What Can I Say?

If you came here looking for a sugar fix, you're in the wrong place.

If, however, you're  here to fix your sugar, then this is the place to be.

Much as I quit a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit cold turkey 30 years ago, so I quit a 75-teaspoons-of-sugar-a-day habit cold turkey about six weeks ago.

How's it going?

Well, let me not hold you in suspense.

I'll tell you later.

So Much: Explained

Honestly, I just don't know what took me so long. How could I have not known? I'm a smart fellow; at least I like to think so, although no doubt many would quibble.

But how could I honestly have gorged on so much sugar all my life and not known that it was completely unnatural, that human beings were just not designed to ingest so much of this potent chemical? I mean, would I feed my cat chocolate, put sugar in his milk, force-feed him gummy bears? Of course not! Most people would blanch at the thought—it would be animal cruelty!

So why was I so ready to do it to myself?

It's plainly something I had no control over. The mere fact that it's behaviour that is not only completely legal, but actually encouraged, is a quick explanation as to how this parlous state of affairs could have come to pass.

Again, I hate the idea that I'm coming across as some sort of "born-again" do-gooder who has miraculously "seen the light"—I hate that idea—but nevertheless, I feel the need to just slap up people I know, and point out to them this incredible truth which has never hidden itself. It was there all along—I just chose not to see it.

Think about it. Think how unnatural it is to even ingest one teaspoon of sugar per day. Just two thousand years ago, the chance than any human being alive at the time—anywhere on earth—had access to, let alone the privilege of eating any sugar at all, be it in a fruit, or an incredible cache of natural honey, was vanishingly small.

It must have been so rare to be able to eat sugar back then that one might have gone through decades without it. Yet that was the natural state of being.

Mind you, people were dying of rickets and other vitamin deficiencies like flies, so I'm definitely not advocating the Middle Ages Diet, but you see where I'm going here. Sugar ingestion is just not a natural state for human beings; we just weren't designed to ingest so much sugar.

If you think of sugar as being just another abundant chemical, which today it is, and then imagine ingesting forty teaspoons of salt per day, you can see how quickly you would be poisoned to death. Yet that is the amount of sugar that many, many human beings happily put away per day.

It's not hard at all. Two Cokes, two glasses of orange juice and a hearty pasta dinner and it's all over. Forty teaspoons of sugar.

Can you imagine drinking four cups of soy sauce per day?

I rest my case.

It is plain that sugar is a powerful, mind-altering chemical. Over time, the ingestion of sugar at the pace I was ingesting it would have stripped twenty layers of paint off a Soviet-era apartment block. I distinctly recall a hilarious experiment we children used to do: when we lost a tooth naturally, we would put it in a glass of Coke overnight to see how brown it would get. I kid you not—even at that age we understood the corrosive nature of sugar.

The world is slowly—very slowly—waking up to the corrosive nature this plague is having on it. Forget climate change. We're all going to go via diabetes-related illnesses.

Already, my old sugar ways are carving deep inroads in my lifestyle. While I'm a comparatively svelte 155 lbs. at age 57, looks are deceiving. Inside, my lifelong sugar bingeing has wrought incredible havoc.

Both my feet are completely numb due to diabetic neuropathy. On the walks I belatedly conduct as many times as I can, they feel like two bricks at the end of my legs.

This condition is irreversible. I will never feel my feet again. The doctors just shrug. They've seen this too many times before. This is normal to them.

It's definitely not normal to me.

Is it too late?

I don't know. I have cut my sugar consumption to a personal low. No more pasta, my favourite food, next to rice. Next to potatoes. Next to chocolate. All gone. All of it deleted, do not pass go, most certainly, go to jail.

The next teaspoon of sugar I ingest could just be my last; I just can't risk it any more.

It may be too late for people like me, who bought the massive food industry lies—abetted by our own government's so-called "dietary guidelines" of  the "low fat" way to health, while shamelessly encouraging the consumption of "healthy" carbohydrates, but maybe it's not too late for you.

I think a good measure of "how much is too much" would be: would I feed this to my cat? If the answer is no, then I don't think it's a good idea for you to be feeding it to yourself.

On Portion Recommendations for Diabetics

Since I'm quite obviously a Type-2 diabetic, I have to watch them carbohydrates. And I try. I haven't had any form of pasta, no potatoes, very little rice (a couple of days) and no bread, in about three months. That is a long time to be missing all my favourite food groups, but it's got to be done.

And it's great to to have the Web for all this great info on what to eat and what not to eat.

