Sugar

This Allergic Girl has been processed sugar-free for almost two years now. I’ll eat or use organic Maple syrup and raw [i.e. NOT boiled, filtered, and otherwise fussed with] honey; a box of raw sugar rests in my cupboard for guests and the small amount of baking I’ve done of late. I was never a huge table sugar eater but damn if it’s not in everything: ketchup to Boca Chik’n patties, whole wheat bread and vitamin waters . [Speaking of pernicious sweetners, Accidental Hedonist has made a list of products with the dreaded High Fructose Corn Syrup , the evil of all evils sweet-wise.] Cutting out all processed sugars is a larger task than one might initially assume. But after a few months of systematically deleting overly processed, overly sugared and overly processed sugared foods, my body adapted happily and I haven’t missed them.

Or so I thought.

Sunday night, I slipped. Or rather, Sunday night I realized that over the past few weeks my processed sugar-free diet had been breeched.

Sunday night, I spooned my way to unhealth eating raw gluten-free chocolate chip cookie dough. Right out of the bowl.

Oh the healthy-eater shame.

Since I’ve been on a product review jag, sugar or “evaporated cane juice” has been creeping slowly, slyly, but stealthfully back into my otherwise very healthy diet. Without my really realizing it.

For an Allergic Girl tasting I’m conducting this weekend, I decided to pre-mix the cookie batter. I was testing the raw product, almost on autopilot, until I realized I had "tested" about 1/4 of a cup of raw chocolate cookie dough in fingerfuls! It was a sweetly familiar activity, a lovely childhood memory; I haven’t licked a bowl in years

Next thing I knew, Rome was over [one more episode left, sigh], it was 10pm, and the dinner salad I had prepared was still in the kitchen, untouched and wilting. I missed dinner entirely. Why? Because the mix’s second ingredient after white rice flour is brownulated sugar; the third ingredient is evaporated cane juice i.e sugar. My body said, “Ooh, eat more more more!” Which I did almost without thinking; I was sated, without eating anything nutritious.

Sugar is evil as Michael Schwartz said to me in South Beach: I knew that. I know it’s evil and I don’t have ANY of that in my diet. Fiddle dee dee.

Well, major wake up call time. The last few weeks, I’ve been tasting and pre-tasting trials of excellent nut-free/gluten-free products that weren’t “evaporated cane juice” free. And I’ve gotten a taste of the evil stuff. So much so when I came home from work last night, where did I go but straight to the fridge to spoon some raw cookie dough! Good news for the Cherrybrook Kitchen, whose excellent products I’m tasting [and have done some pre-tasting-they’re nut-free, dairy-free, and gluten-free and very raw-dough-spoonable] but after this final tasting I’m going to need a sugar detox and clean diet reboot.