Let's Talk: Sugar and Real Food
As you probably know, this blog is devoted to the concept of getting off processed food. Quietly, in its own little way, it's about reducing the chemical signature of what we eat. It's like being Dreydl there, gnawing on the bone. He's getting back to basics, back to where the marrow is.
Can we reduce the chemical signature of what we eat? Yes.
But can we completely? No.
And right there is the question of balance.
(More after the jump--but don't miss the discussion going on in the comment thread. Very, very good stuff.)
Let's face it: we live in a world of agricultural pesticides and industrial residues, of mercury and PCBs, of ground-water antibiotics and airborne free radicals. Even if we go live in a yurt in the middle of nowhere, we'll still live with the chemical detritus of human civilization. (If you want to see what's happening to people in far northern Greenland, to see that even they have ridiculously large chemical residues in their bodies, check here.)
Still, we can reduce our food's chemical signature to the best of our abilities in the modern world by 1) cooking real food at home, 2) supporting growers, producers, and restauranteurs who work with locally sourced, real food, and 3) becoming ever more aware of our options.
In Bruce's and my new book, named after this blog (check it out here), I lay out the research in pretty no-nonsense terms. It states that 1) deprivation is never the answer (we run on pleasure endorphins and there's no use trying to push back against those) and 2) food must be more tasty, more satisfying for it to register the cues of satiety in our brains.
For example, we most often eat tasteless fats and so we miss the cues to deep satisfaction that tasty fats bring (butter, walnut oil, almond oil, even lard). We overeat partly because we don't really know that we're eating in the first place. We trick the enteric nervous system in our guts with meaningless, tasteless calories--and so eat even more to compensate for the lack of satiety we feel.
Overnight, Celia from Australia dropped me an email about this topic (please check out her blog here) and I thought I'd drop in a quote from her here on a further extension of this very topic:
Years ago, I lost quite a bit of weight with the aid of lots of non-real foods: protein shakes, low fat substitutes, artificial sweeteners. They provide a temporary fix, and also fill your body full of strange chemicals and preservatives. What they don't do is re-educate your palate or appetite; instead you continue to eat lots of food, and much of it salty and overly (artificially) sweet. Since then I've done a full 180 degree turn--I try to eat food that is as close to its natural state as possible and am instead trying to train my appetite to be satisfied with smaller portions, and my tastebuds with less fat and sugar.
Which is exactly the point in a nutshell. And yet . . . Sugar. It's the sticking point. First off, most of it is not real, no matter how hard we try to make it otherwise. Sure, there are some better choices. For one, check it out here.
Secondly, sugar is so darn pleasurable. It sets off all those chemical reactions along the vagus nerve, connecting the gut to the head.
There was a lot of blather in the press about a year ago now about how sugar is addictive (along with fat and salt). I did a lot of research on this while writing the book; I talked to a lot of nutritionists, biologists, and clinical psychologists. To a person, they dismissed the notions of addiction problems for 99.9% of the population, mostly because there is no bio-chemical signature for sugar, fat, and salt classically associated with addiction. Put simply, you can go off sugar tomorrow and you won't go through the DTs. You might crave sugar for a day or two, but you won't show any of the chemical residue markers of addiction withdrawal.
What's more, despite anecdotal evidence from parents, there is no real scientific date to suggest that sugar makes kids (or the parents themselves) hyperactive. Sure, kids at a birthday party eat cake and run around like banshees. But might they not be running around like banshees simply because of the noise and chaos, the fun and screaming, so many kids in a room at once? (I give these studies a real once-over in the new book.)
Rather, those researchers I contacted almost all suggested that addiction is "merely" an excuse: "I'm addicted and thus I got to where I am through little fault of my own."
No, they all said. You made choices and trained your palate to get you to where you are.
Because that's the key. Solid research we are born with only one genetic proclivity when it comes to taste: a predisposition for sweet--mostly for the lactose in our mother's milk.
Sugar. We're back there again. It's the very crux of this discussion. It's probably not addictive, it's certainly empty calories, it's very pleasurable, it's mostly not real food, and yet it's quite a joy at every turn.
