Day 50

Sweet suppression

“Sugar releases beta endorphins in the brain. These are the same endorphins that love releases. We live in a world where people need love, especially for self. Sugar provides this feeling but it is short lived and no replacement for the real thing. I help people not by telling them to quit, but by getting them to seek ‘sweetness’ in other areas of their life and to eat wholesome fresh foods and vegetables. When this is done properly, their need for sugar just falls away. ‘Quitting’ is from a place of fear and loss but you aren’t losing anything, you’re not sacrificing a thing by removing sugar, you are gaining a new way of life and seeing the world, and that should be looked forward to.”  Kathleen DesMaison.

Kathleen had some great advice for me about my upcoming detox. She told me that too many people think they just have to go cold turkey straight away but this elicits feelings of loss and grief for many people because of those love endorphins (its like losing a lover). Her advice for me was to make sure I went easy on myself and to make sure I ate sweet potatoes and even a piece of fruit a day for the first week,  just to ease back into my previous way of eating. She was a lovely lady with a heart the size of Texas, but wasn’t from there. She has been helping people remove sugar from the diets for 20 years.

Three meetings today in a packed day of contrasting discussions about sugar and love and then sugar and politics. I felt much more at home in the former. That said, the politics angle was quite incredible but my sugar whacked brain is pretty much at the end of its absorption abilities and there were some heavy duty topics flying around. Discussing the history of company and Sugar Association intervention into science and health guidelines is completely necessary and fascinating but I certainly needed to keep topping up the glucose supply for the frontal lobe. The old girl has done so well but I am starting to notice an odd glitch or two.

It is amazing to hear about sugar being a huge issue of public concern even in the 1920s before being suppressed, it then popped up even stronger as an issue of public health in the mid 70s but again the industry rallied, crafted and paid for their rebuttals. A lovely woman I talked to today actually found some documents from a closed sugar company that contained memos and ‘confidential’ documents stating that ‘no definitive evidence against sugar must ever be found.’ The tactic was to constantly muddy the waters by funding certain studies and keeping the knowledge ambiguous. The tactics worked in the 70s and sadly continue to work today. While there is no definitive evidence, the sugar will just keep on a coming. Another man I met with today said that any definitive study is almost impossible today due to the cost, the length it would take and most disturbing of all, how hard it would be to find enough people without sugar in their diets to start with. A scientist I spoke to yesterday told me of a study abandoned recently as they couldn’t find enough people in their area who drank less than one sweetened beverage per day. Madness.

Breakfast was apple granola cereal and low fat yoghurt dessert (12)

Mid morning, one Tropical Mango juice with High Fructose Corn Syrup (10)

a large handful of trail mix (7)

Eggs with cheese and ham and some coconut water with lime for lunch (5)

Another handful of trail mix (6)

Dinner was a chicken wrap with some fries

I feel like I have a wonderful array of information for the film.  So many different and interesting angles to explore and shape. It is going to be an enormous piece to put together but I am confident it will bring a lot of things out into the open for discussion and debate. I am exhausted and am now seriously focusing on life post sugar binge. 10 days to go, unbelievable. I am looking forward to getting all my test results back and seeing just what this white gear has done to my once svelte body.

50 down and only 400 teaspoons to go. Bloody hell that still sounds a lot.