Category Archives: sugar

On soda pop

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I used to drink soda or pop when I was a kid. You know, sugary water with lots of bubbles and some sort of flavor profile–sweet, very sweet. Then my teeth started to get lots of cavities and I gave it up. Even when I got to college, I would limit my intake of sodas to one a month. I lost my taste for lots of sugar and caffeine, and I never went back. I know why people drink soda–sugar and caffeine–but what happens if nobody needs either of those things? Sure, people drink soda as a refreshing experience that slakes their thirst and cools their brow, but water does the same thing. Not that it worries me that people drink soda, but it does seem super unhealthy to drink gallons and gallons of the stuff. Some people will drink a cola or two to start the day, others will have one at lunch or on break, still others will drink a giant litre or two with a couple of burgers and a bunch of fries–tons of carbohydrates, more sugar than a body really needs, and more caffeine than anyone needs. If you look at the actual food value of soda, it’s almost non-existent except for the sugar, and we all get too much of that anyway. Soda is really just a question of good marketing of a sugary food product. Perhaps a splash of cola once in awhile with a bunch of ice and other things to modify the flavor (lemon?) isn’t so bad, but living off of the stuff on a daily basis has got to be bad for a person. Nevertheless, far be it from me to tell anyone else how to live their life.

On soda pop

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I used to drink soda or pop when I was a kid. You know, sugary water with lots of bubbles and some sort of flavor profile–sweet, very sweet. Then my teeth started to get lots of cavities and I gave it up. Even when I got to college, I would limit my intake of sodas to one a month. I lost my taste for lots of sugar and caffeine, and I never went back. I know why people drink soda–sugar and caffeine–but what happens if nobody needs either of those things? Sure, people drink soda as a refreshing experience that slakes their thirst and cools their brow, but water does the same thing. Not that it worries me that people drink soda, but it does seem super unhealthy to drink gallons and gallons of the stuff. Some people will drink a cola or two to start the day, others will have one at lunch or on break, still others will drink a giant litre or two with a couple of burgers and a bunch of fries–tons of carbohydrates, more sugar than a body really needs, and more caffeine than anyone needs. If you look at the actual food value of soda, it’s almost non-existent except for the sugar, and we all get too much of that anyway. Soda is really just a question of good marketing of a sugary food product. Perhaps a splash of cola once in awhile with a bunch of ice and other things to modify the flavor (lemon?) isn’t so bad, but living off of the stuff on a daily basis has got to be bad for a person. Nevertheless, far be it from me to tell anyone else how to live their life.

On fruit

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When asked about my favorite fruit, I’m sure I would have to say fresh cherries with strawberries running a strong second with the kiwi coming in third. Can you ever get enough fruit? I suppose we should ask Adam, but he’s not here, so we’ll move on. Apples and oranges, bananas and pineapple, I can already feel the juice running down my chin. Nature’s own fresh candy, it’s sweet and delicious, a delight to the sense of taste and smell, touch to a certain extent. Not a huge fan of mango, but it’s because I’m allergic. Grapes, watermelon, lemons, limes, grapefruit, pomegranate. Fruit is a dark object of sensuous desire, the colors and textures yearn to split and eaten, juice running everywhere, down your chin, your hands and elbows, you grab for a napkin to clean up. It’s the sugar, of course, which we crave. Eat a banana–it has one of the highest sugar contents in the fruit world. What redeems fruit are all the vitamins and minerals they contain. I also think that sugary fruit, the object of desire, is redeemed by its aesthetics and its taste. The taste of a ripe grapefruit, beautifully red strawberries, sweet white grapes, or that perfect apple are all astonishingly different and astonishingly wonderful. No one will mistake one for the other, but it is rather rare to meet someone who doesn’t like fruit. The textures are also all different: raspberries are not at all like melon, and no one will mistake a peach for a pear, in the dark or with the lights on.

On fruit

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When asked about my favorite fruit, I’m sure I would have to say fresh cherries with strawberries running a strong second with the kiwi coming in third. Can you ever get enough fruit? I suppose we should ask Adam, but he’s not here, so we’ll move on. Apples and oranges, bananas and pineapple, I can already feel the juice running down my chin. Nature’s own fresh candy, it’s sweet and delicious, a delight to the sense of taste and smell, touch to a certain extent. Not a huge fan of mango, but it’s because I’m allergic. Grapes, watermelon, lemons, limes, grapefruit, pomegranate. Fruit is a dark object of sensuous desire, the colors and textures yearn to split and eaten, juice running everywhere, down your chin, your hands and elbows, you grab for a napkin to clean up. It’s the sugar, of course, which we crave. Eat a banana–it has one of the highest sugar contents in the fruit world. What redeems fruit are all the vitamins and minerals they contain. I also think that sugary fruit, the object of desire, is redeemed by its aesthetics and its taste. The taste of a ripe grapefruit, beautifully red strawberries, sweet white grapes, or that perfect apple are all astonishingly different and astonishingly wonderful. No one will mistake one for the other, but it is rather rare to meet someone who doesn’t like fruit. The textures are also all different: raspberries are not at all like melon, and no one will mistake a peach for a pear, in the dark or with the lights on.

