Year of No Sugar (31 page)

Then again, we were much more mainstream than we were
last
year. We had stopped flipping out about things like orange juice in the salad dressing or sugar in the bread. We were no longer the most annoying table our waitperson had that night, which was nice for everybody. And anyway, after a year of questions, we also already
knew
which items would have the sugar in them. Sometimes we had them, and sometimes we didn't.

But after inoculating myself with small amounts of sugar on a regular basis—a teaspoon's worth here and there—I had found that gradually, over time, my ability to enjoy sugar—without aftertaste or headache—had returned. It was different, though. I now enjoyed things with a much, much subtler sweetness than I ever would've thought possible. Sodas, ice cream sundaes, carnival cotton candy all now strike me as slightly…gross. However, I
can
order the mango sticky rice at the Thai place and simply
enjoy
it.

Which I view as a good thing. After all, alcohol is a potentially addictive poison, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying a glass of it with dinner on a regular basis. Likewise, I want to be able to enjoy a bit of fructose—potentially addictive poison anyone?—in the occasional dessert. For me, that's part of the joy of life.

So I'll have my glass of wine and maybe a small dish of the amazing gelato at that Italian restaurant. But I'm walking right by ninety percent of what's for sale at my local supermarket—row after row of sugar-sweetened beverages, snacks, candy, and convenience entrees. We drink water, snack on whole fruit, rudely ignore candy, and cook from scratch. It's not as simple as “Yes, always!” or “No, never!” but that's fair, I guess. Food is what keeps us alive, brings us
together every day, and gives us the means to celebrate and enjoy. If that isn't worth our serious consideration, I don't know what is.

 

⁶⁵
Well, for everyone in our house except Steve that is. Anyone know the hotline number for Diet Dr Pepper Anonymous?

⁶⁶
Remember, most supermarket cold cuts have sugar-containing glazes in them.

If I've heard it once, I've heard it a thousand times. It's the story of my grandfather and the grapefruit.

Because my father's father died when I was about ten years old, and because he lived far away in California, I don't have very many memories of him. Instead, much of what I know of my grandfather comes from stories others have told me, and the story I have heard the most is the one told by my mother.

It goes like this: my mother, a young bride, sat at the table with her husband's family and politely asked to have the sugar passed so she could sprinkle some on her grapefruit. My grandfather, being the very opinionated guy that he was, proceeded to give her a lecture on why grapefruit was perfectly palatable as nature intended it to be without requiring adulteration.

Because, by all accounts, he was a pretty headstrong guy, he seems to have phrased this in a rather undiplomatic manner, something along the lines of “Only a complete
moron
would add sugar to a perfectly good grapefruit!” Or something like that.

I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure at the time that my mother was cowed into submission and resentfully ate her grapefruit plain, casting sidelong annoyed glances at Mr. Self-Appointed-Dietary-Dictator all the while. But then again, maybe not. Maybe she defiantly sprinkled her sugar, adding an extra pinch for good measure just to show
him
.

I don't really know, because for my mother that was beside the point. The point of the story was this: her new father-in-law was telling her what to do—specifically
how to eat
, as if there was a correct way and an incorrect way to go about the matter. And she certainly did not like it. No, she did
not
. Did he deter her from adding sugar to her grapefruit in the interest of
not
being a moron? Hardly. My mother sugars her grapefruit with enthusiasm to this very day, and I'd daresay she thinks of John Ogden every single time she does it.

This, then, is our conundrum. How do we attempt to come back from the brink of disaster, emerge from the out-of-control obesity epidemic that threatens to swallow our population whole? Dr. Robert Lustig likened the Candyland of modern western culture to an opium den. So how do we begin to emerge from that opium den without people feeling they are being
told what to do
?

Helpfully, I don't have an answer to this question so much as I have a commitment to making sure the conversation is had, that the question is being asked—over and over again,
if necessary. How many decades did we need to grapple with cigarettes before “Four out of Five Doctors Prefer Camels” became “The Surgeon General Has Determined that Cigarette Smoking is Dangerous to Your Health”? And that conversation continues still.

For my family specifically, I hope many things. I hope my children have learned that you can do virtually anything you set your mind to, that big ideas are worth trying, and that your biggest support network is—ideally—your family. I hope they learned that healthy eating is a choice and that lots of things in life are bad for us—sugar, alcohol, reality television—but that often the key is awareness and moderation.

Lastly, I hope they learn that most things that are worthwhile—eating good food, raising happy children, having a fulfilling career—take time, thought, and energy. There are many shortcuts in life, but perhaps none that come free of consequences. Sugar is one of those things we have manipulated into giving us lots of shortcuts: to better taste, to more convenience, to ever-higher food industry profits. But at what costs? As the old saying goes, if you don't have your health, you don't have anything.

