On Sugar

by Virginia Eaton

Unless you’ve been living completely off the grid, you know that sugar is the new dietary villain, almost as vile as cigarettes — and for good reason. Sugar is addicting and adding on the pounds isn’t the only way that sugar harms the body. Insulin levels are disrupted by sugar, your mood is altered by sugar, and depending on the type of sugar, your liver can be damaged in the same way as over consuming alcohol.

Unfortunately, avoiding sugar isn’t as easy as one would think! Reading labels doesn’t always reveal ‘sugar’ because manufactures hide it with a host of names.

Given all the guises of sugar, even when the label declares, “No Added Sugar”, that doesn’t mean that sugar has not been added.  There are lots of ways to sweeten up processed and manufactured food and just because it’s with fruit juice or evaporated cane syrup doesn’t mean your body hasn’t been given a big dose of the sweet-stuff!

Here is a list of sugar found in food in spite of, “No Added Sugar” being in bold lettering on the label:

• Agave nectar

• Barley malt

• Beet sugar

• Blackstrap molasses

• Brown rice syrup

• Buttered syrup

• Cane juice crystals

• Cane sugar

• Caramel

• Carob syrup

• Castor sugar

• Corn syrup

• Crystalline fructose

• Date sugar

• Dextran

• Dextrose

• Diastatic malt

• Diatase

• Ethyl maltol

• Evaporated cane juice

• Florida crystals

• Fructose

• Fruit juice

• Fruit juice concentrate

• Galactose

• Glucose

• Glucose solids

• Golden syrup

• Grape sugar

• High-fructose corn syrup

• Honey

• Lactose

• Malt syrup

• Maltose

• Maple syrup

• Molasses

• Muscovado sugar

• Organic raw sugar

• Raw sugar

• Refiner’s syrup

• Rice syrup

• Sorghum syrup

• Sucrose

• Treacle

All of the above items are sugar in disguise. Many of these forms of sugar contain fructose, which should be avoided when not consumed in its natural habitat—fruit. When removed from fruit, fructose is often unintentionally consumed in large quantities (think super-size sodas and slushy-type drinks) and can be detrimental to the body in the same way as alcohol.

Fructose is not processed in the blood using insulin like glucose; it has to travel to the liver to be broken down for use or storage. When you consume large amounts of fructose on a regular basis your liver can become stressed to the point of developing fatty liver disease, which is the non-alcoholic version of cirrhosis of the liver, from which alcoholics eventually suffer.

Manufactured foods that often contain fructose are:

• Soda

• Fruit juice

• Energy drinks

• Fancy coffee drinks

• Sweetened teas

• Breakfast cereals

• Candy bars

• Condiments such as catsup, salad dressing and BBQ sauce

Reading labels is a good habit but, unfortunately, food companies have been given such latitude on how they label their ingredients that you won’t know how much or what type sugar you’re consuming unless you know the how sugar is being disguised.

Be smart, don’t just look at the front of a food package where the marketing is taking place; turning your wrist and interpreting the ingredient label on the other side could save your waistline and maybe even your life.

Virginia Eaton is a health and fitness coach helping people reorganize priorities.

The Magic Potential of Peppercorns

by Virginia Eaton

I owe my ex-husband an apology. He loves black pepper and tops every savory dish placed in front of him with a substantial amount of ground peppercorn. He said that, aside from the spice and flavor black pepper adds, he really liked the crunch of coarsely ground peppercorns.

It bothered me to no end that, before even tasting the dish that I had cooked, he was spicing it up with pepper. He rarely added salt. I even asked that he at least taste the dish before adding more seasoning. Eventually, it became the family joke and the pepper grinder lived next to his place at the dinner table. The reason I owe him an apology is because, as I was researching foods for the class I gave in Utah on eating with celiac disease, I came across compelling information about the health benefits of black pepper.

The hard science on the subject is slim and relates mostly to isolated molecules found in black pepper, rather than black pepper as a whole food. However, the tradition of using black pepper as a home remedy for a myriad of conditions is long standing. It’s noted for maladies including fever, congestion, arthritis, and stomach issues.

It is thought of as an antimicrobial agent, killing bacteria and fungi, that increases the bio-availability of certain foods. This means that black pepper can unlock certain nutrients, making it easier for our body to absorb them.

For instance, everyone seems to be talking about the health properties of turmeric as an anti-inflammatory, however unless you’re combining your turmeric with black pepper, you probably won’t see any benefit. If you take a bottled turmeric preparation, read the label: most likely, black pepper will be on there.

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One of the most surprising healing properties of black pepper is in reducing symptoms of heartburn and other stomach issues. Many of the drugs used to treat heartburn have been discovered to be problematic when used long term  so I was thrilled to have a new way of approaching this condition.

Using a variation of a recipe from my favorite herb book, (Alchemy of Herbs by Rosalee De La Foret) I create little pepper bombs, offering them to everyone before a large meal, or to anyone who tends towards heartburn.

The recipe is simple — equal amounts of black pepper, long pepper (a type of black pepper) and dried ginger that are ground in my coffee grinder and then bound with just enough honey to hold the spices together. If you add too much honey and the spices won’t hold together simply add more of the spices until it is the consistency of bread dough.

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I typically use one tablespoon of each of the spices and about a half to one tablespoon of honey, added a teaspoon at a time. Rolling these into little balls about the size of a pea, I then coat them in dried fennel powder. You can swallow these whole if you don’t like the flavor or chew them up before a hefty meal to prepare the stomach for what is to come!

My mother says they have the unfortunate appearance of something at the bottom of a rabbit hutch, which may be true. They are tasty, nonetheless. The effects of these little pepper balls have pleasantly surprised everyone who has partaken, and the antacids have been returned to the medicine cabinet.

A word of caution: since black pepper increases the bio-availability of certain substances, if you take prescription medications, please check with your doctor before increasing the amount of black pepper in your diet.

Note: The long pepper is a variety of pepper that with complex flavor unlike black peppercorns and can be ordered online.

Virginia Eaton is a health and fitness coach helping people reorganize priorities.