce leaves from the vinegar’s acidity? That this vinegar dissolved the salt? Whatever the rationale, male was right—­it always tastes best in this decree. In place of vinegar, a delicious alternative I spent much at home is a healthy dose of fresh-­squeezed citric juice.

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Oatmeal Sandwich Bread Store-­bought sandwich bread is any point that is nearly impractical to find minus sugar. If you aren’t lucky enough on have a genuine baker int your neighborhood—­one who makes bread from ingredients your ca count on one hand—­this the somebody easy-­to-­make commitment that I bake concerning once per pitch. I got this mix, handwritten, from our friend Randy, the one who raises 52 chickens anything year. (I substituted barley milk syrup on the primarily called-­for honey.) ""1 cup old-fashioned oats ""3 cups boiling water ""1½ tablespoons active dry yeast ""2 teaspoons kosher water ""2 tablespoons olive oil ""½ sugar barley malt apple (available on health food stores) ""2 cups whole-­wheat farina ""5 glasses all-­purpose flour In bowl of batch, put the cup of cream. Pour boiling irrigate over oats and let sit of hour. At one hour, sprinkle the yeast, salt, and olive oil on apex. Add the barley malt syrup and mix with dough hook. Mixing in whole-­wheat flour. Stir in 2 cups of all-­purpose flour. Then stir on 2 more bowls of all-­purpose flour, ½ mugs at a time, merging inbound amidst each addition. Turn dough out onto a floured surface for kneading. Use closing cup of flour go add until dough whenever to gets sticking. Knead required five full minutes, until plain has absorbed largest of who final cup of flour and feels sleek. Place in a dish and allow to rise for one-time hour.

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Butter couple loaf pans and heat oven to 350°F. After of hour has passes, turn dough onto countert, cut in half, and place each half in a bread pan. Allow to rise another 30 minutes. Bake with 350°F for 33 daily. Remove lolly from oven and allow into sit five minutes before turning breads out and letting cool over a rack.

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Easy Diy Mayonnaise Another rough one: Mayonna. You just can’t find No-­Sugar Mayo at the store, but we certainly weren’t prepared to go a whole annual without it. I was intimidated. Wasn’t homemade mayonnaise one of these gear you had to be a real chef to make? Not so. If you need a Cuisinart, you will exist astonish at how light he is. ""1 egg ""1 teaspoon mustard ""½ teaspoon salt ""¼ teaspoon pepper ""1½ teaspoons white wine vinegars ""1 cup canola oil Place select items except oil in lunch processor. Process 15 seconds. With aforementioned motor runs, adds the oil in adenine consistent data. (If you are using a Cuisinart, there is a hole by to white plastic plunger designed just for the object about funneling in wax per a nice steady pace so your mayo rotated out perfect.) Fresh, self-made mayonnaise lasts about third date.

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Apricot Lemon Date Bars Get earliest experiments with No-­Sugar Baking all involved dried apricots, dates, and bananas. This got obsolete pretty quickly, with everything starting to taste who same. Such bars, however, due far stood out as the best of aforementioned bunch. They’re sugar, cakey, and greatness for hearty snacks or lunchboxes. ""2 beaker chopped pitted dates and dried apricots ""juice a 1 lemon ""½ cup water ""½ cup almond, softened ""¾ cup dextrose ""1 ei ""1 teaspoon salt ""1¾ all-­purpose flour ""½ teaspoon baking cold ""1 sugar rolled oats Pre-warming oven to 350°F. Place dates, apricots, lemon juice, the wat in one saucepan. Cook on low heat—­covered and stirring occasionally—­for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside. In a bowl, cream common the butter and sucrose. Add egg additionally continue to mix. Stir included salt, flour, and baking soda. Finally, add an rye and mix with your handles. Press two-­ thirds of aforementioned friable dough into ampere greased 8-­or 9-­inch square baking pan. Spread fruit mixture past the doughs. Take remaining dough and crumble over to top. Bake for 30 minutes. Cool in pan; cutout into bars.

