So, why start a blog when I already have a lot on my plate? Well, food has become a bigger focus in our house over the last year with my son being diagnosed with Coeliac Disease (more about that in my next post). Having managed to overhaul our diet and remove all gluten containing products I realized that I had substituted with many sugar-laden foods! My skin and my sons was not good, I felt sluggish and often irritable. We were all eating a lot of fruit, dried fruit, homemade cake and biscuits etc. Good right?! Well actually not. Even these high levels of ‘natural’ sugars were having an adverse effect on our bodies but I was not aware of this until I chanced upon a book – Whilst visiting one of my oldest and dearest friends in Australia I picked up a book, which was lying around their house. Written, in fact, by her fiancés sister. ‘I quit Sugar (by Sarah Wilson). http://www.iquitsugar.com Two pages in and I was gripped.
“Our modern food system is set up around sugar, and seductively so. A muesli bar can contain more sugar than a block of chocolate; everyday bbq sauce more than chocolate topping. You try to do the right thing only to find low-fat yogurt contains more sugar than ice cream. You feed your kids ‘wholegrain’ cereal in the morning with some juice and pack their lunchbox with ‘healthy’ snacks, like raisins or fruit. By lunch they’ve eaten their way through a Mars-bar-and-cola-can worth of sugar” Sarah Wilson.
Note: It is not ‘sugar’ per se that is the problem. It is the fructose element (which our bodies store as fat), the glucose part is broken down and utilized as energy. Many fruits and dried fruits contact high levels of Fructose. This is where I was confused. I thought that all the sugars in fruit were ‘good sugars’. I was wrong and had been gorging on fruit ever since we became ‘gluten free’. It was a readily available snack! – more on the biology later!
In the last 6 weeks I have eliminated sugar from my diet, learned more about hidden sugars in the food we eat and started to look at my children’s diet. I was shocked at the amount of sugar they actually consume and have been pulling together recipes, snacks and ideas to reduce their sugar consumption; Using my kids as guinea pigs!!! All the recipes are gluten free, and mostly completely sugar free – I have taken inspiration from a number of sources then simplified the recipes to cater for the tastes of little ones and in order to make them quick and easy to prepare. Will quote original sources and provide links where necessary.
Anyone who wants to follow my journey read on; I am interested in the ‘biology bit’, the tasty food bit and the way society and the food industry has developed in recent years so that we accept, all be it unwittingly, sugar laden foods to be sold to us!
I am not here to get fanatical, be virtuous or preach at you. My experience will, I hope, enable families coping with autoimmune diseases such as Coeliac’s find cooking and meals enjoyable again as well as those who want to reduce the amount of sugar (especially hidden sugars) in their diet and those of their kids do it more easily. BTW, I don’t spend hours in the kitchen. All my meals contain as few ingredients as possible, do not use expensive and difficult to find substitutes and are quick to prepare. I am busy right!
Lets get going……..
