week 3 fructose-free

We are still on the bandwagon possibly more committed than ever. I've finally read the Sweet Poison Quit Plan by David Gillespie and found it thoroughly inspiring. He's a bit sarcastic in tone for me and despite my scientific training I kind of skipped over all the medical stuff. I'm a bit ambivalent about it: he's not medically trained himself and I'm happy to just try it out and see if it's good for us. Although if even half of what he says about fructose is true, it's pretty frightening stuff. Besides the putting on weight issue there are purported links to diabetes (my concern - got to love your genes), dementia, heart disease, stroke, cancer, PCOS, depression and anxiety.

He also has great advice about how to break the addiction. There's the obvious stuff of clearing out your cupboards (anything > 4g of sugar per 100g has got to go). Then there's working out when you're most tempted to indulge in fructose and having a plan of what you're going to substitute instead so that you don't feel deprived. Like the way I have a handful of cashews with my morning coffee... But I found it helped my mindset that we just don't eat the stuff anymore. If you're eating it sometimes you're constantly weighing up 'can I eat this or not'? I love just not having to make the decision, it's just automatically out.

I also LOVED his chapter on how to help your kids in the process. Insightful and wise.

The thing I'm trying to weigh up is whether to eat the sweet substitutes or not. I'm pretty much against the 'artificial' sweeteners. Not loving the metallic aftertaste anymore. I'm just trying to decide whether to go down the road of making your own cakes, biscuits, custard and ice cream using glucose (sold as dextrose in the home brew aisle). I guess it's good for celebrations and helping your kids not to feel left out but I've actually enjoyed not eating that stuff for the last 3 weeks and don't want to get back in the habit. Maybe we can make it less frequent - and I guess if I have to make it all myself (it's not commercially available) we won't be having it as frequently anyway ;-)

We're also giving 100% chocolate a go. Koko Black has a 100% Dominican chocolate bar (around $7.50 for 40g). And Lindt has a 99% excellence bar ($5.10 for 50g). It is a bit like eating cocoa powder but at least you don't demolish the whole block in a sitting. I'll get back to you on which one we prefer. We started with the Dominican...

PS is it terrible to re-gift chocolates or other sugary delicacies we've received when we think it's poison but the recipients are happy to receive them???