After a telephone conversation with a friend who generally follows a macrobiotic diet, he expressed concern that I am consuming *any* refined sugars. I checked out a few macrobiotic WEBsites, and found http://www.macrobiotics.co.uk/sugar.htm, in which you can see a documentary film, not only focussing on the incredibly bad health effects of eating refined sugar, but also on the ethics of consuming sugar. As for me, this video was a wake-up call: Based on the ethical considerations alone, my motivation for eliminating all refined sugar from my diet is now set. I am fortunate in that I naturally abhor the taste of soft drinks and “fruit” and “vitamin” waters, and don’t consume *most* of the myriad processed foods in which sugar is a hidden ingredient, although things like ketchup (and maybe even?) soy sauce or my “organic” corn flakes (sweetened with grape juice=sugar) will be difficult (butnot impossible) to detect. An excellent point made in the video at the above site is that refined sugar is a(n addictive) drug with no nutritive value whatsoever.
Almost the only meal I routinely crave sugar these days is breakfast: as in jam or jelly or marmalade with my toast or bread, and sugar/maple syrup or something sweet on my cereal. After my trip to Taiwan three years ago, now, I realize that what we think of as “breakfast food” is highly cultural. In China and most of Asia, for instance, breakfast is a variant of congee, a rice porridge, with bits of vegetables, fish, pickled veggies, or other condiments tossed in. Starting the day after tomorrow (it’s too late to prepare congee in time for this morning’s breakfast), I’ll make some congee ahead of time, and just add variants of condiments for variety each morning. Another benefit: my craving for the taste of coffee is to offset the “sweet” taste of the sugars I consume with either my bread or cereal and fruit. Now, if I start getting used to a “savory” breakfast, I’ll be drinking tea instead of coffee. Perhaps green tea, at first.