So where does sugar fall in this schema of real food? Is it real food at all? Is it the one exception? Is being "real" not a matter of being "manufactured"? What are your thoughts? I'd love to know more, to see if we could get a good discussion going here. Because I have a hunch that this is one of the most important topics we real food mavens face in the modern world.
dessert, real food, refined sugar, sugar | 1 Reference
Reader Comments (22)
I think one of the problems with food today is that people are, if you'll excuse the pun, trying to have their cake and eat it too. They want to be able to eat large quantities for fewer calories, which has led manufacturers to seek methods of reducing calories while still allowing people to eat a lot of food. The problem with this though is that it leads to an unrealistic expectation of portion size - if people are able to eat a meal the size of their head for the calorie count of a potato, then they never have to learn what an appropriate serving size is. This might be fine provided they keep eating low fat/artificially sweetened food (though I'm not convinced), but once they venture back into the world of "real" eating, then frankly, they're completely stuffed (again, please excuse the pun).
Specifically on the topic of sugar, the addictive point your write about is very interesting! And you're right to draw a distinction between different sorts of sugars, because hasn't the recent research shown that there are more complicated issues associated with how your body processes high fructose corn syrup? Do you have more info on that, Mark? It's not big on the news here in Oz, so I haven't really kept up with it, but my friends in the States said there's been a bit in the press about it recently over there.
I don't use artificial sweeteners any more. I don't drink diet drinks, I don't use margarine, and I don't buy foods marked "fat free". Instead, I'm trying to re-educate myself to eat mindfully, in smaller portions, and to train my palate to be satisfied with less sweetness and less fat. (It was all going well until those darn fig cookies.. :D). So in the case of Bruce's cupcakes in the earlier post, I would have made the icing as written, but probably only used half of it on my cupcakes - no criticism of the recipe intended, but that's how I would have adapted it to how I want to eat.
Sigh...hope this all makes sense, it's 6am here and I need a cup of coffee.. :)
Celia
Ok, kids are side tracked for a few minutes so I am going to try and harness a few brain cells here. I agree with Celia regarding the portion sizes and people wanting a huge meal (value for money?) for not so many calories. It simply doesn't work, but it is quite hard to re-program someone if thats the sort of food lifestyle they have always known. I spent extended periods in Italy when I younger and it was truly hard for me to be satisfied with a small dessert the size of 1/4 of your palm. My brain wanted bigger! More! However thats not how they do things over there.
Do I see sugar as a real food?... Yes, I guess I do. I certainly don't have a problem with it. I try to use sugars that have been as little processed as possible, and never artificial ones. No soft drinks, juice for my kids only and thats watered down, and everyday muffins honey is substituted. I try and keep our food as natural as possible. Making most things from scratch and being very aware of what the ingredients are if something is bought. A few years ago I went off sugar all together, and was so surprised to find it in so many things in the supermarket.
Are kids effected by sugar? I would have said yes in a heart beat. As I know how effected I can be. If something sugary is eaten I can physically feel it going through my body if its eaten on an emptier stomach.
I see sugar as a key ingredient for making simply delicious things, along with good fats, a food to be eaten in small amounts and enjoyed.
What a great question--it really got me thinking. In fact, my response to it got so long that I posted it over at my blog so as not to hijack your comments: http://therovinglemon.blogspot.com/2010/04/real-food.html
You guys are just terrific. It's hard to express how thoughtful and "real" your posts are. I know others are reading along. (I see how many visitors this post has gotten in the past few hours!) I hope it's providing food for thought.
About sugar in the body: it's very hard to tell what's happening, beyond the chemical processes. One of the things that's so befuddling about the psychology of food is that it exists on such a "simple" stimulus-reward continuum. I'm not just talking about hunger/satiety. Rather, foods themselves are pleasurable, even when we're full (cake at the end of dinner, for example).
And because the link is so "simple," it becomes a self-supporting loop. Take my response to coffee. I used to drink a lot of it, particularly back in grad school and then during my first mind-numbing years as an academic. I quit drinking it during the day (I still do in the morning) because I kept getting headaches, brought on, no doubt, by the caffeine in the six cups of coffee I'd downed since lunch. However--and here's the rub--even today, years later, if I drink coffee mid-afternoon, and (ah ha!) no matter that it's now decaf, I get a headache--because I've got a Pavlovian response to the taste and smell of coffee mid-afternoon. No caffeine and yet a headache. It's a quick step dance between a sensation and the physical response in this thing we call taste. And the research is pretty conclusive that most of what happens with taste is learned. We eat our behaviors, as it were.
That quick-step dance between stimulus and reward is undoubtedly at work in sugar because of the metabolic and digestive changes it induces, many of them quite pleasurable. We come out of the womb really liking the stuff--and we keep reinforcing that like until we're all Pavlov's dogs, slobbering for a Pavlova. (Yes, please.)
