Tag Archives: sugar

The tale of the poison-filled cupboard

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My dear aunt Sunita e-mailed me recently.  “Ravi, I have been following the Ravionhealth diet and lifestyle religiously, but I haven’t lost much weight!”.  I was intrigued, because I now have over a hundred people following my diet, and the only person who has not shown results is a friend with a thyroid problem.  It was time for a forensic investigation at Aunt Sunita’s home!

On a sunny Sunday afternoon, I knocked on her door.  “Helloooo!” said the familiar singsong voice and the million-watt smile, but I could see what she meant when she said that my diet was not working.  Aunt Sunita was as rotund as ever, looking like the most eligible bachelorette in Uganda*.

After the pleasantries, I made a beeline for her kitchen, and started my investigation with the refrigerator.  Full of fresh vegetables, whole milk, cheese, dark chocolate (85% cocoa), paneer, eggs, mayo, butter, and not a juice in sight…so far an A+ from me!  The freezer was full of fish and frozen chicken and no problem there.  Next I looked in the cupboards, and there was no sign of cereal, rice, pasta, flour, sugar, honey, and now I was starting to really worry…how can Aunt Sunita be putting on weight with a kitchen stocked like that?

“So Auntie, tell me what have you been doing since you started my diet?” I asked, and I wondered if she was simply eating out all the time.

“Not much, son!  Have been staying home.  Can’t really eat out much in India because the vegetarian food in restaurants is full of sugar carbs.”

Now I was flummoxed.  Was she that random person who won’t lose fat no matter what she eats?

As I was trying to work through this problem, the doorbell rang.  “Oh, it is my mahjong group!”, said Aunt Sunita as she waddled to the door and let in four other aunties who were all plus-sized.

You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with…

The Jim Rohn quote danced in my mind’s eye as I looked at the kitchen table, now occupied by this gaggle of famine-prepped aunties.

“Son, this is how I spend my afternoons these days.  We meet mainly at my place for mahjong and a little gossip.” Aunt Sunita smiled at me.

I feared that the end of my investigation was near.  I went to the living room and browsed the daily papers, lost deep in thought, until the familiar “tea-time” call from my aunt’s cook an hour later.  I walked back into the kitchen/dining area, and there was the answer to my question on the table, a whole spread of potato samosas, flour murukus, potato and paapdi chaat, rice crackers, corn chips and dips, you name it!

“Auntie, what is all this?”  I was aghast.

“This is just for when I have guests, son!”

“But you have guests every day for mahjong, auntie!”

“Yes son, but it is only for tea time!” my dear Aunt Sunita smiled as she tucked into a fried potato triangle.

“But where do you keep all this stuff?  I didn’t see any of it in the kitchen!”

“Oh it’s not for me, so I keep it in the guest cupboard!” she pointed to the dining room cupboard, where I could see the words in clear typeface “Guest Cupboard”.

As I left Aunt Sunita’s house, I marveled at the power of sugar addiction.  It is no different than alcohol or any other drug, in that once you develop a dependency, the addiction will create a delusion that you don’t have a behaviour problem, and that whatever symptoms you are experiencing are beyond your control, i.e., genetic.

Here was my aunt, a perfectly sane and reasonable person, who simply put all her junk food into a cupboard marked “guest”, and ate healthy food three times a day.  But she simply put it out of her mind that since going on my diet she had joined a daily mahjong group that met at her house, and she put away at least a thousand calories of sugar from the “Guest Cupboard” daily while entertaining her guests.  She was by no means the fattest of her mahjong group, so she never feels out of place when she is in their company…quite the opposite!

Breaking sugar addiction is an extraordinary achievement for some people, the same as quitting smoking, while other people do it with ease.  We have to sympathize with our sugar-addicted loved ones, be patient with them, and ultimately respect their choices.  But it is not impossible.

Aunt Sunita, I will find a way to rid your home of the poison cupboard…eventually!

 

Two words that will improve your health forever.

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Very few things can be simplified into two words.  This is especially true in the vast and complicated field of health, where in the US alone some 12% of GDP, or $1.5 trillion each year is spent on healthcare.

Can you imagine if someone came up with a two-word sentence that could shave at least  50% off this enormous cost?  How should a grateful society reward this person?  Give them a billion dollar reward?  The Nobel prize for medicine at the very least?

Sadly, I won’t get any of these rewards.  For starters, there are many many scientists working on medical research whose findings have collated into these two words, and the concept is not something original I came up with.   Second, there are enormous vested interests who are aligned on the other side, the recipients of those trillions of dollars in direct and indirect health costs who will not easily accept my two-word solution.  So what are these magic words?

Avoid sugar.

That’s it.  This is the secret of good health.  If you can change your diet to avoid sugar in all its myriad forms such as ice creams, sodas, rice, pasta, wheat, bread, cereals, fruit juices and sweet fruits, you will live a long and healthy life.  Sugar is the most inflammatory substance that is widely consumed in the world.  Forget worrying about MSG, saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol, forget the bogus calorie restriction diets, forget the X number of small meals a day diet, and forget the vegetarian versus non-vegetarian debate.  These are all irrelevant in the great battle for improving human health.  The only thing that matters is sugar, and whether you can lower your consumption of it by 70-90%.  How do you know you are avoiding sugar?  It’s very simple.  Just look in the mirror.  As a healthy individual, if your body fat percentage is 15% or less for a man, or 20% or less for a woman, you are avoiding sugar (or you are an elite athlete).

Think about the ramifications of what I just said!  The single biggest spender of advertising dollars are the two big sugary drink companies.  Yes, a can of Coke has, count ‘em, 12 teaspoons of sugar in it.

These companies make a big show about getting into so-called healthy drinks, but the reality is that the vast majority of their sales come from selling liquid sugar to consumers.

How different are these guys from tobacco companies as far as public health is concerned?  And yet they are allowed to market not just to adults but also to our children.  There is a clear market failure here.  The solution will have to take many forms, but we can start by ratcheting up the taxes on sugar and sugar products, and using the money to pay for educating people on the dangers of sugar.