Me? For one thing I'm a better cook now. If pressed, I can make my own mayonnaise, kill a chicken, cook potatoes on an open hearth, and make desserts without fructose. Heck, I might even pour out the mac and cheese noodles a few seconds before the timer goes off, but I'm not promising anything. And I'm willing to try a lot more new things, although I've definitively crossed beaver off the list.

_______

_______

I've learned as much about myself and my family as I've learned about the crazy food system and myriad ingredients that are designed to make us give up. “Just eat it,” we sigh all too often. “It isn't going to
kill
you.” But to paraphrase Humphrey Bogart, no, sugar isn't going to kill you today or tomorrow, but someday it will, and for the rest of your life.

I've told a lot of stories in this book and I have just one more left to tell: when my girls were little—too young for school—they went one or two days per week for daycare to a lovely woman's house in a neighboring town. Locally, Martha's House is famous for being the kind of place everyone would want to go if they were a kid—her entire house is oriented toward children. There are bookshelves to the
ceiling, armloads of puzzles, armies of Legos and Playmobil and Barbies. There is a record player with 45s, a piano, and several small outbuildings that are crammed top to bottom with old bicycles and enormous bins of clothes for dress-up. Every day the kids put on a play with the musical accompaniment of the record player such as “The Firebird,” “The Three Little Pigs,” or “Peter and the Wolf.” There's an endless garden and an enormous sandbox and mini-trampoline, and a stream for shallow swimming, and apple trees that are perfect for climbing—I could go on and on. Heck, I figured, if
I
couldn't go to Martha's House, at least I could send my children there.

Martha herself turned seventy a year or two ago, but this slows her down not a whit—she has more energy than any grown adult I know and more than many children as well. She's been watching children at her house since her own four children were little a couple decades ago. Martha has seen it all. She's seen food fads come and go too—back in the seventies, she reminded me at one point, people were getting worried about too much sugar in their children's food. This worry was then successively supplanted by lots and lots of other worries—artificial colors and flavors, plastics, vaccinations, peanut allergies, gluten and dairy intolerances, and of course, high-fructose corn syrup.

Many moons ago, perhaps back when I was of an age when Martha could've changed
my
diaper, she got it into her head that, between home celebrations and school celebrations, children were getting an awful
lot
of sugar on their birthdays. In an effort not to compound the matter any further, she invented a Martha's House Specialty: Birthday Bread.

Nary a child's birthday goes by at Martha's House that is not marked by the preparation of these wonderful simple
loaves. Each child helps with the mixing of the dough and is given a portion to knead and shape into whatever they wish: a bun, a little turtle, an initial. If a child has been absent during their birthday for some reason and returns, Martha always makes sure the child gets to make up their birthday bread. Not that the children would let her forget—they adore this tradition, just as they adore Martha, as they adore Martha's House and everything about it.

Are there any sprinkles on the birthday bread? Icing? Chocolate chips? Raisins at least? Nope. It's
bread
. Martha lights a candle in it at lunch and the kids sing “Happy Birthday,” and as with everything at Martha's House, it's terribly festive. And God forbid a child's parents
forget
to bring that last leftover crumb home in their labeled paper bag to finish later—they will surely be forced by the wailing and lamentation from the backseat to return and claim the prized commodity.

Not that we can't have cake. Not that we can't celebrate. But we have to remember the lesson that Martha teaches in everything she does: kids
know
what's special. They know when you care. And it doesn't
always
have to involve sugar.

We're driving. It's January. Steve and I are driving through sloppy, foggy weather to have a date night—a movie at the theater in Glens Falls—when suddenly the perfect symmetry of it all hits me: Wasn't this exactly what we were doing at the beginning of the No-Sugar Project two years ago?

Now the book about our year is nearly done. Sort of. Are you ever really done with something that changes your life? As we drive, I compare our evening two years ago to tonight:
that
night we had been trying to see
True Grit
and failed because we could find no place to eat at fast enough to make the movie time. Tonight, we're on our way to see
The Silver Linings Playbook
, and we
will
make the movie: we ate dinner at home before leaving.

Back then we ended up having sausages at the German restaurant; tonight I had leftover spaghetti with sweet potatoes and ricotta; Steve had baked chicken with hot sauce because he's on another food rampage—attempting to lose spare pounds à la the Atkins diet. At the theater, I pass on the circus-y concession stand as usual, while Steve gets a “small”
diet soda that is large enough to come with its own hand truck. I think,
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

It makes me pause once again to reflect—so where
are
we now with all of this, now that it's been a full year since the project ended? What has truly stuck?

Speaking for myself, I am happy to no longer be the Sugar Nazi, or the Sugar-phobe; instead, I guess I can best characterize myself as a Sugar Avoider of the first order. I haven't lost my habit of obsessive label reading, haven't stopped counting how many items contain sugar on Ilsa's lunch tray at school or in the cart in front of me in the supermarket line. I haven't stopped being aghast. I still can't bring myself to buy things that I used to prior to our No-Sugar Year—shelf-stable tortillas, jar tomato sauce, dried cranberries, or the occasional pack of Fig Newmans.