Day 23

There Will Be Blood Orange

Sugar was once so rare and precious that at parties in the 18th century, people would occasionally carry sugar in small containers and when the need arose they would have a ‘pinch’ of sugar. If that is the hardest drug my child does at a party 18 years from now, I will be a delighted father.

Tonight is going to have to be brief, I am absolutely exhausted. It has been an enormous week and I have just worked out that I have eaten 880 teaspoons of sugar in the last 3 weeks. That’s enough to make a muffin the size of a Cirque De Soliel tent. That actually makes me feel a bit sick. (They might actually bake it though, and have some kind of ludicrously flexible acrobat land in it).

Its fair to say that I felt a smidge fed up today. I moped around a bit, bug eyed and needing a few solid hugs. Cue beautiful lady and her telescopic arms. It has been so amazing to have someone remind me that it isn’t me, its the sugar. Someone who is still eating like a radiant human, that is able to reminisce about that guy she knew 3 weeks ago. I then get vague flickers of him and suddenly remember that he was quite a jolly chap, a little silly and loved a good laugh. Please send him my regards. She really is being incredible through this whole process and I would have descended into some pretty dark territory if it wasn’t for her.

Speaking of dark territory, how about starting the day with some pancakes? Yep, I made some gluten free, kind of cardboard tasting flapjacks and put some good ole maple syrup on them at 8am. I chased them down with a bottle of Charlie’s berry whole fruits juice and staggered from the table 15 teaspoons the sillier.

I then had a terrific skype interview with a professor from a University in Vermont about a study she did on teenagers and soft drink consumption. They were quite shocked to find that those that drank 5 cans or more a week were considerably more inclined toward violent or aggressive behavior. They also studied a group of 5 year olds and found that the ones drinking sweetened beverages showed more tendency to aggression. I can totally relate, you should have seen the death stare I gave a fellow road user this morning. The inside lane on the freeway is for the fast guys pal. Or guys jacked up on pancakes.

Mid morning fix was a muesli bar and a ‘Nature Valley Sweet and Nutty’ bar. What a great title the latter is, it almost perfectly describes me on sugar. They were 4 teaspoons combined.

Lunch was a BLT wrap which was delicious (1 teaspoons for the lathering of low fat mayonnaise) and a small 250ml fruit box drink (6 teaspoons).

I then moved into a fantastic afternoon experiment. A tiny nugget of wisdom and understanding somehow popped through the candy fog and I managed to capture it on camera. I took 4 shiny looking red apples and contemplated eating them. There was no way I could have got through even 2 of them. I then pulled out the juicer and fed those succulent, thin skinned fruits into the whirring metallic jaws of all that embodies man’s destruction and convenience. “Thats it” I thought. We have developed such ravenous cravings for the sweet hit that we have built a machine that we keep in our kitchens that utterly rapes the fruit of its precious fibre and nutrients to get at that sweet sweet nectar. Juicers aren’t found in the Sarengeti or in the heart of the Amazon, Mother Nature gave us fruits in a perfect package with fibre that tells us when we are full and the perfect amount of sugar. Our thirst for excess continues to be our ruin.

Those 4 handsome apples I had held in my hand were now in millions of pieces, flesh stuck to the machine, obliterated. All that remained was a full glass of its sweet apple blood. And in that glass were 14 teaspoons of sugar. And we recommend that to our kids. We push it as a healthy option. Its a madhouse of indulgence!

If I do find in my travels that fructose is having the effects on our liver and other internal organs that I suspect it might be, then it is all starting to make sense. We need to seriously educate the next generation and it needs to start pronto. I did the maths and in the time that it has taken me to write this blog entry, 10 Australians were diagnosed with diabetes. That just ain’t right.

Dinner was a medium bowl of pasta with pesto and cheese.

Day 22 down and 880 teaspoons.  Bloody Hell.

1. Tomorrow we are heading to an Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory to look at the effects of sugar on the indigenous. I may well be out of internet range for a few days. I will continue to write the blog and will post all the days on the day I get back. Sadly, I think it will be very easy to maintain my 40 teaspoons a day up there. It will be hard for me to not have a soft drink by the look of the research I have done.

Have a great few days.