Mille Feuille and 7 Tricks to Tame Your Sweet Tooth

Pickled herring, pasta and tomato salad

Food Diary (May 18, 2011)

Breakfast: Rye sourdough toast

Lunch: Pickled herring, pasta and tomato salad

Dinner: Rye sourdough toast with veges in oyster sauce and red curry white beans and potatoes (leftover from yesterday)

Baking/sweets: Easy 4-Ingredient Coconut Cookies

Those damn cookies. I had no intention of consuming sugar today. Unfortunately the Easy 4-Ingredient Coconut Cookies are easy, far too easy. I use my coffee measuring spoon intended for the espresso machine for measuring the ingredients. The measuring spoon holds enough to make 3 cookies and the dough is ready to rock and roll in just a few minutes. Today I made two lots of 3 cookies. Its not much, the damage could have been far worse if my willpower was weak today. 

I used oil instead of butter and they tasted just as delicious. The afternoon run hopefully that took care of the sugar. Afterwards I read an article that mentions the effect of consuming omega-6 and sugar together. Its explained more below, after you drool over the picture of the mille feuille.

Today's Favourite Photo

Source: Camemberu

Mille Feuille

Today’s Favourite Blog

Source: Care2

An excellent article titled “7 Tricks to Tame Your Sweet Tooth”. You may or may not agree with the 7 tricks, nevertheless at least some are bound to be interesting. Here’s a summary:

1.      Put protein, healthy fat and fiber in the mix. All of them slow down the digestion process, averting blood-sugar spikes.

2.      Prioritize low-sugar fruit. Not all fruits are created equal. Some fruits, such as bananas, convert to sugar more quickly than others

3.      Treat all sugars equally. “The taste buds don’t care if you’re eating raw sugar or high-fructose corn syrup,” says David Katz, MD. “If you bathe them in sweetness, they are going to want more, more, more.”

4.      Do the math. A gram of sugar is hard to picture. Four grams of sugar equals a teaspoon. In 2009, the American Heart Association advised adults to eat no more than 6 teaspoons of added sugars a day for women and 9 teaspoons for men. That does not seem that much. Woman can consume up to 0,7kg per month while man have a slightly higher limit at 1,1kg.

5.      Don’t fall for fake. Artificial sweeteners, often used in diet drinks, are non-caloric chemicals designed to stimulate the sweet receptors in the mouth. Aside from their questionable safety, a pressing concern is that these chemicals are up to 600 times sweeter than sugar itself. “When people rely on artificial sweeteners, they tend to prefer all of their other foods sweeter because the intensity of the sweetener propagates a sweet tooth,” says Katz. “You are simply cultivating a preference for more sugar.”

6.      Curb omega-6 fatty acids. High levels of carbohydrates, including sugar, in the diet activate the enzymes that convert the omega-6 fatty acids found in common vegetable oils, such as soy, corn and safflower oil, into arachidonic acid, the building block necessary to generate cellular inflammation, says Barry Sears, PhD, creator of the Zone Diet and author of the Anti-Inflammation Zone: Reversing the Silent Epidemic That’s Destroying Our Health (Harper Collins, 2005). “A diet rich in refined carbohydrates and omega-6 fats is like adding a lighted match to a barrel of gasoline. Americans have been doing this for 30 years.” I did not know this. Omega-6 is good for you but not when combined with sugar.

7.      Limit fruit juice. Fiber is what makes fruit filling. Depending on its size, an orange may pack up to 4 teaspoons of sugar, but that sugar is absorbed over a couple of hours. Compare that to the 8 teaspoons of sugar in 8 ounces of orange juice that is absorbed in 20 minutes. “That sugar is hyper-absorbed,” says Henry Lodge, MD.

Maybe I can make a rule that replaces all of the above rules. Bugger all the rules, eat what you want in moderation and exercise regularly. If you try to follow every rule you will get a headache and this is not healthy!