What's more, I have a hunch that there's some sort of Western Puritanism at work here, too, undermining that quick-step dance to pleasure. "It's good--ergo, it's bad." I don't mean to impugn Christianity here. Distrust of the body and its pleasures is woven down into Western civilization, at least since Plato and his cave-dark world of forms (and of course long before). This (for lack of a better word) Puritanism has been blown across the whole world in ads and books and movies and shows--all about how people get their (usually painful) comeuppance right after they get off. Get your kitchen spotless and the kids track in mud. Find the love of your life and start suffering. Be successful in your career and find out "it's not all it's cracked up to be." Those are very old plots. And they might run under our discussion of sugar.
Which is one of the reasons this discussion is so darn important. It hooks those issues: pleasure, guilt, happiness, rewards, Pavlovian responses to a Pavlova, the whole mess called "being human."
I also think one of the problems with sugar and the "take personal responsibility" argument, is that the foods we have access to are so heavily influenced by our socio-economic status. So processed foods, the ones that are usually the most affordable and most convenient, have been souped-up with corn syrup etc.
Furthermore, the call to cook more at home, although one I fully support, can also be a bit problematic for those who don't have functioning or stocked kitchens (many renters, for example, of a certain class, or those without access).
So interestingly, sugar has always, historically, been bound up with distinguishing between social classes. In the Middle Ages, it was imported in Europe from the Levant and expensive and used sparingly as a spice by those who could afford it. Today, it's practically forced-fed to those whose options are limited and whose lack of resources is limiting.
Andrea: On the money. Exactly. Thank you so much for posting. Sugar is indeed a socioeconomic issue. 1) It brings feelings of satiety quickly in otherwise inexpensive and even inferior foods. 2) It does give lots of pleasure per bite. 3) It's rather inexpensive to produce in the modern world (as opposed to its rather difficult production before and during the age of Western exploration).
Which means sugar is sort of a weird paradox in the modern world: both pumped into inferior foods to make them seem more satisfying (hello, the buns in fast-food burgers as well as those cheap cakes from the supermarket, not to mention cheap packaged treats of all sorts) and used for high-end, ridiculously useless desserts to pleasure the higher classes (hello, Pavlova--and lots more).
Oddly--and even ironically--it's basic "problem" is pleasure on both sides of the class divide. To be crass, sugar brings lots of bang for the buck.
M.
Andrea's completely right, of course, and that's what makes it really galling - if big industry knows there is a large percentage of the population depending on them to process their food, then they should be looking out for them, not pumping as much salt and sugar as possible into foods to maximise sales. But even I'm not idealistic enough to believe that that's ever going to happen.
What I find ironic is how often salt is added to high sugar foods to balance out the flavours. Why? Because certain combinations make you eat more - salt and fat, salt and sugar - these are the things that stimulate appetite and encourage us to overeat. And overeating -> more sales.
Is sugar a real food? Absolutely. Is a crappy hamburger bun stuffed with unnecessary sugar and salt a real food? I'd argue not.
this discussion has taken on so many ramifications i don't know where to begin. i completely subscribe to everything celia said above. i've lived for 5 years in the us and mountains of spaghetti on a single plate don't shock me anymore, but when i first got here, this could have been a whole new planet for all i knew. first, it's like you say, mark: everything is sweet. bread that's puffy and sweet and will keep indefinite amounts of time - bread that i could ball up into a white weapon in seconds - was all i could afford at first. i couldn't eat it. first two months i ate mostly fruit - especially peaches, from the supermarket: i still gained weight. i heard talk about organic, but honestly had no idea what that meant, because it's all organic where i come from, there's nothing but. phrases like 'made with real cheese' sometime still perplex me. as far as the socio-economic side of this story is concerned, i believe everybody should assume responsibility for their own situation: sugar is not addictive. the people in america are not overweight because they eat cupcakes. i have four kinds of sugar in my house and no one has the shakes. the challenge is not to stop consuming foods that are empty nutritionally, but to exercise portion control. it's like you say: it's meant to bring a smile to the table. i don't count calories. i don't share in the obssession with fat-free. but i don't like recipes that call for cups upon cups of butter, or sugar, or whatever excess. i don't understand icing that's made of sugar and a few drops of liquid. that will just taste sweet. it will have no subtext, no flavor, no elegance, no finesse and i'm not interested in that kind of food. and the same goes for buttercream and the cream cheese icing. what's the point of cooking at home if i'm going to color some sugar and call it a day? don't people realize they're eating pounds of raw butter? aren't they troubled to use pounds of sugar for a single cake? i am trying to find the middle way: i'm not counting calories. i'm not obsessed with fat-free. i love butter. but a balance must exist. a basic cake recipe from romania typically contains 1 tablespoon of sugar per egg used. no butter needed. here recipes that use 6 eggs may require up to 2 cups of sugar. desserts in america are generally much sweeter than those in europe. i don't want to taste just sweet in a dessert. there has to be balance to that dish, i want layers of flavor, contrast, harmony. especially in a chocolate dessert. if can't taste anything but sugar, then it's not only empty calories, but unsatisfying empty calories, and those are really the worst kind. like an eclair, crisp shell, perfumed vanilla pastry cream, and then a heaping of confectioner's sugar chocolate icing. now that just spoils my day. if i'm getting fatter it better be worth it. my bottom line is this: portion control in everything. taste is the imperative. don't eat twinkies.
