wws@whuxlm.UUCP (Stoll W William) (07/30/85)
A testimonial (of sorts): I've never been too excited about sweets -- I never eat candy and rarely eat ice cream. My father is a holistic physician and has been letting us (kids) know that we need to cut sugar out of our diets for about six years now. I tried it for awhile, but didn't go "all the way" -- I ate bread with molasses in it, and bought food at a cafeteria (who knows what they put in that stuff?), and gave up after about two weeks. Big deal; I had one dental cavity in 25 years of life and was at my optimum weight. I didn't feel that I had to worry about it. My girlfriend bought the book "Sugar Blues" recently and I read two chapters of it -- the first, in which the author tells about his life before and after "kicking" the sugar habit, and the chapter on "kicking" which describes what it's like to give up sugar. For some reason, reading those chapters made me decide to REALLY give up the stuff for at least four weeks; to give it a chance to make a difference in my life. My girlfriend did the same -- it is a lot easier when you have company. My father sent me a "care" package giving me some ideas about what I could eat, foods to be suspicious of, etc. For the first four weeks, he said that ANYTHING sweet should be eliminated, to keep the body from being "triggered" into thinking it was getting sugar. This made life much more difficult, because fruit was my "fast food" and I had to give it up. We also took the vitamin supplement "Basic Preventive" to "help us with the transition to a better diet". We lived on bread made with diastatic malt instead of honey/sugar, and vegetarian lasagna (oh yes, he suggested we cut out red meat at the same time). We gradually added new vegetarian dishes and ideas to our menu. After about two weeks, things started to taste better. Carrots began to taste sweet, as did nuts. I was introduced to bread made with freshly ground flour - it tasted like cake! After about four weeks, I found I needed about an hour less sleep (I was used to eight hours) and had more energy. The best part was that I began to think more clearly. When I began to take the vitamin supplement (about 2 years ago), I noticed the that my "mental clarity" had improved -- but nobody had told me to expect that. Now, after giving up refined carbohydrates, I am noticing a more gradual (but perceptual) improvement. Anyway, I don't want to bore anybody -- I'm not the best writer in the world. I just wrote this to make two points: 1) Maybe sugar is deadly, maybe it's no more harmful than anything else, but if eliminating sugar and eating whole foods makes a person feel this good then gee, why not eliminate it? 2) "Sugar Blues" really is a good book for convincing the reader to at least give it a try. The two chapters I mentioned are basically testimonial, and some of the "history of sugar" that you see in the other chapters leave you wishing the author had done a better job of documenting his statements, but it is still an educational book. A good "well-referenced" anti-sugar book is "Orthomolecular Nutrition" -- send me mail and I'll look up the author. Gee, I feel like I'm witnessing for some religion. "Accept the God of anti-sugarites and be reborn" or something... Bill Stoll, ..!whuxlm!wws