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Day 4: Help On the Way with former Sugar Shrew Connie Bennett!
Who do you call in the middle of the night – OK, it’s not quite 11 p.m. here in France but I’d argue it’s always dark without sweets – when you’re thinking of slipping? Maybe sneaking out to buy a small bar of Milka chocolate? Like, who would really know, right? Just a small bar. One euro. What harm could it do?
You call the Queen of the Sugar-Free of course. Connie Bennett!
Connie, who sometimes calls herself “Sugar Shrew No More” presides over an empire helping people kick sugar.
Her HQ is her Sugar Shock website and she has a book, a blog – and about 900 other cunning and insidious ways to help you kick the habit.
Tomorrow – Day 5 – Connie is going to coach me by telephone from Chicago as I bitch and whine my way through my first candy-free week.
I’ll be interviewing her as well. My planned opening salvo?
“Connie, I’m not even sure I really do want to quit. A year – or a lifetime – without sweets? Who I am kidding? Who are you kidding?”
I’ll be posting the coaching session and interview online tomorrow.
P.S. I did not go buy that Milka chocolate bar. Yet
Ta,
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Day 4: I Hate Everyone
Wait, is that too harsh?
OK, I hate only certain people – everyone I ran into today on a rainy, windy miserable day in the south of France (yes we have those kinds of days here.) I had to deal some bureaucrats and doctors and it was an exercise in frustration – trying to solve problems and being blamed for said problems.
Was it someone, um, French who said, “Hell is other people?” Merci bien, Jean-Paul Sartre.
Victim much? Today, yes! And I felt sorry for myself which I almost never, ever do. It was the kind of day that started off on a bad foot (literally, see above doctor reference) and just got worse.
Coincidentally, today was also my fourth day of going without eating candy, cookies, ice cream, cake or… anything fun.
In other news, I’ve been ironing my hair shirt and it looks very chic on me as I lie on my bed of nails and read literature from Opus Dei. I like to get a good night’s sleep after spooning down my thin gruel, chewing on a crust of dark stale bread and downing my thimbleful of wheatgrass juice.
I mean, what else is there to when you can’t have what you want?
And what do I want? So glad you asked.
And what do I want some of the above spooned onto?
Guess what I am having instead? At this very moment I am drinking a large glass of water containing a fizzy orange tablet of magnesium. What, no castor oil chaser? Cod liver oil a la mode?
Good times!
Anyway, the magnesium is to help the sugar cravings which I have every day.
As you can see, the honeymoon is officially over with a mere 361 days to go in my Year Without Candy. I so felt that void today. Trying to kick sugar is worse when you’re running around and the weather is crap and people are annoying.
I wanted to go to the tabacs, newsstands, kiosks that are everywhere and just pop a Mars bar to take the edge off. I almost felt the void today where candy would usually be more than the craving for candy itself.
I don’t like the void.
But I haven’t had any candy or sweets yet. Yet.
Damn, I really am taking on water.
Ta,
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Day 3: Sleeping with the Enemy!
We have a new follower from the white side – white sugar that is.
Todocandy is for candy addicts, with candy blog reviews, candy lists, mouthwatering (sorry) candy ads.
We are featured today along with other reviews on what the site calls “Candy Tuesdays.”
They say: “Do you think its possible as a candy addict that you could go without eating sweets & candy for a year? Honestly, I’m a very disciplined person however a year is a very long time to me.. But Dana Kennedy an American Journalist living in France is prepared to do just that — NO CANDY FOR A YEAR! Check out her blog, I’m sure it will be a success. I’ll be following it!”
Thanks for the thumbs up, Todocandy, stay in touch!
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Day 3: The Early White Sugar Conspiracy!
When you’re kicking sweets, there’s no one better to read than William Dufty, ex-boyfriend of ancient movie star Gloria “I am big! It’s the pictures that got small” Swanson. Dufty wrote the gold standard of anti-sugar books, “Sugar Blues” in 1975.
Read here for a chilling excerpt from “Sugar Blues” or check out a shorter segment of it that I’ve added below:
Here’s what Dufty wrote about the early “sugar pushers” and how they spun sugar myths so hard that white sugar became imbedded and encrusted in American food and American diets for generations to come.
SUCROSE: “PURE” ENERGY AT A PRICE
When calories became the big thing in the 1920s, and everybody was learning to count them, the sugar pushers turned up with a new pitch. They boasted there were 2,500 calories in a pound of sugar. A little over a quarter-pound of sugar would produce 20 per cent of the total daily quota.
“If you could buy all your food energy as cheaply as you buy calories in sugar,” they told us, “your board bill for the year would be very low. If sugar were seven cents a pound, it would cost less than $35 for a whole year.”
A very inexpensive way to kill yourself.