Based on several surveys of European cookbooks (French, Spanish, and German, on my end), the desserts are lower in sugar, just as you suggest, Dana, but also higher in fat, particularly when you take into account the whipped cream used. This is sheer anecdotal evidence on my part--and hardly definitive. But there it is.
What I can say definitively is that fat, sugar, and salt exist in some sort of weird balance in America. Here's what I mean. When a product is sold as low-fat, it often has cups of extra sugar and a heavy pour of salt added to compensate. When a product is sold as low-sugar, it often has a big slather of fat in the mix. Bruce and I did many side-by-sides for the new book, the one out next month--many comparisons of low-sugar or low-fat packaged products with those that are "normal" (or whatever word you want to use). We discovered that nine times out of ten, the calorie count was almost identical among the offerings--because, for example, the low-sugar cookies were packed with more fat to compensate for the blech taste.
You're right, Dana. Balance is everything. And yet so hard to find in a land of such stunning (and cheap) abundance. (And, by the way, I think this is a problem now across western Europe, some of the Middle East, increasingly India, and even the Antipodes--eh, Celia?). My gosh, a box of ziti or rigatoni at the run-of-the-mill supermarket (or Super-U en France) is so darn cheap. And how many people just cook all that's in the box because, well, it's there and costs about a buck?
I've discovered that one of the ways--and this is going to sound very, very crass--for me to pull down what I eat is to buy better fare. If I buy whole wheat, organic pasta, I eat less because, well, it's more expensive. I have to eat less to stay on our budget. Bruce and I now eat meat only from farmers whose hands we shake--which means we don't eat a lot of it. Last night, we split a 10-ounce (280 gram) steak for dinner (along with a big platter of roasted carrots, lemon, and cumin). In the past, years ago, we would each have downed a 10-ounce steak (at least) because it was relatively cheap at the supermarket. But at $18 a pound from an organic, grass-fed beef farm down the road, we just have to eat less.
Just came back to read through the comments--fascinating stuff, especially Dana's comments about the abundance of sugar in American recipes and the theory that we eat more because there's more there to eat. I'm completely in agreement about portion control, and in fact I use a scale to weight food portions: I'm far too likely to cheat if I eyeball it. It has been very educational to learn just how much (or rather, how little) food I need to fill me up. And Mark, I think there's another aspect to your argument about more expensive food: you may feel compelled to eat less because of the cost, but I find I am also satisfied with less because it is a much more complex sensory experience.
I think it's also important to remember that we are lucky enough to be in a financial position to make those kinds of food choices, and ask if there's anything we can do about the many, many people who are not. Yes, people are ultimately responsible for what they put in their mouths, but following on from my earlier comments (exhaustively detailed at http://therovinglemon.blogspot.com/2010/04/real-food.html) and other people's above, some people in this land of abundance don't even have physical access to fresh fruits and vegetables, let alone organic or grass-fed anything. All they have is the crap that the food industry chooses to make available to them, and the food industry earns a much bigger profit if they can make a frozen dinner constructed out of a few shreds of Grade D meat and some reject vegetables, and then beef up the flavor with a whole bunch of salt, sugar, fat, and other chemicals. Food choices and food availability are a socio-economic issue. Maybe some people would be able to make better choices about food if they had better access, or better information. What can we, as people who care about food, and have some knowledge of some of the issues, do about that?
