Sugar: Sweet or Bitter?

I'm Krystal.

I'm new here.

I'm from Canada.

I have a husband and two kids.

I try to feed healthy food to my family.

That's my bio.

Eating healthy food is a constant education. It can be a chore. It can be fun. In most cases, the problem with healthy eating is that everything that is inexpensive is full of chemicals and processed so much that it no longer has any of its original nutritional value.

As my husband has embarked upon the process of "losing the love handles", we were constantly surprised that no matter how healthy we seemed to eat, he just could not move past that elusive weight plateau. Those love handles were holding on, at all costs.

Now, we had already been aware of such evils as monosodium glutamate (MSG), aspartame, sucralose, and soy protein isolate, just to name a few, and we had mostly eliminated those things from our diet. Of course it came as no surprise to me to find, in my research, yet another "drug" in our food that is keeping us fat and sick: fructose.

In North America, there has been a heavy taxing of sugar. This has caused an unnatural inflation in the cost of sugar and for food manufacturers, became a problem when trying to put out products that people could afford. So alternative methods of sweeteners were sought. High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) was born. In Canada, this is labeled on food products as "glucose/fructose", and since glucose is actually very healthy for you, as it can be metabolized by every cell in your body, the title on the food labels is sort of misleading. Because of the low cost of sweetening foods with HFCS, it can be found in almost everything, and you'd be surprised at where you can find it in your supermarket: bread, ketchup, bbq sauce, pop, frozen juices, and the list goes on.

The problem with high amount of fructose is that our bodies do not know how to metabolize it. Thirty percent of all fructose you eat will be automatically turned into celluloid fat, a fat that your body will almost never be able to wear off. The reason for this? Our bodies are not designed to eat high amounts of fructose. Whenever you see fructose in nature, it is always packaged in such a way that makes it digestible, with high amounts of fibre. 

So what am I trying to say to you?

Switch to a low-fructose diet. Simple.

Read your food labels and be aware of the things you are putting into your body. You may not look at it this way, but food is actually a drug, with the power for good or evil in your body. When you put good food in, your body will thank you.

Getting rid of HFCS has been a challenge for us because so many of my awesome recipes require something that is made with it. We are in the process of purging our cupboards to get rid of all HFCS, will you do it too?

Here are a couple of resources which we found helpful. The video is quite scientific, but certainly understandable... take some time and listen. If you'd rather read? Try this book: The Sugar Fix. The book also had recipes and suggestions to rid your diet of high amount of fructose. A valuable tool.

Good luck!!
Krystal out.