Day 14: Salt, Sugar, Fat I
Friday, September 20, 2013
10:30 am
I’ve reached an inflection point, consuming the AHA recommended 9 tsp. of sugar a day. Started book report on “Salt, Sugar and Fat” by Michael Moss.
Video Summary:
The drink now has 8 1/2 tsp or 34 grams of sugar. So I am drinking roughly the American Heart Association’s recommended amount of added sugar (9 tsp). So I’m two weeks into the program, and am now consuming the amount of sugar recommended by the AHA. Remember that the average American ingests 22 tsp of sugar a day. So in the last two weeks I’ve still been drinking more sugar than is recommended, but I’ve felt good, and the program has been very easy so far and much easier than the caffeine withdrawal program I did in the spring.
I feel good, have been sleeping well, and am in a good frame of mind, and I’ve still been getting more sugar than is recommended. We’ll have to see how the second half goes, since I will be dipping below the 9 tsp. AHA-recommended amount of sugar. Also, I am probably getting extra added sugars in my day-to-day diet that I’m not aware of. I’ve just been avoiding obvious sweets like cookies, cakes, candies, sodas and the like.
I read the first section of “Salt, Sugar, and Fat”. The first section was about sugar. It’s sort of like an expose of the food conglomerates and how they are creating a lot of processed foods containing salt, sugar and fat to lure us into buying and eating them. The book starts off revealing a secret meeting that the food conglomerates had in 1999 in which they discussed that there was a rising threat of diabetes, obesity and poor health, and that the food companies should get together and address this issue or they will all be blamed for it later.
One of the heads of one of the food conglomerates (I think General Mills) stood up and announced that they were business people who had spent a lot of years developing these products and would pretty much continue to do so.
The book then goes on to talk about the three foods: salt, sugar, and fat. The first section is about sugar. Three things jumped out at me:
First, they talk about how cereals started out 100 years ago as a healthy alternative to a fat-laden breakfast of bacon, sausage, etc. Most of the original cereal makers were very much against sugar. In the past century, however, things have morphed to such an extent that most cereal are now loaded with sugar.
Second, they talk about how there is a .999 correlation between the amount of soft drinks we are consuming and the rise of obesity and diabetes in America. So this issue is where I think the biggest bang for the buck is, and is what this series is about.
Third, they talk about how there is this marketing ploy of advertising fresh 100% juice products that are basically nothing but sugar water after all the processing. So drinking juice is not really any better than drinking soda.
Even though this series is not about salt and fat, I will read these sections also, and report briefly on them.
Things are going well. I have a lot of energy and have had no problems with this program at all.