Day 17

The Gremlin Slayer

I read an interesting study today from the University of Vermont. High school children that had 5 or more soft drinks per week showed much higher levels of violent behaviour than those that didn’t consume the drinks. Despite my hoovering of sweetened teas and juices, I can assure everyone that my lady is safe.

I started the day with a lazy saturday morning scrambled egg, avocado and mushroom combo. Its delicate flavours were sadly hijacked by a 500ml glass of Langers Cranberry Juice with its 60 grams of sugar or 15 eye bulging teaspoons. As I sipped I had flashbacks of being a toddler and mum feeding me litres of Blackcurrant Ribena all those years ago (as the kind doctors told her and countless others to do). My teeth temporarily recoiled into my gum at the memory.

After breakfast we hit the local Westfield ‘deathstar’ shopping complex, which in hindsight was a stupid thing to do on a saturday but it did allow me to join the ‘cake and coffee’ club. I sat there with some lovely people and treated myself to a decaf latte with 1 and an almond croissant (3 teaspoons). As I watched an array of brightly coloured cakes and crumbling muffins disappearing into beckoning mouths, it struck me what a culture of convenience we have become. We tire ourselves with all our business and consuming and so stop in for a sugar hit to ‘refuel’. Its all adrenalized lifestyle and its little wonder we are burning out at such a young age and now find the majority of the population over 55 on some form of medication. Life is now about a quick fix, a decision made in an instant, a hasty ‘like’ on a friend’s photo. Sugar is the perfect companion for this addiction to ‘rapidity’.

And so there I was sitting at the sugar fuelling station in the middle of consumer paradise, surrounded by beautiful human beings unaware of the consequences of their eating and thus the reliance on medication. Something has to give.

After lasting a confronting 6 minutes in Babies R Us, we headed home and I felt an enormous crash. I was hungry and so pretty much inhaled a fruit fix bar (4 teaspoons), a Nature Valley Nutty Bar (2 teaspoons) and a Yakult drinking yoghurt with its slightly less than 3 teaspoons. Interestingly the hunger rumbles continued. I have arranged some interviews with some scientists who have studied the effects of fructose and sugar on suppressing a hormone called ghrelin (which is what causes the rumble). I prefer to call it Gremlin, as the image of a small gnarled monster pleading to eat, suits me better.

The “Gremlin slayer’ came in a few slices of an organic, gluten free Margarita and Vegetable pizza from the local shop. Truly delicious. And the Organic Phoenix Lemon Lime and Bitter bottle I washed it down with also helped the sugar tally with its 8 teaspoons (It did say it used organic cane sugar however. Hmm).

I then went to the movies and while I lapsed into a sci -fi coma, a bottle of trusty Vitamin water and its 5 sugared spoons kept me company. I will say that everyone else there was eating ice creams and chocolates. I am determined to get through this whole process without one soft drink, one scoop of ice cream or one chocolate bar. I will then get a true understanding of the impact that the foods that come in colourful packets are having on us. Nature has done so many things right for a lot longer than we have even existed. ‘Nature Valley’ on a green packet is not nature people and it never will be.

17 days (flown by) and 40 teaspoons down.