Decisions we make...

I have to laugh at myself from time to time as I have made decisions that matter and some that have no effect on the world at all. The reason I laugh is mostly due to the fact that I do realise any decisions I may make reaches no more than three or four people around me and even then they are taken with a pinch of salt and everyone moves on.

Inadvertently, whilst cleaning up my act, I stumbled upon SUGAR as a topic and thought it may pay me to do a little research. You see I have heard the affects that coffee and caffeine have on the system and the damage it does etc and a natural progression from cutting coffee out of my daily liquid intake includes the sugar that went with it. I discovered that I consumed in excess of 40 kg of sugar a year in my coffee alone. WHAT ? You heard me forty kilograms worth of sugar a year in coffee alone. 2 teaspoons per cup, daily cups = 8 cups = 100 grams sugar per day. Multiply that by 365 days in the year gives you 36,5 kg sugar UNDER NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES. no early morning cups - no late night working cups - no out for dinner cups etc etc...

If you research sugar you will find a whole heap of information both pro sugar and those against it. Sift through it and make up your own mind. The most startling for me was two salient points namely, a) no nutritional value to sugar at all - and I mean zero nothing. and secondly more importantly for me is that 'most' of the sugar manufacturers still use animal "Bone Char" to whiten the sugar. WHAT animal products in sugar ??? Yup you heard me, Bone Char is still used to whiten sugar. Of three major sugar producers in South Africa not one has as yet responded to my enquiries regarding the process they apply.

Please do not take this statement or pronouncement, as a knock the sugar guys, but rather my mind saying that there is enough overall evidence that Sugar is purely for taste and of no nutritional use at all. Besides the 'animal' product used to produce it there are a myriad of negatives connected to sugar that made me decide to cut it out entirely. Two weeks now and not a single grain has passed my lips. No chocolate, no sweets and nothing containing sugar. The more you research the more you discover what and how sugar affects the body. For example; it is not the sugar that makes you fat... it is the effect it has on your bodies chemistry and functions that causes your body to store the 'other' sugars.

Withdrawal symptoms from sugar? Damn right there is, for the first week of no sugar I was exhausted by 10h00. Besides the screaming headaches for most of the day i was yawning my head off only to discover with a bit of research, that the two spoons of sugar combined with my two spoons of coffee every two hours or so was my boost to keep the body on a high. Combine that with the twenty odd years of consuming sugar and coffee this way, it has to have a reaction on the body. I have just worked out the total sugar consumption for my 22 odd years of drinking it based on the details noted earlier... a staggering 803 kilograms of sugar - 197 kilograms short of a ton. WHAT STRAIN has we exposed our systems too?

Now I sound like an alarmist !!!

The folk around me have had lectures and research shoved under their noses for two weeks now and I think if I mention sugar once more someone is likely to punch me.

Hahahaha well that is done - no more sugar or sweetener ( I will not scare you with what that does to your system) from now on.

THUS DONE AND DECLARED THIS DAY 17th September 2010