On (not) eating healthy

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I try to eat healthy, but I don’t have to like it. Actually, I have no intention of trying to eat “healthy” to either improve my health or lengthen my life. I think that most foods which are marketed as healthy are a marketing gimmick designed to play off of the fears of an unthinking consumer market that thinks it can buy health. I figure that since my grandfather ate half-cooked bacon, ate doughnuts fried in lard, loved brown gravy on his pork chops, and lived to age 92, I’ve got a fighting chance of making 92 as well. I eat steak and butter, despise tofu with a pure passion, think rabbits are well-fed with lettuce (but I’m not), love blueberry pie, and am a connoisseur of chocolate in its endless varieties and mutations. Bacon is good, but popped rice cakes were invented by someone who was very unhappy with life. Trying to count calories will only lead to frustration and unhappiness unless you are trying to see how many calories you can actually consume in one day and not get sick. The joke will be on all of us when we find out the most health food, or food that producers claim to be healthy, has no effect on how long we live or how healthy we are. If you eat average quantities of food and stay away from sugary drinks, you will probably be okay no matter what you eat. I often get the feeling that “low-fat” products are really just “high-sugar” and “high salt” products instead. I think that eating old-fashioned, home-cooked meals in an orderly normal fashion will probably do you no harm no matter what you eat. Probably the only food which is excessively bad for all of us is too much sugar, which was not a large part of our diet as we evolved on the pampas and plains of Africa a million years ago. We get into unhealthy eating habits, not because the food is unhealthy, but because we are way too sedentary today for our own good.

On (not) eating healthy

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I try to eat healthy, but I don’t have to like it. Actually, I have no intention of trying to eat “healthy” to either improve my health or lengthen my life. I think that most foods which are marketed as healthy are a marketing gimmick designed to play off of the fears of an unthinking consumer market that thinks it can buy health. I figure that since my grandfather ate half-cooked bacon, ate doughnuts fried in lard, loved brown gravy on his pork chops, and lived to age 92, I’ve got a fighting chance of making 92 as well. I eat steak and butter, despise tofu with a pure passion, think rabbits are well-fed with lettuce (but I’m not), love blueberry pie, and am a connoisseur of chocolate in its endless varieties and mutations. Bacon is good, but popped rice cakes were invented by someone who was very unhappy with life. Trying to count calories will only lead to frustration and unhappiness unless you are trying to see how many calories you can actually consume in one day and not get sick. The joke will be on all of us when we find out the most health food, or food that producers claim to be healthy, has no effect on how long we live or how healthy we are. If you eat average quantities of food and stay away from sugary drinks, you will probably be okay no matter what you eat. I often get the feeling that “low-fat” products are really just “high-sugar” and “high salt” products instead. I think that eating old-fashioned, home-cooked meals in an orderly normal fashion will probably do you no harm no matter what you eat. Probably the only food which is excessively bad for all of us is too much sugar, which was not a large part of our diet as we evolved on the pampas and plains of Africa a million years ago. We get into unhealthy eating habits, not because the food is unhealthy, but because we are way too sedentary today for our own good.

On ice cream

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Is there a more superfluous food than ice cream? Sugar, sugar, and more sugar, and nobody needs more sugar. Perhaps what is wrong with the consumer mentality is emblematic of what is wrong with eating ice cream. No doubt that ice cream is one of the funnest, most delightful on the face of the earth to eat, but nobody needs ice cream to survive. There is no essential nutrient or vitamin that is only contained in ice cream which means we eat ice cream, not to survive, but because we are slaves to our hedonistic natures, which are fulfilled by all the sugar and fat in ice cream. Let’s face it, there are fewer more tasty delights in this world than a banana split made with vanilla ice cream, chocolate, strawberry, and pineapple toppings, a nice, ripe banana, lots of whipped cream, and covered with a sprinkling of chopped walnuts–with a healthy dose of caramel drizzled over the whole thing. People pay good money for that sort of treat, but who needs that kind of sugar in their life. Ice cream is emblematic of societal excess. A society is too successful if they can dedicate resources, time, and energy into the production of food that serves no nutritional end. Sure, one might argue that this is just another dairy product and that people can benefit from the calcium, some trace minerals and vitamins, if they eat ice cream, but the benefits have to be minimal when one considers all of the sugar and cholesterol that they will also be consuming, so what is the benefit, then, of eating ice cream? Is it possible that there is more to life and nutrition and health than just eating broccoli? I mean, I like broccoli as much as the next guy, but can man live by broccoli alone? Certainly, I have picked an extreme case with broccoli (which I love to put into my salads, by the way), but nobody would classify broccoli as a “fun” food. Yet, is it necessary to have “fun” foods? Perhaps nutritionists have studied why we like to eat caramelized walnuts and whipped cream, quadruple mocha lattes with extra whipped cream and caramel, or bananas foster, but I’m also sure that there answers would always be rather unscientific and subjective because who can turn down any of those things? I suspect that mental well-being, bolstered by the ingestion of delightful food, might lead to a healthy, well-fed person if they don’t ingest so much as to become as big as the great outdoors. This is, however, the rub: we love to eat fun foods, but they essentially bad for us in large quantities, so the trick is to learn moderation–eat a little instead of a lot. Yet, I would also say that for human beings this is almost an insurmountable paradox. Gluttony did not make it onto the list of the seven deadly sins for nothing. Human beings are by their very nature incredibly gluttonous because long ago, when food was scarce, only the gluttonous survived to pass on their genetic material–the thin, moderate folks were eliminated long, long ago, which brings us back to ice cream, a super-food that can give you the energy you need to get up and get all those important chores done, such as surviving until the next day. If you survive until the next day, you may have offspring, carbon copies of yourself who will have the same gluttonous motivations that were underpinning your own success. Go ahead, enjoy with heightened delight and glee your next bowl of ice cream.