But some things are just absurd. Get this, from the San Francisco Examiner:

"As a member of the grains food group, pasta contains a significant amount of starch, a complex form of carbohydrate. One diabetic serving of pasta is 1/3 cup of cooked pasta, or the equivalent of 15 grams of carbohydrate. One serving of pasta also contains fiber, another complex carbohydrate which helps to control blood sugar. Whole-wheat pasta contains the most fiber: roughly 3 to 5 grams of fiber per serving."

Did you get that? 1/3 cup of cooked pasta. Imagine a cup. It's about as big as your fist—smaller if you're not a man. Now imagine a third of that. That's about an area the size of one quarter of one of those ramen bricks you use to make your instant ramen. About FOUR TABLESPOONS. Are they out of their fucking minds? WHY THE FUCK BOTHER?

That's like saying, eat as many green peas as you like, but try to limit it to about 35, or you can have mashed potatoes, but only three tablespoons.

Coke Sweat

I don't want this blog to turn into an anti-Coke screed, but hey, they're sure not helping their cause.

This is remarkably similar to the tobacco companies' dilemma a while back because really, what do you do to defend a product that essentially has not one redeeming quality?

Desperately trying to inject some fun into what is turning out to be a joyless narrative, Coke is standing itself up to be a target for parodies, mockery and abuse, and it deserves every single iota of it.

For decades now, Coca-Cola (I remind you, it has a hyphen!) and whatever its parent company is (someone should have mentioned the possibility of abortion, in the case of baby Coke) has slammed the public with relentless campaigns of meaningless, drivel-filled slogans (I Feel Coke?) and targeted-to-children strategies, all to peddle a heavily sugared medication—because that's what it is, an addictive drug that, I repeat, has not one redeeming quality.

So as long as Coke keeps shooting itself in the foot, I'll keep mentioning it here.

It is really, really hard to feel sorry for Coke and its beleaguered executives, knowing they will ultimately ride off into the sunset of retirement with multi-million-dollar severance packages, come what may.

A Day in the Life (Death?)

I've figured out just what my sugar intake was on a very typical day in around 2012.

Please note that I am not exaggerating in any way. This is only typical, and probably actually is a minimization of my intake—I distinctly recall days when I positively binged, possibly ingesting more than half again this quantity, having given up alcohol, and believing I was entitled.

Wherever possible, these are images of the actual brands of the stuff I was ingesting. Each is followed by my estimates of how many teaspoons of pure white sugar they amounted to.

5 Casal Domingo .05% wine coolers at 25g of sugar each: Total: 20 tsp. white sugar

1 packet gummy treats, about 40g sugar:  Total: 10 tsp. white sugar

8 Leclerc Chocolate Raspberry Truffle cookies : Total: 28 tsp. white sugar (not counting carbs)

1 plate Spaghetti Bolognese (2 cups at 45g carbs/cup) :  Total: 22 tsp. white sugar

1 large slice Black Forest cake :  Total: 7 tsp. white sugar

GRAND TOTAL, ONE DAY: 87 tsp. white sugar

That looks like this, give or take a couple of cubes (I cobbled it together in Photoshop, but you get the picture):

That is one day.

Imagine what that was doing to my body.

If you even approach HALF this daily, you're in BIG TROUBLE, especially if you've been consuming sugar like this for decades, like I had.

What do you do to remedy this?

Slash all sugars and carbohydrates IMMEDIATELY.

Three months ago, I did, and now I estimate my daily sugar consumption looks like this:

Still too much, but better than the preceding.

It's never too late.

Hilarious Nostalgia

Can you imagine your world without sugar?

Cahsssssst your mind baaaaackkkk . . . to 1974 . . . .

Read the words:

ONE.
POINT.
SEVEN.
MILLION.
TONS

If it was that in 1974, imagine what it must be now.

Here's a fun infographic. Donald Trump must be pleased about the Mexican part (the United States is FOURTH, Canada is SEVENTH):

Health Myths and Sugar

Fresh orange juice is much healthier for you

Honey is much better than sugar because it's natural

Skim milk is better for you than whole milk

If you have to eat yogurt choose low fat

Why Coke is Panicking

Coca-Cola (yes, it's officially hyphenated) is all a-flutter because scientists are on a rampage to expose them.

I think this is hilarious! It's very reminiscent of the tobacco industry in the 80s and 90s.

I don't hear Philip Morris assuring us any more that tobacco products are not bad for you. Do you?

How long before Coke cracks?

Seriously, Though

Tell me you're joking, Coke. You have a new soft drink out called "Coca-Cola LIFE?"

Okay. well, I suppose Coca-Cola Death wouldn't have fit as well on the label. And how do you justify this new abomination on the landscape of abominably bad-for-you soft drinks?

 “For consumers looking for a reduced-calorie soft drink sweetened with cane sugar and stevia leaf extract, this is a great-tasting option.”