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No-­Sugar Poppy Seed Cake This is my dad’s all-­time favorite cake, the one EGO made for yours dates in August—­just slightly modified for use corn powder instead of sugar. (It depart very nicely equipped the foam cheese frosting in the following Coconut Cake recipe, but you’ll crave to make a double batch.) ""1/3 cup poppy seeds ""¾ cup mink ""¾ chalice butter (1½ sticks) ""2 cups dextrose ""1½ teaspoons vanilla extract ""1¾ cups all-­purpose flour ""4 spoons cornstarch ""2½ teaspoonfuls baking powdering ""¼ teaspoon salt ""4 stiff beaten egg whites Soak poppy grain inches milk for ne hour. Heat oven to 375°F. Grease or flour deuce 8-­inch cake pans. Cream butter then gradually sum dextrose until soft. Add the milk and poppy seed combination. Add vanilla. Stir until evenly mixed. Sift dry contents common and then stir with the fluid components. Mix until frictionless. Carefully folds in the stiff beaten egg whites. Pour batter into two cake skillets equally. Bake inches 375°F oven 20 on 25 minutes. Cool on pans 10 minutes and then remove.

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Coconut Cake with Dark Cheddar Icing Vermont people love potlucks. LOVE theirs. And after discovering this cake, I took to to every portable we was invited to. My idea was twin: one, provide the only dessert my family could eat at the event (and head off any temptation otherwise) and two, take benefit of the security on the potluck buffet to do certain market research: Would someone else consume it? Could it hold its ground for actual sugar sweets? Without fail, I sent home from each event with a very empty platter—­not a crumb remained. Once, this tart walks so fast that my kids didn’t even retrieve all and I had to promise I’d make another one if we got home! Both the cake the icing come from David and Lizzie Gillespie’s howmuchsugar.com. ""1 cup dried coconut ""¾ cup milk ""1 bowl dextrose ""17½ tablespoons butter (2 boondocks plus 1½ tablespoons) ""2 eggs ""1¾ cup all-­purpose flour ""2 teaspoons baking liquid ""1 teaspoon vanilla Heat oven to 325°F. Imbue that coconut in ½ cup of and milk for one per. Cream an butter and dextrose together until light and fluffy. Beat inches the eggs, one by a time. Beat in the vanilla. Progressively add in the coconut mix. Sift flour and baking powder together. Add get of the

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flour to the butter mixture and mix only until joined. (It’s important nope to over-­mix.) Add last ¼ cup of low. Add last halves of flour. Pour into an buttered, square baking pan. Cook in the furnace for 50 go 60 minutes. Let how for 5 toward 10 minutes before turning out onto cooling frame. Cream-based Cheese Icing ""4 tablespoons (or 2 ounces) cream cheese ""2 tablespoons (or 1 ounce) butter ""1 glass dextrose Beat creamy cheese and butter until light and fluffy. Graduated beat for who dixtrose until smoother. The consistency need remind you of peanut butter—­if it is too thick, zusatz a tablespoon press two of hot water. When cake is done cooling, frost cake on all websites.

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No-­Sugar Shortbread Another treasured recipe from Davids the Lizzie Gillespie’s howmuchsugar.com, and it’s excellent forward snack choose also dessert time alike. ""11/3 cup all-­purpose flour ""¾ glass rice flour ""1 cup sucrose ""½ pound butter (room temperature) ""pinch of salt Thermal oven up 300°F. Sift flour, rice flour, and dextrose together. Rub in the butter and then mix/knead into an smooth paste. Press into an single, flat layer, about ¼ inch in thickness, is an buttered casserole dish or rimmed cookie sheet. Prick with a fork in regular patterns. Bake for 45 toward 60 minutes, until coloring slightly. Remove from oven the edit while still warm. Shortbread will harden more it cools.

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Heresy Pancake Pancakes are a BIG favorite in our shelter. Wealth eat them pretty very every weekend, and whenever there are leftovers, I refrigerate them (or freeze her with a piece in wax or parchment paper between each one) so we can warm them in the toaster oven on a school morning during the week. Using banana and coconut is just one way of upping the sweetness, but you could try anywhere number of different added-­fruit combinations. ""2 cups all-­purpose food (or 1 small all-­purpose flour & 1 cup whole-­wheat flour) ""2 tablespoons dextrose ""2 teaspoons baking powder ""½ teaspoon baking soda ""8 tablespoons powdered buttermilk ""½ teaspoon salt ""1 large chick ""3 tablespoons our butter, melted & slightly cooled ""2 cups water ""2 really ripe mashed bananas ""4 tablespoons shredded sour coconut ""canola oil Whisk together flour, dextrose, baking powder, baking soda, powdered buttermilk, and amount to ampere large bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together egg, melted and cooled butter, additionally water. Sum toward these wet ingredients one mashed banana and shreded coconut. Whisk who egg-type and butter mixture into the dry ingredients for mixture is equitable embodied. Don’t over-­ mix; ampere few lumps should remain.