“Of course, we don’t live on any such unbalanced diet,” they admitted later. “But that figure serves to point out how inexpensive sugar is as an energy-building food. What was once a luxury only a privileged few could enjoy is now a food for the poorest of people.”
Later, the sugar pushers advertised that sugar was chemically pure, topping Ivory soap in that department, being 99.9 per cent pure against Ivory’s vaunted 99.44 per cent. “No food of our everyday diet is purer,” we were assured.
What was meant by purity, besides the unarguable fact that all vitamins, minerals, salts, fibres and proteins had been removed in the refining process? Well, the sugar pushers came up with a new slant on purity.
“You don’t have to sort it like beans, wash it like rice. Every grain is like every other. No waste attends its use. No useless bones like in meat, no grounds like coffee.”
“Pure” is a favourite adjective of the sugar pushers because it means one thing to the chemists and another thing to the ordinary mortals. When honey is labelled pure, this means that it is in its natural state (stolen directly from the bees who made it), with no adulteration with sucrose to stretch it and no harmful chemical residues which may have been sprayed on the flowers. It does not mean that the honey is free from minerals like iodine, iron, calcium, phosphorus or multiple vitamins. So effective is the purification process which sugar cane and beets undergo in the refineries that sugar ends up as chemically pure as the morphine or the heroin a chemist has on the laboratory shelves. What nutritional virtue this abstract chemical purity represents, the sugar pushers never tell us.
Beginning with World War I, the sugar pushers coated their propaganda with a preparedness pitch. “Dietitians have known the high food value of sugar for a long time,” said an industry tract of the 1920s. “But it took World War I to bring this home. The energy-building power of sugar reaches the muscles in minutes and it was of value to soldiers as a ration given them just before an attack was launched.” The sugar pushers have been harping on the energy-building power of sucrose for years because it contains nothing else. Caloric energy and habit-forming taste: that’s what sucrose has, and nothing else.
All other foods contain energy plus. All foods contain some nutrients in the way of proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins or minerals, or all of these. Sucrose contains caloric energy, period.
The “quick” energy claim the sugar pushers talk about, which drives reluctant doughboys over the top and drives children up the wall, is based on the fact that refined sucrose is not digested in the mouth or the stomach but passes directly to the lower intestines and thence to the bloodstream. The extra speed with which sucrose enters the bloodstream does more harm than good.
Much of the public confusion about refined sugar is compounded by language. Sugars are classified by chemists as “carbohydrates”. This manufactured word means “a substance containing carbon with oxygen and hydrogen”. If chemists want to use these hermetic terms in their laboratories when they talk to one another, fine. The use of the word “carbohydrate” outside the laboratory-especially in food labelling and advertising lingo-to describe both natural, complete cereal grains (which have been a principal food of mankind for thousands of years) and man-refined sugar (which is a manufactured drug and principal poison of mankind for only a few hundred years) is demonstrably wicked. This kind of confusion makes possible the flimflam practised by sugar pushers to confound anxious mothers into thinking kiddies need sugar to survive.
In 1973, the Sugar Information Foundation placed full-page advertisements in national magazines. Actually, the ads were disguised retractions they were forced to make in a strategic retreat after a lengthy tussle with the Federal Trade Commission over an earlier ad campaign claiming that a little shot of sugar before meals would “curb” your appetite. “You need carbohydrates. And it so happens that sugar is the best-tasting carbohydrate.” You might as well say everybody needs liquids every day. It so happens that many people find champagne is the best-tasting liquid. How long would the Women’s Christian Temperance Union let the liquor lobby get away with that one?
The use of the word “carbohydrate” to describe sugar is deliberately misleading. Since the improved labelling of nutritional properties was required on packages and cans, refined carbohydrates like sugar are lumped together with those carbohydrates which may or may not be refined. The several types of carbohydrates are added together for an overall carbohydrate total. Thus, the effect of the label is to hide the sugar content from the unwary buyer. Chemists add to the confusion by using the word “sugar” to describe an entire group of substances that are similar but not identical.
Glucose is a sugar found usually with other sugars, in fruits and vegetables. It is a key material in the metabolism of all plants and animals. Many of our principal foods are converted into glucose in our bodies. Glucose is always present in our bloodstream, and it is often called “blood sugar”.
Dextrose, also called “corn sugar”, is derived synthetically from starch. Fructose is fruit sugar. Maltose is malt sugar. Lactose is milk sugar. Sucrose is refined sugar made from sugar cane and sugar beet.
Glucose has always been an essential element in the human bloodstream. Sucrose addiction is something new in the history of the human animal. To use the word “sugar” to describe two substances which are far from being identical, which have different chemical structures and which affect the body in profoundly different ways compounds confusion.