No shit! I just happened to be looking around for a reduced-calorie soft drink sweetened with cane sugar and stevia leaf extract! As if cane sugar was any different than regular sugar! And the stevia extract occupies .01% of the entire drink, with the rest all sugar!

And I'm sure it's great tasting. I'm calling my dentist now to tell him all about it.

Hey, Coke! Because, Well. Coke!

Hey Coke! Are you trolling the Internet looking for negative blog posts about your products? Well, you've DEFINITELY come to the right place.

I can, however, be persuaded to change my tune . . . a few well-placed "advertising dollars," and I will trumpet the effects Coca Cola has on a healthy lifestyle!

What are those effects?

Um, well, sugar is good in moderation! But perhaps not in 8 teaspoonfuls of sugar in a cup. Seriously, would you sweeten your coffee with eight teaspoons of sugar? You would?

Okay. I guess I won't be shilling for you after all.

The Endless Experiment

I'm having a mini-psychotic break. Eating at least a cup of Israeli ice-cream after a nice burger dinner.

Let's see what it does to the blood sugar!

Like It Is

How Much Sugar Are We Talking?

How much is too much?

How many rhetorical questions break the PatienceSphere?

I figure, with all the data now available to me, that more than one teaspoon of sugar a day is too much.

Too much for whom?

Again with the questions.

Too much for any living organism save, perhaps, bees, who don't consume what they carry, anyway.

I read somewhere that in early 17th-century England, the amount of sugar that was available on the whole island amounted to perhaps a three-pound bag. Sugar was more valuable than powdered diamonds.

Okay, you say: so was pepper. And you'd be right. But my point is, that up until the 18th or 19th centuries, the only sugar anyone ever got was sucked from the pistil of tiny wildflowers, snatched from beehives, or eaten in fruits.

There just was no other source of sugar.

This is an astounding thought, in light of what is available to us in the 21st century.

And now, you can consume what a denizen of 1650 consumed in a lifetime in one can of Coke. Strike that; in one can of Coke (about nine teaspoons of sugar) there is more sugar than anyone of the year 1650 could ever consume in their lifetimes. (I'm assuming that the average inhabitant of 1650 did NOT have access to a daily supply of fresh fruits).

At the risk of repeating received wisdom, because sugar is now the illness du jour, no one has a clue what the effect so much sugar consumption has on the human body. Any more than if suddenly, for whatever reason, gold powder became very cheap, and became the new major ingredient in all our foodstuffs.

Sure, gold is a mineral, and no one would seriously consider putting two teaspoons of it in their daily cup of coffee, but you see my point. If gold suddenly became as cheap as sugar, who knows what bizarre uses it would be put to?

So basically, the Human Being, starting from when—let's say 1945—is one huge guinea pig for the Great Sugar Experiment. Because, well, pre-1945, rationing. Blah blah blah.

So really, we have no idea what a lifetime of sugar consumption—and I'm not just talking a teaspoon here and there, but rather a pound of a mound here and there—will have on a living mammal.

Would you feed your dog 33 teaspoons of sugar per day? Why the fuck not? The most sugar consumed per capita on the planet is . . . Macedonia? But that is 160 pounds of sugar per year! That is TWELVE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY TEASPOONS OF SUGAR. That is THIRTY-THREE TEASPOONS OF SUGAR A DAY.

So let's get realistic. How much sugar are YOU consuming per day? Well, let's look at a typical food label. On a can of Coke, you'll see something like "Sucrose" or "Sucralose" or "High fructose corn syrup" or whatever: 39g.

How many teaspoons of actual sugar in 39g or these mystery sweeteners? About one teaspoon per four grams. So in one can of 39g Coke, there are about nine and a third teaspoons of sugar.

NINE AND A THIRD. How many, if any, do you put into your cup of coffee? Would you consider putting NINE AND A THIRD TEASPOONS OF SUGAR into your cup of coffee?

Thought not. But every time you have a soft drink—not just Coke, but MOST soft drinks—that is precisely what you're doing.

If you put 9.3 teaspoons of ANYTHING into your body at one time, it's pretty fair to say that you'd get sick quickly. Salt? Pepper? Parmesan cheese? Tabasco?

I rest my case. WHY would you put 9.3 teaspoons of, say, vanilla extract, onto your dessert? You'd be certifiable.

Yet every time you have a Coke, that is exactly what you do, with sugar.

Obviously, since you're just about to go to the fridge for a drink, I haven't gotten through that fucking thick skull of yours.

But I will. I will make you NEVER WANT TO SEE A SUGAR CUBE AGAIN IN YOUR FUCKING LIFE.

That is the purpose of this blog.

Nice to see you, too.