On ice cream

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Is there a more superfluous food than ice cream? Sugar, sugar, and more sugar, and nobody needs more sugar. Perhaps what is wrong with the consumer mentality is emblematic of what is wrong with eating ice cream. No doubt that ice cream is one of the funnest, most delightful on the face of the earth to eat, but nobody needs ice cream to survive. There is no essential nutrient or vitamin that is only contained in ice cream which means we eat ice cream, not to survive, but because we are slaves to our hedonistic natures, which are fulfilled by all the sugar and fat in ice cream. Let’s face it, there are fewer more tasty delights in this world than a banana split made with vanilla ice cream, chocolate, strawberry, and pineapple toppings, a nice, ripe banana, lots of whipped cream, and covered with a sprinkling of chopped walnuts–with a healthy dose of caramel drizzled over the whole thing. People pay good money for that sort of treat, but who needs that kind of sugar in their life. Ice cream is emblematic of societal excess. A society is too successful if they can dedicate resources, time, and energy into the production of food that serves no nutritional end. Sure, one might argue that this is just another dairy product and that people can benefit from the calcium, some trace minerals and vitamins, if they eat ice cream, but the benefits have to be minimal when one considers all of the sugar and cholesterol that they will also be consuming, so what is the benefit, then, of eating ice cream? Is it possible that there is more to life and nutrition and health than just eating broccoli? I mean, I like broccoli as much as the next guy, but can man live by broccoli alone? Certainly, I have picked an extreme case with broccoli (which I love to put into my salads, by the way), but nobody would classify broccoli as a “fun” food. Yet, is it necessary to have “fun” foods? Perhaps nutritionists have studied why we like to eat caramelized walnuts and whipped cream, quadruple mocha lattes with extra whipped cream and caramel, or bananas foster, but I’m also sure that there answers would always be rather unscientific and subjective because who can turn down any of those things? I suspect that mental well-being, bolstered by the ingestion of delightful food, might lead to a healthy, well-fed person if they don’t ingest so much as to become as big as the great outdoors. This is, however, the rub: we love to eat fun foods, but they essentially bad for us in large quantities, so the trick is to learn moderation–eat a little instead of a lot. Yet, I would also say that for human beings this is almost an insurmountable paradox. Gluttony did not make it onto the list of the seven deadly sins for nothing. Human beings are by their very nature incredibly gluttonous because long ago, when food was scarce, only the gluttonous survived to pass on their genetic material–the thin, moderate folks were eliminated long, long ago, which brings us back to ice cream, a super-food that can give you the energy you need to get up and get all those important chores done, such as surviving until the next day. If you survive until the next day, you may have offspring, carbon copies of yourself who will have the same gluttonous motivations that were underpinning your own success. Go ahead, enjoy with heightened delight and glee your next bowl of ice cream.