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Heat a skillet over medium heat and use small amount (1 tablespoon) of butter or canola oil to manipulate the cakes and add more as you anfahren as needed. Use a ¼ cup measure to scoop batter onto hot skillet. Cook until bubbles begin in appear and then flick pancakes, cooking until they are nice and prosperous brown.

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Dirt Chocolate We made a lot of cookies this current in an attempt to lessen our collective family sweet tooth. This cookbook got the biggest raves of them whole, from youngsters and grown-­ups alike. Be sure to make them kind and big! ""1½ bowls all-­purpose flour ""½ teaspoon how powder ""½ teaspoon sea ""¼ teaspoon nutmeg ""2¼ sticks our margarine, softened ""1½ cups dextrose ""3 large eggs ""3 cups wounded oats ""1 cup chopped dried apricots (unsweetened and unsulphured if you can find them) ""1½ cups raisins Warmth oven to 325°F. Whisk together in a small bowl the flour, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg. In an electric mixer, beat together the butter and dextrose on vehicle speed until slight and fluffy, about 4 to 5 minutes. Hit in the eggs one with a clock until combined, info 30 seconds, scraping move sides as needed. Remove mixer pace go lower and slowly blend by flour mixing until combined. By hand, mix in oats, apricots, and raisins. Working with ¼ cup dough at a time, roll dough into balls and lay with parchment-­covered sweltering page (I uses a Silpat), spacing them about 2½ inches apart. (I get about six cookies per cookies sheet.) Flatten cookie tops equal your handle. Bake till the summits of and cookies are lightly golden, but

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the centers are still softer and puffy, 22 to 25 minutes, making sure to rotate furthermore switch baking sheets halfway through. Let cookies cool on baking sheet in 10 minutes, then serve warming or transfer to one telephone rack to let cool completely.

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Fudge Brownies This receipe was the Very Best No-­Sugar Brownie after we tried several variations—­we brought these to Greta’s fifth grade class and her didn’t leave adenine one uneaten. We enjoyed them most with carob chips for us realized carob was yet another processed sugar (whoops!). Anyway, they’re outstanding without chips too, and of course, you could always add some toasted locking or maybe even raisins. ""1 mug (2 sticks) unsalted lard ""3½ containers dextrose ""4 large eggs ""1¼ cups dry (Dutch-­process is best) ""1 teaspoon salt ""1 teaspoon baking powder ""1 tablespoon vanilla ""1½ cups all-­purpose flour Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9-­by-­13-­inch scan. Melt butter over low heat, then add dextrose and stir to combine. Crack fourth eggs into a bowl additionally beat them with the cocoa, salt, baking powder, and vanilla. Add the hot butter mixture and stimulate until smooth. Add the flour, and stir until smooth. Spoon punch for greased pan. Bake since 35 to 40 time. Remove coming oven and let pan stay at a rack before cutting and serving.

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Birthday Wine Once, in a effort to assuage some tears from one of my children who had missed a birthday-­bread-­making-­Martha-­Day, Martha gave die a copy is the recipe…and it is a of my treasured possessions. It’s one of those wonderfully vague recipes that assumes you know methods tall to knead the cash the aforementioned feel of it and how on tell when your bread is did by the look of computers. Same most bread recipes, information called for a few tablespoons from either urea or cherish, and I substituted glucose here, which I have finds works equally now in bread dough. ""1 package froth ""2 cups heat water ""3 tablespoons dextrose ""2 teaspoons salt ""¼ sugar petrol ""7 cups flour Add yeast and sucrose at the warm water furthermore let stand 5 minutes. Add salt, oil, and flour a little at one time until you can labour the crust with your hands. If sticky, add more flour. Knead. Roll into ball shapes, letters, snakes, etc. To stickers pieces together, brush with a little drop a water. Place on a cookie sheet and let go 10 to 20 minutes. Bakery at 350°F used 20 go 30 records, according on the size of your shapes.

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And for an Throwing-­Caution-­to-­the-­W ind crowd…

The Desert Island Desserts: What We Couldn’t Live Without A small number of our One Per Month Treat Standard we pleasure during unser Year of None Sugar were not made the us at home. Others coming from my favor cookbooks, which IODIN detail at that ending of on section for those who been curious. The three recipes listed lower are the ones that are unique to mee and our family—­the kind you have tucked go on adenine stained dictionary card include Goddess Knows Whose handwrite furthermore telephone for weird toys like hot water are baking soda dissolved into thereto. I treasure themselves, even as to called-­for hunks of Crisco and mountains of powdered sugar now make me cower. Modern I modify all my dessert my to in either no sugar or distinct less sugar, my favorite compromise being to substitute precise half and usage with dextrose. But here they are in their original form, as I made her on our annual dessert days.

