Food Rules: The Edible Experiment, Week Nine

Journal Entry
Week Eight
October 29, 2010

Rule 34 “Sweeten and salt your food yourself”

So this past week I’ve really tried to work on sweetening and salting my food myself. I really feel that Pollan makes great points about the dangers of refined sugars – and I had the pleasure of attending a prayer breakfast this morning and listening to an incredible testimony from a friend and two-time breast cancer survivor, who had tried everything from traditional to alternative and herbal medicine and reflexology before undergoing her chemo, mastectomy, and radiation. She is such an incredible witness – wow, what we could all learn from the suffering she’s been through – but one of the things that stood out to me today in her talk and that she talked a lot about was food in relation to the process of ridding her body of cancer. For the two years that she was sick, she had a nutritionist who repeatedly told her that she needed to get rid of “bad carbs” and non-natural sugar (aka, anything besides honey or unprocessed sugar) and to exercise, or else she would not get rid of her cancer. She was also told to eat hormone-free meat. Now, having personally known this lady while she was going through her illness, I know that she was religiously following a strict nutritional diet that was extremely healthy. Ultimately, she did undergo radiation (twice) and chemotherapy due to the severity of her illness. However, when she told her nutritionist that her cancer had come back the second time, he blamed it on her “not eating well” and for “violating her diet,” as if it were her fault. This hurt me to hear her say this, and I cannot imagine how she must have felt when her nutritionist blamed her cancer coming back on her and pegged it as her fault! She adhered to a healthy diet so rigorously, has cut all refined sugar out of her diet, and has sacrificed so much with her bouts with cancer, that I was simply floored to hear the lack of compassion that the nutritionist had for this woman!

For in her testimony, she said that one thing which helped her stay away from all refined sugar and processed product was the very fact that when patients fasted from refined sugar before a PET scan, their results were much more accurate… because when they had not fasted from refined sugar before the scan, they (and I quote) “lit up like a Christmas tree.” In other words, the sugar had such a negative effect on their bodies that the PET scan detected the refined sugar in their system – the sugar in their system was what was showing up on the PET scan image!!!

Since reading Pollan’s book, I have switched to turbinado cane sugar and only use refined white sugar when no other sugar is available and in the shower as a body scrub (which by the way works great!) I also use Stevia – I wonder what Pollan would say on this. Stevia is supposed to be all natural (like cane) and from the Stevia plant. I used to use SweetnLow and then switched to Splenda, but having heard of all the horrible things associated with those artificial sweetners I stick to raw sugar and Stevia now.

As far as salt goes, I had been practicing salting my own food since before I read Pollan’s book, but I made a conscious effort this week to take notice of the salt I was adding to my food. I already buy “low sodium” Boar’s Head deli meat (you guys, it tastes SO much better and doesn’t leave you with that horrible overwhelmingly salty taste in your mouth!) and have noticed that since processed foods have much more sodium in them, that no “extra” salt is needed when cooking with those foods. (For example, I like American cheese in my scrambled eggs. I know that’s about as processed as you can get, and it is one of the only processed foods that I eat, but something about that melty cheese in my eggs… mmmm) Ok but seriously, I used to add cheese and salt, but now I just add cheese and pepper or paprika to give a little added flavor. There is plenty of salt in the cheese to begin with, and when you must cook with processed foods, take notice – I bet you’ll find that you don’t need any additional salt.

I think I’m going to ask Pollan about the artificial Sweetners and Stevia – I’ll suggest it as an idea for his new book! I’d love to hear the real deal with all that!