On cinnamon toast

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I was reminded of this midwestern delicacy the other day when Garrison Keillor mentioned it in one of his status updates. Not that Garrison and I are great friends or anything, but being brought up in Minnesota during roughly the same period–he has a year or two on me–we share certain experiences in common, and cinnamon toast is one of those experiences. The recipe is simple: one hungry child, two slices of bread, a little sugar, a little cinnamon, a pat of butter, and a toaster. You swirl all of that around and you end up with a happy child with butter and cinnamon breath who now will stop whining. Perhaps what I like most about cinnamon toast is that it is a simple pleasure that never stops pleasing. You can serve cinnamon toast whenever you want to, but I find that as a snack, just after school was always the best. Although, as an adult, I find that just after midnight with a glass of fresh milk is the best time. You don’t have to be a genius to make it, and it’s hard to mess up unless you get the cinnamon and some other brown spice confused in which case it’s easy to mess up. Not too much butter, not too much sugar, and not too much cinnamon seem to be the best way to describe perfect cinnamon toast. Plain toast with butter is fine, but a little cinnamon and a little sugar go a long way in jazzing up a fairly bland experience. Crying children can be made quiet by cinnamon toast. An unhappy baby will find endless hours of fun playing with cinnamon toast bits. I’m not really sure why the butter-sugar-cinnamon combination is so appealing. I get the sugar and butter–energy–but the spicy element, the cinnamon, that’s the mystery. But maybe it’s a little mystery we all crave in Minnesota, on the tundra, in the middle of January–a warm slice of cinnamon toast that has been prepared for us by someone who love us. Just surviving the Minnesota winter is enough for most of us–we understand the relative value of even the small things in life. So when making cinnamon toast, don’t worry if the little can of cinnamon is a few years old, it’ll still work. What I like is when you sprinkle the cinnamon on the butter and it turns from light brown to dark brown–the cinnamon is active. You don’t have to grind your own special for the cinnamon toast to be very good. What you want is a little flavor, not to be overwhelmed by it. Cinnamon toast, in lieu of fancier desserts, is one of life’s great pleasures that needs to excuses or explanations. Recently I had cinnamon toast and a nice cup of Spanish café con leche, and the combination was very nice–two simple pleasures mixing together in the midst of a chaotic, fractured, non-linear sort of day. Cinnamon toast is as much about nostalgia for a simpler life as it is about smell, taste, and texture as it explodes in your mouth. Yet, it is also easy to forget if you are an adult. When was the last time you sprinkled a little cinnamon and sugar on your toast? Did you ever even learn how to spell the word, “cinnamon”? Two n’s, one m? So tonight, when it’s about have past late, and my stomach is on the prowl for something good, I’m going to go back in time and make myself a couple of pieces of cinnamon toast.

On cinnamon toast

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I was reminded of this midwestern delicacy the other day when Garrison Keillor mentioned it in one of his status updates. Not that Garrison and I are great friends or anything, but being brought up in Minnesota during roughly the same period–he has a year or two on me–we share certain experiences in common, and cinnamon toast is one of those experiences. The recipe is simple: one hungry child, two slices of bread, a little sugar, a little cinnamon, a pat of butter, and a toaster. You swirl all of that around and you end up with a happy child with butter and cinnamon breath who now will stop whining. Perhaps what I like most about cinnamon toast is that it is a simple pleasure that never stops pleasing. You can serve cinnamon toast whenever you want to, but I find that as a snack, just after school was always the best. Although, as an adult, I find that just after midnight with a glass of fresh milk is the best time. You don’t have to be a genius to make it, and it’s hard to mess up unless you get the cinnamon and some other brown spice confused in which case it’s easy to mess up. Not too much butter, not too much sugar, and not too much cinnamon seem to be the best way to describe perfect cinnamon toast. Plain toast with butter is fine, but a little cinnamon and a little sugar go a long way in jazzing up a fairly bland experience. Crying children can be made quiet by cinnamon toast. An unhappy baby will find endless hours of fun playing with cinnamon toast bits. I’m not really sure why the butter-sugar-cinnamon combination is so appealing. I get the sugar and butter–energy–but the spicy element, the cinnamon, that’s the mystery. But maybe it’s a little mystery we all crave in Minnesota, on the tundra, in the middle of January–a warm slice of cinnamon toast that has been prepared for us by someone who love us. Just surviving the Minnesota winter is enough for most of us–we understand the relative value of even the small things in life. So when making cinnamon toast, don’t worry if the little can of cinnamon is a few years old, it’ll still work. What I like is when you sprinkle the cinnamon on the butter and it turns from light brown to dark brown–the cinnamon is active. You don’t have to grind your own special for the cinnamon toast to be very good. What you want is a little flavor, not to be overwhelmed by it. Cinnamon toast, in lieu of fancier desserts, is one of life’s great pleasures that needs to excuses or explanations. Recently I had cinnamon toast and a nice cup of Spanish café con leche, and the combination was very nice–two simple pleasures mixing together in the midst of a chaotic, fractured, non-linear sort of day. Cinnamon toast is as much about nostalgia for a simpler life as it is about smell, taste, and texture as it explodes in your mouth. Yet, it is also easy to forget if you are an adult. When was the last time you sprinkled a little cinnamon and sugar on your toast? Did you ever even learn how to spell the word, “cinnamon”? Two n’s, one m? So tonight, when it’s about have past late, and my stomach is on the prowl for something good, I’m going to go back in time and make myself a couple of pieces of cinnamon toast.