It makes possible more flimflam from the sugar pushers who tell us how important sugar is as an essential component of the human body, how it is oxidised to produce energy, how it is metabolised to produce warmth, and so on. They’re talking about glucose, of course, which is manufactured in our bodies. However, one is led to believe that the manufacturers are talking about the sucrose which is made in their refineries. When the word “sugar” can mean the glucose in your blood as well as the sucrose in your Coca-Cola, it’s great for the sugar pushers but it’s rough on everybody else.
People have been bamboozled into thinking of their bodies the way they think of their cheque accounts. If they suspect they have low blood sugar, they are programmed to snack on vending machine candies and sodas in order to raise their blood sugar level. Actually, this is the worst thing to do. The level of glucose in their blood is apt to be low because they are addicted to sucrose. People who kick sucrose addiction and stay off sucrose find that the glucose level of their blood returns to normal and stays there.
Since the late 1960s, millions of Americans have returned to natural food. A new type of store, the natural food store, has encouraged many to become dropouts from the supermarket. Natural food can be instrumental in restoring health. Many people, therefore, have come to equate the word “natural” with “healthy”. So the sugar pushers have begun to pervert the word “natural” in order to mislead the public.
“Made from natural ingredients”, the television sugar-pushers tell us about product after product. The word “from” is not accented on television. It should be. Even refined sugar is made from natural ingredients. There is nothing new about that. The natural ingredients are cane and beets. But that four-letter word “from” hardly suggests that 90 per cent of the cane and beet have been removed. Heroin, too, could be advertised as being made from natural ingredients. The opium poppy is as natural as the sugar beet. It’s what man does with it that tells the story.
If you want to avoid sugar in the supermarket, there is only one sure way. Don’t buy anything unless it says on the label prominently, in plain English: “No sugar added”. Use of the word “carbohydrate” as a “scientific” word for sugar has become a standard defence strategy with sugar pushers and many of their medical apologists. It’s their security blanket.
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Day 2: Wanting… Chocolate
I’d give today a B+ in terms of sugar cravings – partly because I was so busy.
I had to give a talk to university students at the SKEMA business school in Sophia Antipolis north of Nice.
Then I got back and wrote a Huffington Post article about giving up candy and this blog. Then I was plunged into a crazy story about Italy’s wacky Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and the showgirls he’s nominated to represent his party in regional elections.
But at 4 p.m. I felt that familiar pull – toward sugar.
I wanted to get up and go down the street to my favorite confiserie L’Art Gourmand, located at 21, rue du Marché and buy one of their four euro tablets of pure milk chocolate manufactured on the premises.
But I didn’t. At least not for today.
That’s the beauty of this blog. It’s so selfish. It’s not for you.
It’s for me. You’re my conscience. Whether you’re reading this or not.
When the sugar cravings come, I think of you.
And how this Piglet has to keep swimming.
Until next time,
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Day 1: Join Me. Go Candy-Free, Chocolate-Free, Ice Cream and Cake-Free for a Year!
We’ll suffer rejoice together in sugar-free
hellheaven while white-knuckling it taking it one day at a time! Join whenever you want and keep track of your own 365 days by just adjusting them to the day count of the blog.Last-century’s steroid-free superstud Jack LaLanne (still kicking butt at age 95) calls us “sugarholics.” Worse, he says we’re “soft and weak.”
(BTW, is there anyone hotter than Jack in his jumpsuit? “Students!”)
Check out the below video of Jack exhorting us to get off sugar but don’t miss this fantastic interview with LaLanne in Outside magazine. I love him because he admits he’s just as bad as any of us – he just has ferocious discipline. Here’s how Jack responded to the interviewer asking him if he ever, God forbid, snacked before bedtime.
“Never!” he snarled. “You don’t get it. I am one runaway son of a bitch! I am an animal! I want to eat everything! I want to get drunk every single night! I want to screw every woman there is! We are all wild animals. But we must learn to use our minds. We must learn to control the bestial and sensual sides of ourselves!”
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Day 1: Yesterday was My Last Day Eating Sweets (Allegedly)
Yesterday was my birthday. I had a lovely day. It was a special day, too.
Why? Well, yesterday was another in a long-ish series of one special last day before I give up sweets days. See also: New Year’s Eve. Everytime I do this, I’ve got to make sure I eat plenty of my favorite candies for old times sake – just this one last time.
I don’t always eat that many sweets every day either. Sometimes just one candy bar or one (okay, two) scoops of ice cream will do. Not a binger – I just want some sweetmeat every single day of my life. I’m consistent.
So for my latest last candy supper, I bought 15 milk chocolate palets (small, thin discs of pure milk chocolate) and 15 caramel palets at the chocolate shop behind the famous Hotel Negresco yesterday. (I live in the south of France, remember.) I also got a frozen Mars ice cream bar and a frozen Bounty ice cream bar at the Epicerie Centrale right below my apartment.
