Saturday candy?

[abendgules]

Thanks to several months of enforced inactivity, I'm feeling uncomfortably round, and had an unpleasant encounter with a measuring tape recently.

So I'm resolved to get out of the office at lunchtime more often for walks - daily isn't too often - and I'm considering drastic measures, for me: Saturday Candy.

I encountered this at Crown this year in Nordmark - that some good Swedish parents still limit their kids' intake of junk to Saturdays. I'd never heard of something so, so, so....sensible. Sheesh. (Especially when the Western world is staring an obesity epidemic down the gullet - how do the Swedes manage it, when everyone else is so helpless?)

So I'm seriously thinking: I don't eat a lot of candy, but I do like biscuits, particularly at work. I do like a sweet to follow dinner, of some kind. And I don't know if I can follow through, when my beanpole-shaped-sweetie noshes down on his treats in the evening. Could I actually follow a Saturday Candy rule?

(I'm painfully suggestible, I've discovered. Don't remember this always being the case, but by god, if I'm reading about someone enjoying a pot of coffee, all of a sudden nothing short of a pot of coffee will do...similarly when someone says 'I'd love a cup of tea' on TV, etc.)

I was put in mind of it (see? suggestible) by a BBC food article about a family giving up sugar because of a daughter's Type 1 diabetes.

I know a few people who avoid sugar, but why would you substitute dextrose for sucrose (shown in one recipe)? It all turns into sugar in your body, doesn't it?

Comments

[my-stitching.livejournal.com]

Yes. Basically the only difference between different types of sugars (dextrose, sucrose, fructose, etc) is either the shape or the number of carbons and in some cases whether they form chains. Some are absorbed directly and others are broken down into the simplest form which is most useful for our bodies to absorb: glucose aka dextrose. So using dextrose rather than sucrose does nothing.

Good luck with candy saturdays. It sounds like a good concept!

[my-stitching.livejournal.com]

With the comments below differing from what I had remembered studying in anatomy and physiology, I went back and looked. All sugars break down into glucose (dextrose), fructose and galactose. There are others but these are the common ones. They all have the same chemical composition but differ slightly in how they are ordered (isomers). All three of these are absorbed directly into the system via the small intestine. All of the more complex sugars break down into these. Sucrose is glucose and fructose, for example. There are three things which set fructose apart from the others. One bad thing, one good thing and one neutral thing.

Neutral: Glucose and galactose are absorbed via cotransport with sodium ions. Fructose is absorbed via facilitated diffusion.

Good: Fructose has a low glycemic index which means that it doesn't raise your blood sugar or require the body to kick out insulin to deal with it. This is a BIG positive for diabetics.

Bad: If you eat a very large amount of fructose, the body can't absorb it all and, instead of being absorbed in the small intestine, it goes to the large intestine where it sort of ferments with the natural bacterial flora and causes tummy upset. (ETA: This only seems to happen when glucose and fructose are not balanced. Fructose with glucose seems to help the fructose absorb more efficiently)

Verdict: Eating or cooking with dextrose instead of sucrose gives no real benefit unless you were planning on eating 50 pounds of it. And you are probably raising your blood sugar more than needed. It is just another bit of pseudoscience that comes our way to try and "improve" our diets when in actuality, it does jack all. Sea salt, for example, is actually LESS healthy than table salt. But it costs more and has more articles written about it. ;)

[edith-hedingham.livejournal.com]

I find that it has to be all or nothing. Biscuits disappear in our house so best not to have any!

[kareina.livejournal.com]

The rule that works for me is "no processed sugar save for in home-baked goods". If I want a cookie, I have to bake it, and I tend to use way less sugar than traditional recipes call for. As a result my diet is less than 1% sugar by volume most months, though it sometimes gets as high as 3% "junk" over the winter holiday season.

[xrian.livejournal.com]

I decided a while back to limit my daytime sweet-snacking to a particular flavor of hard candy. I tell myself I can have two a day and am able to stick to that maybe 28 days out of the month -- on a very stressful day I may eat five or six, but considering they are only about 20 calories each and last a long time (being hard candy), they do a pretty good job of satisfying the sugar urge. And because they're always the same flavor they become really boring after the first two, which deters me from eating more.

The different sugars, IIRC, are metabolized somewhat differently, and -- what is probably more important to a diabetic -- have different effects on blood sugar and on the insulin level. The diabetic diet strongly favors slow-release carbs, and tracks blood sugar and insuln levels very carefully, but I disremember all the details since it's not me who's diabetic (it was my Dad). I also learned from him that the more closely a diabetic regulates their blood sugar, the fewer side effects they have later on -- a counter-example being a dear friend who had a wild and careless youth and died of kidney failure in his 50s.

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

If you like cookies (sorry, biscuits are a whole different thing :)) at work -- and are often at SCA events where there isn't candy, per se, on the weekends, anyway, why not consider something like "candy on Tuesdays", with an exception for SCA desserts? Might make it an easier rule to follow.

I still agree with you that Candy on Saturdays is eminently sensible, and while we aren't there yet with Gwen, I'm seriously thinking of doing it when she's older.

[frrsawyer.livejournal.com]

I like the idea of "Saturday Candy". Yes it would be tough to avoid the sweet things when others around you are eating them but it all comes down to being prepared and having other options on hand to munch on instead. Good luck!

If you're interested in a good read about the different types of sugar and how to break the sugar habit I can recommend a book by David Gillespie "The Sweet Poison Quit Plan". He has also published "Sweet Poison: Why Sugar Makes Us Fat". I haven't read "Sweet Poison: Why Sugar Makes Us Fat" which was actually his first book but I have read the Quit Plan one. It has very good explanations of the different types of sugar any even provides some recipes that use dextrose.

It's been quite some time since I read it but from memory, fructose is actually the main problem sugar. It's ok when it comes in whole fruit because the fibre counter-acts the effects of the fructose but the fructose that comes in regular sugar is far more detrimental.

Both books are available on Amazon if you're interested.

[vizi.livejournal.com]

I had a major diet change this year. I simply don't buy sweets or fizzy drink anymore. What doesn't come home with me, can't be snacked on absentmindedly during the day. What I have for a sugar fix is fruit, usually apples, dried apricots, or dates - twice a day. I sometimes add honey to hot drinks or porridge.

I am allowed one "diversion" from this, for each gym session I do each work (or other hour of solid sweaty exercise like a fight practice). As a beer counts as a diversion I decided I would prioritise being able to share a beer with friends, than eating sweet snacks by myself.

Its noticeable how strong the sugar flavour now is when I do eat something like a cookie, and some of the sweets I used to eat, such as a citrus slice, have actually become unpleasant to my taste buds now due to the sensory overload.

[bend-gules.livejournal.com]

Good to hear from you! And yes, beer after practice is a good priority - both restorative physically and socially. Robert is happiest with a beer for 'dessert'.

I grew up with 'starts, middles and afters' for evening meals - 'middles' were typically raw veg sticks or salad, and 'afters' were dessert. So it's pretty ingrained in me to have *something* to mark the end of a meal - cookies, fruit and yoghurt, icecream etc.

Saving this til Saturday is proving a challenge.