I watch the Daily Show pretty religiously, but Brian and I DVR it and then catch up when we have free time at night. Since we've started working out together at night, we don't have a lot of free time. I did, however, catch a recent episode that featured Michael Moss. Moss is an author of the book, Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us.
I have been pretty public about my ongoing struggle with my weight. I started overeating as a kid. I have belonged to groups for people trying to recover from food obsessions. I know that talking about food addiction is not a popular thing, but I have posited for years that it has been exactly that for me.
I am especially vulnerable to sugar. It is tough for me, once I have even one bite of something sweet, to stop eating it. I remember sneaking Zingers, a Dolly Madison treat, when I was a kid. My mom used them as treats in her classroom and we weren't supposed to eat them. The allure of chocolate and cream was too much and I took to sneaking one at a time. One day in particular, I took two of them. I started eating them and then realized my mom was home. In order to escape detection, I stuffed them both in my mouth and promptly started choking.
My mom found me eating them and had to administer the Heimlich. Years later, having struggled with addictions that are more commonly recognized, I can tell you the behavior was the same. I was being secretive because I knew I was doing wrong. I was more interested in engaging in the dangerous behavior than in setting it aside for a time when I could do it undetected.
In college, I would go to Jewel, buy the value packs of chocolate chip cookies and eat it by myself in an entire setting. I would swear to myself, as I lay in bed feeling bloated and hungover from the sugar, that tomorrow would be different. I would eat nothing but salad, I would walk nonstop for three hours, I would never look at a cookie again.
Tomorrow would come and my brain would scream for only one thing; more cookies. No matter how hard I tried, the allure, the taste, the smell of sugary treats would get me every time.
I know that most people see weight loss as a matter of having willpower. The problem is that with most addictions, the prescription is to be abstinent. You cannot abstain from food all together. Food must be consumed in order to sustain life.
The book is a searing expose on the food companies attempt to get the most possible dollars from consumers. The science is actually the most interesting part of the book. Food companies spend a lot of time and money trying to figure out how consumer's brains work. The findings are quite grotesque. Sugar mimics the effect of cocaine; fat the effect of opiates.
Upon reading it, there was some sense of relief for me. I am not crazy, after all. Yes, I have to accept responsibility for making healthy choices. At the same time, I have the deck decidedly stacked against me. Sugar is in almost every food I see in the supermarket. I can't avoid all sugar, although I am finding out ways of being smart about it.
I know, after years of being a responsible consumer, that fat-free and light are not really healthier choices. I know, based on watching different documentaries, that food companies shuffle sugar, salt and fat around in food items to eliminate whatever the "bad" item of the day is.
To illustrate my point, while at the grocery store today, I checked out the ranch dressing. I compared the full-fat version to the fat-free dressing (which tastes like shit). The fat-free version had more sodium and more sugar than the full-fat version. You are doing away with "bad" fat, but you are then adding more other bad things (sugar and sodium) in.
Bread and spaghetti sauce are big sugar offenders. Out of curiosity, I picked a random spaghetti sauce jar and peeked at the label-there were 10 grams of sugar for one serving of sauce. To put it in perspective, on average there are 2.7 grams of sugar in a serving of peanut butter.
Several years ago, I tried to cut out refined sugar. It is a lofty goal but I found in practice it was nearly impossible. There is sugar in nearly every consumable item in the grocery store. This book has affirmed that for me. Sugar is cheap, easy to obtain, adds bulk to food, makes baked goods fluffier, makes food more shelf-stable, the list goes on and on. For food companies, sugar is indispensable. It is ubiquitous. The alternative is not sugar-free, either. There are so many chemicals necessary to mimic sugar that the food tastes awful and has a little-known side effect--diarrhea.
I am also learning that I'm fighting an uphill battle with my kids and their sugar intake. Kids have a preference for sugar--we all do (we have it at birth). The difference is that kids want things that are, on average, twice as sweet as the things we want. I am grateful that my kids don't eat breakfast cereal because it's the number one offender when it comes to sugar load.
This all makes me grateful that I made the commitment to make my family's bread products from scratch at home and use freshly-ground flour. It doesn't eliminate sugar (especially if I'm making baked goods), but it does add in nutrients that are missing from any commercially produced bread products. I use honey to make my bread. It's still sweet but not nearly as sweet as white sugar. It is also broken down differently in the body than white sugar and has other wonderful properties.
I work hard to limit my kids consumption of juice, junk food (even things like fruit snacks with are not made with anything resembling fruit), chips, sweets, etc. Their special treat when we go shopping is a donut. They have come to understand (because I have drilled it home) that donuts are a sometimes food. I have tried to instill the mantra "we need to eat a wide variety of (lightly processed) foods." It was a line I read in a marathon training book penned by Hal Higdon years ago. But it remains true, especially when I'm not training for a marathon.
I am grateful for my kids taste preferences, honestly. They do a better than fair job of eating fruits and veggies (except for Doug, who is averse to anything green and leafy). They eschew sweetened juice drinks for watered down apple juice. They understand that we cannot eat an entire chocolate cake in one day, that mommy only bakes once in a great while, that we have to eat healthy food before we have a treat.
It's refreshing to know that the battle I'm fighting with them, about eating healthy, about saying no to sweets, is hardwired and is being exploited. That relieves me, to some extent, of the worry that I've ruined them because of my bad habits. It also helps assuage my own guilt when I overdo my sugar consumption. I am responsible but the food companies make it nearly impossible not to overdo it.
I am very open with them about my own struggles. I exercise daily and I do so to get healthy. I don't use words like fat, or obese, or ugly or anything like that. I draw attention to the fact that mommy is trying to get healthy, that I'm exercising so my heart is healthy.
I'm still fighting, though, against the sugar. It's a tough fight, one I have to engage on a daily basis. I crave it every day. I stay away from grocery stores and convenience stores, so that the beautiful packaging, the smell, the allure doesn't drive me nuts. I drink plenty of water, I eat a diet that is high in fiber (so I don't feel hungry and therefore more susceptible). It's a fight I've fought before, with modest success.
It's a tougher fight, though, because sugar is so insidious. The enemies I've fought previous were harder to obtain and not mainstream. I get tired in this fight, more so than in the other. This fight is lonelier in some aspects because support groups are few and far between.
Luckily, I have social media on my side. There are a lot of things about social media which aren't great, but this time around, I have found people who root for me when I'm having successes, cheer me on when my spirits are flagging, give me advice and helpful tips and above all partner with me in prayer for strength and courage.
I harness all of that, along with God's power, to give me some serenity. It's a day-to-day fight, but it's one I'm committed to continuing to fight.
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