Sugar

Food.

It seems to be in the top 3 discussion here in LA or maybe the entire US. Maybe top 2 actually.

Food is everywhere. On TV it’s purely insane, it’s a joke with my girlfriend: “get our Supreme Dunkin Deep Fried Chicken Burger PLUS two Beef Tacos and French Fries with unlimited dipping sauce only for nine ninety-nine!”. Sometimes it’s not far away from that and every 10 minutes. It creeps me out.

Calories is the unit. Everybody talks with calories and knows quite deeply about nutrients or how much calories you can have in the day.

I never knew or took care of that shit, ever. Just knew that sugar was not food, that eating vegetables can almost be unlimited and that water is all you need to drink.

I’m lucky of having grow up in France with healthy home cooking for all my early years, leading me to do the same. I’m lucky of being born in a country, Europe, where the food system is maybe a little less corrupted by financial expectations and more driven toward health of its people (seriously, the FDA is a sad joke).

I realize that chance by watching two absolutely must-see videos especially for you US people. First, why would we eat better? Well to feel better, for a longer time.

How to live to be 100+

What he’s saying about the heavy plant based diet and exercise, the Grandmother Effect or the father not wanting to pay to do pretty heavy stuff in the house and do it by himself like this old multimillionaire Californian man… Well this is almost exactly how I grew up. How my parents –for no particular reason except that they were not sure it would dramatically improve their lives- would not buy robots to do the cooking but use their arms to do all these kitchen tasks to make something to eat. 365 days a year. How they would work every weekend –and enroll me- in the garden, fixing things and never ever have a 8 hours couch/food/tv program. I would of course want to do that and eat more pies and more burgers but somehow, I would say to myself that if I’m never sick, always in good shape and feeling good then the family diet must probably have something to do with that.

But also I need to be active. I always want to do stuff, fix, create I really have a hard time sitting on a couch more than for the length of a movie. I felt that there’s a sweet spot of body activity where the food quality I absorb in reasonable quantity doesn’t really matter –it just needs to be diverse-, it can even be the worse fat ass burger ever. My body is working so well it detoxifies itself. The human body is an amazingly smart, self-cleaning machine, if used. Not for burning calories, which is a dumb version of saying that your body is a full system and needs in order to activate all its parts including protection against bad stuff, to run. When sitting on a chair, it’s idling.

The second video is talking about that and also, how sugar whatever it’s processed –HFCS– or not is a poison. And in large quantity in all the US food. I looked at a yogurt in the fridge. No HFCS, but 23 fucking grams of “sugars” in a 170g portion! It’s like 5 sugar cubes in half a mug of coffee man. It’s ridiculous.

Sugar: The Bitter Truth.

Have you ever tried not to eat any sugar at all? I did. It was the worst experience ever, but I learned something this day: I can’t live without it, even if my body doesn’t really process it.

I decided to stop any sugar a few years ago, from the morning cube in the coffee to yogurts to the chocolate at night just to see what it would be. It took me three days before feeling absolutely, terribly depressed like an old crap on the sidewalk. I wasn’t expecting that at all, I remember going back from the store, feeling sick looking at all these cookies and sugar things all around. I went back buying some Petit Ecolier half a hour later.

I couldn’t believe that it was MUCH harder to stop sugar than stop smoking. Like, it’s not even the same scale. You usually substitute smoking with eating candies. You have nothing to substitute for when you stop eating sugar and your brain goes crazy really fast for that. At least for me.

Anyway again in this video, Robert H. Lustig shows how no soft drinks is a must-have for any kid diet. Just water and milk. That’s how I lived and still do though I can add some wine now. But if people around the world were drinking as much soft drink than I do or my family does, there would be no soft drink companies at all. And that would be ok.

I think I’m even immune to it now. Every time I try some Coke my stomach doesn’t even want to speak to me. It just gets mad at me and it is right when I see the slides of the above conference.

*tractor beam*

Someone in my family grew up with daily Coke from 6 to 12. She had a belly. She stopped soft drinks for the same amount of time and moved much more. She lost it. It demanded a lot of efforts and it was hard.

So seeing how a Coke can
is the equivalent for your metabolism of a beer can –hence bellies-, I’m not surprised. But you can’t say that it shouldn’t be allowed for kids to parents giving their children soft drinks. I mean, if you want to stay friend with them.

And that’s sort of depressing. The importance of food and diet here in the US feels oppressing sometimes and more precisely, out of proportion because the answers are rather simple and your genes don’t really matter: there’s good and bad carbohydrates cholesterol fat whatever, you will never have the perfect diet recipe by suppressing something –except sugar, but it’s hard- and that calories count is a really, really poor measure. Just eat the less processed food possible –never would be a good start-, not too much but diversified food, no processed drinks either and be physically active. Incroyable. We know that since the 60s ffs! It doesn’t stop parents. Even in France and Europe, obesity is growing up: less bread (glucose, good sugar) more buns (sucrose and HFCS, bad sugar) is a signal of a wrong  trend for sure.

I don’t care about food (in terms of taste) as much as I care about balance between my everyday activity and the fuel I need for it, adjusting it. That’s the important part for me, and I don’t want to track that with an app or follow any diet on the internet. I want it embedded in my habits. I just have to teach my body, over and over again with the bad –but kind of good let’s face it- food spreading endlessly around me (I’ll miss my perfect, healthy baguette forever).

Be careful, don’t slip. That’s what I’m saying to myself. Especially since I saw Wall-E.