💾 Archived View for thrig.me › food › sugar.gmi captured on 2024-02-05 at 10:32:38. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Sugar

Americans, probably, eat too much sugar. A German lady once followed an American brownie recipe; on seeing it I was like "that recipe has too much sugar in it". The next day with a tummy ache, the German lady agreed.

Another American I know almost has type 2 diabetes; if you look at their favorite foods, you might see balsamic vinegar with added sugar, peanut butter with added sugar, tea with added sugar (the milk), chocolate chips to snack on, apples reduced to sauce for easier access to the sugar (with of course added sugar on top of the apple's sugar), etc. The products with added sugar probably taste better—just as music played louder sounds better, but then you may end up with hearing problems, for some reason—producers add more sugar or fail to products that do have more sugar in them.

It may be difficult to avoid foods with relentless amounts of sugar in them, especially if you live in one of those many food deserts—just desserts, or have developed a habit for sugar. Four cavities? Who knows where those came from. How much mindfulness or deliberate practice is there for food?

Sugar is necessary. Best to get it from good sources with other benefits--fiber, micronutrients, etc. The time of day can also be important; carbohydrate rich foods are better for breakfast. Migrating to high fiber foods may be difficult if one lives in a food desert (or a food dessert of excess sugar; a typo here would not change much). One piece of advice is to slowly increase the amount of fiber: maybe 1/4 cup fiber for a week, then increase that to 1/2 cup for another week, then a full cup, if you can go that far. Or spread it out so there is more fiber in each meal. This will replace some amount of other food.

Some forms of beans come with too much

Salt

There can also be downsides to food claimed to be healthy; fermented foods might be good for your gut, but they could come with too much salt. Probably there is a Goldilocks zone. This will vary by the individual, their age, ...