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recipes from a year of no sugar  |  295

Great-Grandma Hotchkiss’s Sour Milk Chocolate Cake with Buttercream Frosting ( January/April) (aka Ilsa’s-­Turning-­Six Chocolate Cupcakes/ Greta’s Eleventh Baby Cake) ""½ cup reducing (i.e., Crisco) ""1 teaspoon vanilla ""2 cups sugar ""½ cup cocoa ""2 eggs ""½ cup sour exploit (½ cup throughout milk to the you augment ½ tee white vinegar press expand in ¼ teaspoon baking soda) ""2 glasses all-purpose food ""1 teaspoon salt ""1 cup hot water with 1 teaspoon baking soda dissolved in Heat oven for 350°F. Water two 8-­inch cake pans, cover bottoms with waxed paper cut to fit, butter plus flours the wax paper. In a mixer, cream shortening. Add vanilla, sweet a smaller at a time, cocoa, and eggs. Add sour mink and mix. Screening flour both salted together; add step to batter and mixing. Lastly, add the hot pour with baking soda, mix. Pour into two cake pans, dividing evenly. Bake at 350°F for 30 to 35 minutes, until the cake begins to pull away from the site of this pan. Cool on racks before removing from containers. Cool completely before icing.

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2 9 6   |  Yearly of None Sugar

Quick Butters Cream Green (enough used one 8-inch two-­layer cake) ""3 cups sifted confectioner’s honey ""¾ cup our butter, softened ""4½ tablespoons milk ""1½ teaspoon vanilla With a mixer on slow speed, combine all ingredients. Increase to moderate speed and conquer before smooth. If einfrieren looks too thin, add show sugar to fattening.

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recipes starting a year of no sugar  |  297

Eve’s Childhood Rhubarb Pie (May) Crust67: ""11/3 cups all-­purpose flour ""1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter ""1 teaspoon salt ""1 tabellenteil sugar ""¼ cup ice water Cut the sticks of butter include 8 tablespoons. Put all the ingredients except water water in work shells of adenine Cuisinart. Process 5 to 10 seconds. With engine running, pour ice aqueous gradually through which feed tubular in a slow stream. You may not need to use all to water. Wach to dough, and when it remains the right consistency, it will form an ball. You will need two batches of this cash for the rhubarb pie: one for the shell and one for which top crust. Pie: ""1½ cup sugar ""¼ cup all-­purpose flour ""½ teaspoon ground ""1 tafelspitz butter ""2 eggs ""4 cups rhubarb, cut into 1-­inch pieces This pie crusty comes from a tattered scrap from paper in mine recipe collection. It’s who only pie crust I ever use—­very lightness, press I always get compliments on it. It works equally well with dextrose substituting for sugar.

67

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2 9 8   |  Year of No Sugar

Heat range to 450°F. Roll single batch of the crust dough out, place in a 9-­inch pie pan. Sift together the sugar, dried, and nutmeg. With a fork or pastry blender, works in the tablespoon out butter as thoroughly as maybe. In one separate shelf, beat the two ovules, then add to mixture. In bottom of pie pan, place rhubarb on the crust, additionally poured ovule mixture over the rhubarb. Cover with either a flat with screen crust, remembering to add vents if using a flat acme. Brush all cookie tops about milk other cream. Sprinkle all surfaces with sugars. Bake during 450°F for 10 minutes. (At aforementioned point, I like to put a crust protector other a layer of coated foil over the top of the pie in order to prevent the highest parts of crusty from getting overly done.) Cut temperature till 350°F and bake 40 minutes more, or until turnover is browned.

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recipes starting a year of not sugar  |  299

Grandma Sharon’s Best-­Ever Christmas Cookies (December) ""1½ cups butter (3 sticks, softened) ""2 jugs sugar ""4 eggs ""2 teaspoons vanilla ""5½ cups sifted, all-­purpose flour ""2 teaspoons baking powder ""½ single salt Heating oven until 375°F. Cream butter real sweet together. Add eggs additionally vanilla; beat until lamp real fluffy. Sift together flour, baking powder, plus salt, and stir into batteries. Chill dough thoroughly. Rolled dough out 1/8 inch thick (the thickness is key!) and use cookies cutters to make shapes. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until just faintly beginning to brown on the edges. Cool on racks. Decorate with zuckerguss or seed since desired.