The guys at the Epicerie Centrale mock me when I buy my beloved nutrition-free 50 centime bags of Haribo Polka candies and ask me if the packages are for “les enfants.” (No, you height-challenged, broad shoulder-free jerks.) And yes I bought two bags yesterday.
I also ate two Carambars, an American-type French caramel that I adore:
The way it works with me is that I’m my own “enfant.” Which means that when I let myself have whatever I want, sometimes I don’t even want it – and vice versa.
Yesterday, since it was birthday and also my last day before giving up sweets, my rule (as it always is) is that I could eat whatever I wanted. Yet this Piglet didn’t even want her second ice cream bar. But she ate it before midnight so she wouldn’t get up and eat it first thing Feb. 28, 2010 and abort this blog before it was even born.
Thanks for reading and… keep coming back. I need your support.
I must at least keep my snout above water.
Ta,
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Day 1: I succeeded once giving up candy – for almost two years. Really I did!
I actually did give up sweets one other time, for close to two years. My super-inspiring friend Michael Mitchell, who runs the amazing Body Soul Adventures in Paraty, Brazil (Go!) challenged me to give up Starbucks Frappucinos and sweets in early 2002. I tried it for a month and kept going!
I did so well that I didn’t touch sweets once, even during an unpleasant breakup with an unpleasant man. But my Waterloo Candyloo came over the Christmas holidays in 2003 when I was climbing Mount Roraima in Venezuela. (You can read my New York Times article here.) The last three-hour slog up steep boulders was tough and our Indian guide handed us a big yellow box of Brazilian chocolates like the serpent offering Eve the apple. Mmmm, yum.
Bingo – exit Sugar-Free Paradise. I slipped down that slope so fast back into Candyland I never looked back. Six months later I went to Burning Man in Black Rock City, Nev. We had to bring our own food in for a week – and we packed a lot of candy purchased in bulk at a Wal-Mart.
I’d never had a weight problem before. But returning to sugar after a two-year absence screwed something up in my metabolism. I put on 15 pounds in 2004.
Since then, I’ve struggled to return to Candy-Free Eden – to no avail. Will this time be the charm?
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DAY 1: Yes, I love candy corn. Bite it not me, snobs!
Hello sweetfreaks,
You’re wondering about that gorgeous image of candy corn fronting this brand-new blog?
What, just because I’m a super-sophisticated American* living in the south of France you were expecting pictures of tiramisu, pain au chocolat, creme caramel, crepes Nutella, moelleux au chocolat (OMG my favorite with the melted chocolate tunnel hole,) milles feuilles, apple tatin, strawberry and mascarpone trifle, coconut flan etc.?
Yes, I love the above stuff. But I also love the down-market American rotgut just as much, maybe even more. Sorry, despite the scorn heaped on me for years by my friends frenemies, I like cheap American candy. But candy corn? Yes, it’s a proud tradition in the motherland, dating back to the 1880s, according to candy corn historians.
Of course candy corn haters abound. Just read this entry
Let’s just say they quote Oscar Wilde saying, “If I had a choice between eating candy corn or an elephants anus, I would choose the candy corn. But still, you get my point.”Candy corn isn’t necessarily my favorite candy but it’s right up there and as this year progresses, it’ll no doubt surface in my candy cravings and candy dreams.
Today is the first day of My Year Without Candy. It was my birthday yesterday and I decided to give up make the choice to abstain from my addiction of choice – candy, ice cream, cakes and all manner of sweet treats – for at least a year.
Bear in mind, I’ve planned special last days to mark me going cold turkey making the sensible choice to abstain from this damaging vice maybe a million times.
My Catholic cousin Kathleen wanted us to go off bad stuff for Lent this year and I agreed even though I was not raised Catholic. Rebellious mother, long story. (Though I was baptized, confusing much?, and I just recently found out from an understandably bitter Irish Catholic that I recently interviewed that you are considered forever Catholic if you are baptized. WTF? If you want to “defect,” you have to do this.)
Anyway I told Kathleen sure, I’ll give up sweets for Lent. I lasted two days but did not tell her until now. Sorry, Kathleen.
Right now I’m about six hours into my Year Without Candy. Wish me luck. I’m on the honor system here and yes I am an honorable person. I fall off the wagon, this blog disappears from view forever.
Wish me luck, b’s.
Sweetly,
DK
*
About
Recent Posts
- Day 365: Tell the Women of Congo You Love Them!
- Day 364: What If the World Did End in 2012?
- Day 363: Twilight of the Dictators, Twilight of No Candy
- Day 353: Howl of a Candy Addict
- Day 351: Self-Deprivation Sucks
Archives
- February 2011 (8)
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- June 2010 (11)
- May 2010 (16)
- April 2010 (35)
- March 2010 (40)
- February 2010 (4)
Sugar Free Days
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