Absolutely about the economics of food. When I was doing research for REAL FOOD HAS CURVES, I spoke with a researcher at the US Department of Housing etc. about hunger in this country. Basically, current statistics--taken BEFORE the current economic turmoil--were that about ten percent of U. S. adults go hungry at least once a day, missing a meal to provide food for others or simply because food itself is not affordable. If you walk into a large urban park, chances are that one out of every ten people you see will have gone hungry that day. Those are grim stats, to be sure. Who knows what they'd be like today, in this economic mess?
Of course, in the U. S., the problem is not "real food." It's the economic access to real food.
That all said, there's no question that in the U. S. we don't pay the "real cost" of our food. Although people go hungry, you have to figure that we eat a ton of corn because it's subsidized. We don't pay the real cost of corn syrup or any of those other corn-based products, most of them stretchers and thickeners and chemical emulsifiers derived from corn. Same with beef and pork, given the agricultural subsidies. And wheat. And peanuts. And on and on. So the food we eat is "artificially" cheap for this allegedly pro-free-market country we live in. Thus, the burger at the fast-food joint can cost a couple bucks--although it doesn't; it costs more than that, although we don't see the hidden tally of subsidies in the final bill.
That said, portion control is everything. I just had a bowl of leftover bean soup for lunch--and I had to work to make it a bowl, not a buffet, although there was still some left in the pan.
Sigh. I know this is going to sound condescending, and cliched, and all those other things...but reading all the comments above, I keep thinking the answer really is education. People need to convinced about why they need to make informed choices. And it's really hard - if someone is working all hours and struggling to keep a roof over their heads, then how do you persuade them to buy more expensive ingredients, get less for their money, and be concerned about what's on the ingredients list of the packet food they're buying? At the end of the day, most people, myself included, are driven by $$. We buy most of our fruit and veg from the growers markets, not the flash organic ones, because of cost. But we're blessed with time to process our own food - if you're working 60 hours a week, when are you going to find time to make your own tomato passata?
Much as I dislike this option, and I know many will consider it anti-American, maybe it comes down to legislation? Maybe governments need to play Big Brother, and take a more heavy-handed approach to what actually goes into processed foods? I know over here in Australia (and you're right, Mark, we're right up there with the US in terms of cheap food and obesity), there are moves to get the government to take action in some areas (such as fast food commercials), but actually legislating what can and can't go into food (excluding things which are obviously toxic) is usually a step democratic governments aren't willing to take.
And in the US, it sounds like it would be even harder - a friend of mine in CA told me recently that because of all the bad press about HFCS recently, the corn industry has been taking out large slabs of prime time advertising to tell people about what a natural product it is!
"you may feel compelled to eat less because of the cost, but I find I am also satisfied with less because it is a much more complex sensory experience."
I agree with both Mark for eating less as its my more expensive and Roving Lemon for the more complex sensory experience. I won't get into the socio economic problems with foods as you have all covered it really well, and it is such a complex problem. So continuing on a really basic level...
I find that if I do eat any processed foods, especially high in sugars and salts it completes deadens my tastes buds, thus wanting more. (Salt and Vinegar chips- my mouth will be effected for 2 days.) That simply doesn't happen when eating something more 'real'. Whether it be hand made dark chocolate compared to a bar of corner store chocolate. Or a home made bread and jam compared with the cheapest versions being bought at the super market of the same thing. Personally I just don't feel sated the same way. Complexities of flavours, less sugars added does that equal more satisfaction? If it's a matter of sugars being as much kept in their original forms, and as less processed as possible to keep it as a real food- at what point in the production line does it stop being a real food and become something else?
Yep, my hippie dippy friend, complexity. Here's what I've learned over the last few years of research. Taste is directly connected to memory. You taste something because you have tasted something, to be blunt. And the more varied your experience, the more pleasurable a piece of food.
For example, in a ripe peach, you can taste vanilla, lemon, honey, and grass. Since taste is connected to memory, each of those "pings" is a memory pleasure center firing to say "Oh, I like that." If you have a wide range, you'll feel pleasure on a wide range.
If you don't, you won't. And you'll find a peach rather unsatisfying.
So in the end, it comes down to the education of the palate.
M.
Great posts here - and really looking forward to your new book!
So, how do you deal with sugar/desserts in your new book?