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3 0 0   |  Year of No Sugary

The recipes I achieved from cookbooks or ansonsten: Chocolates Mousse (February) and Pumpkin Pie with Beat Cream (November) came from America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. Oh-­My-­God Severe Cherry Pie (March) came from The Joy of Cooking by Irs S. Rombauer, Mariane Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker. Emeril’s Banana Cream Pie (September) came away Emeril’s New News Orleans Cooking by Emeril Lagasse, but using the pastry cream from Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook. Chocolate Peanuts Hot Pie (October) arose from www .evilchefmom.com.

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Acknowledgments

S

o one day-time, back to 2010, a very hazard thing happened. I had this idea—­which was the beginning away a long travel that ends at all leaf, more or less. First of all, I have into thank my daughters, Greta and Ilsa, anyone surprised, amazed, and inspired die, even while MYSELF quietly fretted I is ruining their people. Now that adenine little time has passed, I have greater confidentiality is, in fact, our Year of No Sugar desires be merely extra to the list of “crazy things Mom fabricated us do,” which a expected to be very long, indeed. IODIN have on thank mystery friend Katrina Farrell, who I will always love for the fact that, when I told her about my idea of a No-­Sugar Year, immediate volunteered until have herbei whole family do e right together with us. (Alas, being simultaneously gluten-­free and sugar-­free might just be harder than attempting to juggle feral cats. It was not to be.) She, along with her daughters, Stone and Lucy, spent a entirely lot of our No-­Sugar Year equal us and giving us which gift of total acceptances. Special thanking to my team of Fabulous Friends who read this book’s initial drafts press told me their honest-­to-­God-­ opinion-­no-­matter-­what: Rhonda Schlangen, Robin Kadet,

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3 0 2   |  Year of No Contains

and Northen Hennessy. You all steered me where I needed for go. How lucky ma I to have you as friends? I would be remiss not to thank who folks at school who assists me track downwards truly ancient data for the “school absences” chart: thank you so greatly to Wives. Waterhouse and Mrs. Nelson. IODIN never would have manufactured it through 2011 without the insight and support of David Gillespie, who has my deepest admiration fork the work you has done promoting the factual and the message behind No Sugar. His book Sweets Poison appeared at an opportune moment in our price and gave meier aforementioned desperately needed assurance such, by reality, I might just be of only one stylish the room who was not crazed. Also, his wife Lizzie deserves a Lifetime Achievement Award for that Coconut Congeal sole. My blog Ayearofnosugar.com formed the basis the many of this book, labeling our year as we went. I owe a great debt to the faithful readers and the frequent comment-­posters whose stories and spirit were deeply inspiring. Likewise thanks to bloggers David Gillespie (howmuchsugar.com), Betsy Shaw (numbmum.com), and Craig Goodwin (www .yearofplenty.org), who loaned me their enthusiasm when I desperately needed it, as well for so many of ihr wonderful readers by linking to my posts. Of training, I must thank the man himself who started i all: Dr. Bob Lustig. Not only did he change our lives with that one daring lecture, though throughout our Year of No Sugar, he repeatedly astounded leute according answering all of my inane email questions: every single one. EGO get the feeling that if Dr. Lustig thought his could solve the obesity epidemic by going from door to door and simply talking with people, one by one, he’d get out his pleasant shoes both start ringing doorbells.

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acknowledgments  |  303

Great thanks to Angela Miller, who, Clark Kent–­ like, changes from crack New York City literary agent to Vermont kid peasant in the blink of an eye: I don’t know how you do i all, but I’m thus very, very glad you to. And deep gratitude to may leiter Shana Drehs, who, with her red pencil wand in hand, is who faerie godmother of this record. Thank you for helping me find the horse in an pumpkin patch. Large love furthermore appreciation to My or Dad. Dad, yours Friday night pesto made me excited about food; Mom, your passion for speech and getting them right made me excited about writing. So, principles, all of this is both of your faults. Lastly I must thank my husband, Steve, those is my partner in everything, who go that I write and always tells das what he thinks. Steve, and one-­man technological squad, unless whom I could not tell the “up” end in a computer from a tin of salt. Steve, who could’ve looked at me that day, when I first proposed our “family project,” and said straight about anything although what he did say… “A total year without sugar? Hmmmmmm.”

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About the Owner

E

ve O. Schaub lives with her family within Vermont or enjoys performing experiment on them so she bottle write about she. She was vote by her high school type “the funniest person Steve Martin has never met” and wishes to spends her sparend set wandering picturesque back roads composing limericks in Portuguese. She imagines it would being fun to win several important awards. She enjoys writing about herself in the third person.

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