4/6/10

My Favorite Flavor...

"What is your favorite flavor that you could still consume WITHOUT added salt or sugar?"

See, I didn’t say FOOD, I said FLAVOR.

I actually expected larger gaps of time for people to respond, because it’s something I would expect that most of society has to think about. It’s not our fault, we have been completely misled on what flavor is.

Dictionary. com says this about its use as a noun; (which is how I used it)

1. Distinctive taste; savor: a flavor of smoke in bacon.

The flavor is the smoke, bacon is the food…unless I guess you want to say have bacon-flavored fries. Then the fries are altered. (I’m German, that is a food…lol) But all preaching aside….lol my point is that we have forgotten what flavor is aside from just calling it food. When you burn your toast, it has a burnt flavor to it!

Then to really add confusion, I ask what is your favorite flavor WITHOUT added sugar or salt. A person may like Cinnamon or Vanilla (and those are flavors), but have you tried either on their own? Try sticking your finger into cinnamon or pure vanilla and tell me you’d eat it while watching a movie. :)

Something I started doing years ago was drinking my blueberry tea without adding sugar or anything else. The kind I buy is just pure blueberry. Now, in all fairness blueberries have naturally occurring sugars in them but mine is so weak that I learned to identify the blueberry flavor because in a weak tea, you can’t taste the sugar, just the flavor. It caused me to look at flavor differently. Lemon is a flavor many people like, but you’ll hear them say they like it in pie or lemonade. While people say sugar brings out the taste, it essentially just adds sugar to the taste we like to make it consumable for us. This isn’t all bad, it’s just a reminder to know the difference. It’s like we should set up a taste test of flavors and see if people know them without the enhancement of salt or sugar.

For me, diving into flavor and experimenting with it makes me understand how dependent we have become on sugar and salt. Now I do know we need a "certain" amount of it in our diets, but most food if you read the ingredients has 2-3, sometimes 4-5 times the sugar or salt in one item of what we need in an entire day.

When I was doing weight-loss counseling, I would hear women say, "but I crave the salt, I need the sugar." My response, "Actually, you’ve already consumed 2000 mg of sodium in your breakfast without even knowing it. No, you don’t."

The body tends to do two things with salt and sugar;

1. It confuses you into thinking you need them because it is lacking other vitamins.

2. It becomes addicted to them based on us feeding the addiction…

Our body just goes with the flow really and works very short-term. There is a scientific breakdown of what our bodies require in a day but we tend to have no clue of how to go about filling the need.

Grabbing carbs (while our brain needs them in a 40/30/30 ratio) makes us feel better because sugar is the fastest thing to flow into the bloodstream. Instant fix! Falling off happens because your body can’t do anything else with it. It’s an empty energy that gives us a jolt, makes our heart race and then we are twice as tired when we fall. So, instead of falling, people tend to keep on going with more sugar, salt and caffeine. Imagine what the poor heart is going through!

But then one step further, I think it’s important to understand the pancreas. When you consume sugar, our pancreas secretes insulin. Insulin stores itself as fat around the middle of your body. It’s why many people only carry weight there. When you eat in a proper 40/30/30 ratio of Protein/Carbs/Fat, the pancreas functions normally and has no reason to store it, unless you are just over-eating which is another topic. You can’t consume more than you burn, that is simple mathematics.

When we eat balanced, the body doesn’t flip out and make our heart and pancreas (amongst other organs and our spine!) do crazy over-worked actions, therefore, we should have a more consistent energy in our day. (unless of course you have something genetic- I am not a Doctor)

LOVING sugar and salt is a dangerous addiction. We laugh about it, I like sweets a lot too! But there is something called moderation….and more than that, we are still coming up short with the vitamins our bodies require.

I am genuinely concerned about our health in North America, not because I want everyone to look like some svelte model, but because we have families, friends and our own art and creativity that are waiting for us to grasp life and enjoy every aspect we can! When we feel tired and sluggish, we can’t even begin to think about taking on something else. All of our energy is consumed by simply not passing out when we stand up! THAT is not living!

LOVE you guys, take care of YOU!!
Karen :)

"Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that's real power." ~Clint Eastwood

1 comment:

  1. I know it's been awhile since you wrote this....good re read for me by the way...But there was something I wanted to comment on that has been rollin in my head since your wrote this...It's SALT that brings out the flavor...not surgar...(lol...I come off sounding like a butt~head ...LOL ...I feel better for commenting that SALT thing through..it kept rollin~n~rollin in my head...hahaha ) (the things that do roll around in the head sometimes is WAY to FUNNY ~! love to ya ...You rock ~!

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