Just ask all of the Diabetics.
Posted on 07/29/2013 8:56:46 AM PDT by SgtHooper
The argument that sugar is a toxin depends on some technical details about the different ways the human body gets energy from different types of sugar. Today, Americans eat most of their sugar in two main forms: table sugar and high-fructose corn syrup. A molecule of table sugar, or sucrose, is a bond between one glucose molecule and one fructose molecule—two simple sugars with the same chemical formula, but slightly different atomic structures.
When I read ——— “Scientists now say ———”, I just groan.
One of the latest is about coffee and caffeine. Changed minds again. Sigh.
But — coffee is now good for you! (I never gave it up.)
Have you noticed the amount of shelf space given in stores today to what used to be called staples?
Can hardly find flour, corn meal, sugar, beans, rice, etc.
Meanwhile they have frozen PBJs.
Hot sauces are also (generally) used in very small quantity.
Of course I do my cooking “from scratch”. Just as I take a bath or shower “naked”, and drive a car “sitting upright”.
Flavored yogurt? Shrimp sauce? The failure of the United States is in its failure to develop a cuisine. Nobody knows how to cook or eat without realiance on packaged crap. Even the Mexicans eat better than we do.
The one thing I can’t give up is my hot tea with milk and sugar. It’s a stress thing. I just compensate for the calories on other foods.
“...every time I drink a soda, I feel like I’m fattening myself up.”
Every time you drink a soda...and it does not matter whether it is sweetened with sugar, HFCS, or any of the artificial sweeteners...all will cause weight gain. And the artificial sweeteners are pure poison...the will mess with your mind. Stevia is the only no-calorie sweetener that is safe, and it is the only sweetener that will not have a tendency to make you gain weight.
We had a perfectly good cuisine. Look at cookbooks prior to about 1970.
What we did was quit teaching home-ec. And the moms that would have passed on that knowledge were too tired when they got home from work to cook. So the kids never learned how. Dinner was a TV dinner or pizza.
Now 20yr old girls can’t, largely, even boil water.
I can’t keep hot sauce in the cupboard. I used to buy Tabasco in the largest size and that was good for a while.
Then, I started using really hot sauces to make sure the kids wouldn’t eat it all. Now, they are just a couple steps behind. I don’t know what to graduate to now that I hit the Ghost pepper level. ;)
That really depends—see my last post on this thread. :)
No, it's not.
You can take sucrose (cane sugar) and dissolve it in water and get a solution of glucose and fructose.
You mix the equivalent quantity of HFCS in water and get the same solution, again - but - you cannot convert the HFCS solution to crystalline sugar as easily as you can, cane sugar. There is a difference, right here. We're only now finding out the hazards of overconsumption of fructose, including its promotion of fatty liver disease.
Exactly!
What the heck is that stuff doing in peanut butter and tomato sauce? Yet, you’ve got to go out of your way now to avoid that.
I have had issues with Aspartame...its hard to describe, but I become physically addicted to it, always needing more...and walking around in a ‘funk’, while jonesing for my next aspartame fix. I’ve been hooked twice, and quit twice.
So I’ve been reluctant to try another non-sugar sweetener...but I might give Stevia a try.
Thanks for the info....your links did not work, BTW. I was just curious what a typical caveman diet meal consisted of. I pretty much do what you do - high protein, try to limit carbs and fat. I don’t really need to lose weight - I’m working on trying to build some muscle.
I disagree. I took home ec, and they taught us how to put ketchup and cheese on an Engllish muffin and call it pizza. And how to decorate a hanger.
I grew up with all stay at home moms - it was considered very odd indeed that my mother had a job - and the food they made was awful. My mother’s was the best -not that she was a great cook, but we had lived in France, and she had learned some basic principles: she didn’t use any packaged anything. No soda. No candy. No packaged bread, or desserts.
Actually, I need to modify that statement - I lived in an unusual international community, with many people who wrked at the U.N., and the mothers of the kids from foreign countries - especially India - made terrific food.
They updated the site to include a BMR calculator on the first page. If you want to gain muscle, you must increase your protein intake and make sure that you are above your suggested BMR.
My favorite site for exercise and advice is Fitocracy. There are a various groups that you can join that explore virtually any aspect of exercise and nutrition.
I took home ec in the deep south. Before the feds ‘nationalized’ the school systems good and hard. WE made food.
Southern cooking food.
I’m sorry your home ec class was a ripoff. Your teacher should be horsewhipped. She was a failure. I think there was a design from on high bureaucrats to do this actually. There’s a huge amount of independence (financially especially) when you can prepare food quickly, economically and from scratch. And our feds have been anti independence for the peasants for a while now.