I live on a farm and am often busy with chores so, I am hoping your book will be filled with practical recipes. So many books are beautiful but I don't have the time - I am looking for some everyday recipes that will help me put real food on the table.
Seems we have complicated our food so much - analyze, inspect nutrients, superfood, good/bad - what happened to eating and the joy involved in it? Not to ignore what we are learning about food but it shouldn't stress you out either -
"don't let perfect be the enemy of good" one of my favorite quotes.
Might be a good time to post one of your new dessert recipes as a teaser... - Best to you - Greg
Celia, I have to agree with your last comment (although it drives me nuts when anything taken into the government's hands is considered un-American.) The government already subsidizes food, already subsidizes the corn industry so it can be put in everything. I'm married to a Norwegian (doesn't get more socialist than that) and there, the government taxes processed junk in order to subsidize real food so that it's accessible to the entire population. By the way, thanks for starting a great discussion, Mark!
As a person who has had a very complicated, and frankly, messed up relationship to food, one of the most important lessons I've learned in my journey is this - pleasure is nutritive, especially when it comes through a meal. To sit down and truly enjoy even a humble meal, the whole body and mind relax, thus facilitating greater nourishment and health. So, in this way, even a sweet treat, whether savored with loved ones or treasured alone, does a body good. Let's allow more room for graciousness and gratitude, and less for guilt, when it comes to food.
More grace at every turn--please, please, please. More forgiveness, too. We're all trying to do our best, slogging through a world we didn't make. In the end, the point is to be nourished, to be fed--and to go on whistling down the road.
I had to come back and add one more thing, because I just came across this quote, and I think it's so dead-on applicable to what we've been discussing. It's from George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier, about his firsthand experiences of dire poverty in 1930s Northern England:
"The peculiar evil is this: that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food....When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harrassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty.' There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let's have a three pennorth of chips! Run out and buy us a two-penny ice cream! Put the kettle on and we'll all have a nice cup of tea....Unemployment is an endless misery that has got to be palliated."
Ah, my friend, you've hit the ball out of the park with that one.
M.
Very intersting post...and discussion. I agree with the comments made by others - a learned taste/behaviour, education (of the palate at least), etc. I think it is interesting to see how the amounts of sugar and fat in recipes have increased over the years - an old cookbook has such modest amounts of both and yet they were still treats much savoured. The base load of sugar (and salt and fat) that is hidden in 'everyday' food means that we tend to need more sugar to taste the sweetness. My experience with sugar has been that the more I eat, the more I need to eat. A couple of years ago I decided to stop eating sugar for three months. It was incredibly hard as I am rather addicted to cake. After a few weeks of not eating any sugar, I noticed that everything tasted really, really sweet. Unbearably sweet if it was an official dessert or sweet thing. So I started reducing the amount of sugar in my cooking. Now my kids and I struggle to eat most commercially made sweet things because we find that we can only taste the sugar, and not the actual ingredient. If I am using an American recipe I would automatically reduce the amount of sugar by a third if I am cooking for others (who are more used to eating higher levels of sweetness - and they don't notice a drop in sweetness) or a half if I am cooking just for our family. Perhaps that is what we can do to start reducing the level of toxicity - one small step at a time - just cut back on the amount of sugar or fat in your cooking. Yes, cut down on portion sizes, and yes please lets get some decent legislation that at least makes it transparent for people to understand what junk is in the food they buy; and yes to all all the other great suggestions listed in other comments too! If you can't afford organic food or you don't have the time to source out local ingredients or whatever, at least you can take one small step towards retraining your palate to enjoy food that is not so super laden with sugar! On that note, I noticed recently that S&W mayonnaise has corn syrup listed in the ingredients - corn syrup in mayo?!! What the...?! It was a good wake up call for me to check the stuff I do buy (and not be so smug about cooking most of our food from scratch).
You, my spicy friend, are on target. I, too, went "off" sugar a couple years ago. (It provided impossible to maintain with almost twenty cookbooks to write in eleven years!) But I, too, noticed how darn sweet everything started to taste. It really ticked me off--the way even entrees (I'm talking here mostly about restaurants) were so darn sweet. We went to one American "family casual" restaurant once while we were on the road and I almost gagged at how sweet the burger was. Ick. It was a real wake-up call for me. I simply couldn't subscribe enough to what you say. And I'm not about to INCREASE the chemical signature of what I eat with fake stuff. So I simply do without, or do with less, or sometimes go over the top and really relish a sticky, sweet treat.