Home Ec stopped being taught in the rural south sometime in the 80’s. I had a cousin who took it 5 years or so after I did, with a new teacher (my teacher had been in her 70’s and retired soon after having taught home ec for fifty years...) and they learned to cross stitch and make biscuits out of a can. Unsurprisingly her grandmother and mother had to pick up the slack...and this cousin still eats out way more than she should because it’s ‘convenient’. Yuk.
I’ve never heard of putting ketchup and cheese on an English muffin and calling that anything but disgusting or male dorm college food. That sounds gross.
My home ec teacher would have perished at the thought. She was a 70 something little old black lady who ran that class with an iron fist. She lived to be 90 something and had a home based alterations business after she retired. She also altered my wedding dress when I got married. And, as most little old ladies will speak their minds, told me to lay off the drive thru food, it was making my waist too big. LOL.
We learned how to bake bread, and use that basic bread recipe to make loaves, cinnamon rolls, pizza crust and dinner rolls. We learned how to make meringues, cut up a chicken and then prepare it economically for a family of 6 (it was the lesson) and make fudge among other things. It was expected that we’d already know the basics, being teens with amall town southern moms and grandmothers. They didn’t teach us how to make toast or grilled cheese sandwiches LOL. Our class was just before lunch so we’d prepare a meal, invite the principal and assistant principal and superintendent. We learned to set a table and serve as hostesses for guests.
I also learned how to sew all my own clothes. Still do. Made most of my clothes in college and even when I was working in NYC. I remember fondly my 3rd year of home ec because that’s the year you were ‘allowed’ to select any pattern you wanted for clothing projects and Vogue patterns were allowed. Sadly I had same age female coworkers who didn’t know how to sew on a button or hem a pair of pants. I was shocked to learn they PAID someone $5 or $10 to do that for them! Highway robbery! I later learned that home ec stopped being taught in any useful manner in the NYC area sometime in the 50’s or 60’s. Home ec classes being a relic of an oppressive patriarchal society and all...Better to pay someone else to do a basic task and spend that money on expensive food!
I grew up in the midst of stay at home southern moms. My grandmother cooked southern but also cajun, they’d lived in New Orleans for about 20 years. My mom learned both. My grandmother took me into the kitchen with her to work when I was around 7 or 8. I’d been in there observing since birth LOL.
And I grew up overseas in Europe and Africa. There was a big expat Indian community in our African city of all things and Sunday dinner after church was usually Indian food. I still make curries frequently. Especially in the summer when we have fresh superhot chilis. I’m reminded to pester hubby to buy me some turmeric roots before it gets cold, I want to see if I can grow them in pots as houseplants.
My grandmothers, both, deprecated packaged prepared food. ‘Convenience foods’ indicated you were NOT a frugal housewife and on top of that were lazy and fed your family poorly. If they saw someone they knew in the grocery store (it was a very small town) with that in the supermarket cart she WOULD be ‘discussed’...This in the 60’s and 70’s.
Only when she was much older did my mom’s mom ever use a packaged cake mix. Then it was a matter of not being on her feet for too long. They both had huge gardens and canned long shelves full of yummy stuff every year. One of my favorite childhood memories is spending the night at my grandmothers house in the summer and the smell of freshly made pickles or some sort of jam or preserves cooking on the stove and the giant bowls and buckets of peas, beans and sweet corn waiting for the blanch. And a plate of homemade (much better than anything you could get at a fast food place!) chicken nuggets and fresh out of the pan french fries made from potatoes dug that morning. And the ever present pop pop pop of the pressure canner.
My grandmother made divinity every year for Christmas. Using the recipe and technique from HER home ec book (circa 1934) without a mixer OR candy thermometer. She used a hand mixer and a cup of cold water with an ice cube instead. I admit I cheat and use the electric mixer.
If you don’t think southerners have their own cuisine I invite you to crash any family reunion you see at a state park in MS, AL, GA, LA, during the summer/fall etc and see for yourself. Bring an empty stomach...and loose clothing LOL. For the most part the little old ladies (50+) still cook that way. And some of the rest of us cook that way too. I don’t recall having ever seen soda at my grandmothers after my youngest uncle moved out. We don’t, generally, keep it at my house either. It’s spendy...and mostly empty calories.
I cook mostly from scratch right now. For a variety of reasons. Cost and avoiding unnatural additives mainly. But mainly cost. You can make a whole pan of homemade ORGANIC poptarts for the cost of your organic sugar and flour (and a bag of those will last and last) if you’ve got the strawberries growing in your backyard. And still come out cheaper per tart than the boxed crap variety with a list of ingredients that reads like a chemistry stockroom inventory.
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