Evil sugar

Sunday:

My little boy Aiden woke this morning with a nasty vomiting bug, poor little mite. And Tim's sore back is worse today and he is trying to lie flat between helping me with vomit clean-up. Not a well household!

I certainly plan to get some exercise in regardless, but haven't yet.

I've been seeing more and more articles about how bad sugar is for us. There was an article in COSMOS (issue 47, Oct/Nov 12) about fructose destroying our livers and giving us diabetes etc, and how Americans average 22 teaspoons of added sugar a day! Mainly high fructose corn syrup. There is disagreement over whether sugar is the enemy or if we all just have to go low-GI. And there was an interesting point that testing blood sugar only tests for glucose and ignores the fructose. Still lots they don't know, about everything.

There was a mention of people on paleo diets not eating carbs, but that even Neanderthals had grains.

Humans are amazingly adaptable. Some people live on camel's milk mixed with camel's blood and get little else. Other cultures have almost excusively fatty meat with no vegetable matter. Vegans go the other way and seem to do fine with no animal protein at all. Maybe there is an "optimal" diet out there somewhere (although I expect it differs from person to person) but even with all the lifestyle dieases we have, we still live a lot longer than the 30 years or so of history.

Regardless of societal pressures to be slender, I know that I am not my optimal weight. Or rather, not my optimal fitness; as perhaps I could be this weight with more muscles, less visceral fat, yet still plenty of subcutaneous fat making me femininely curvy. But as I am I have knee, ankle and shoulder issues; get distressed in hot weather; and have pre-diabetes which is putting me on the path to lots of horrible complications. So, what is the optimal diet for me?

Who knows?

There doesn't seem to be a lot of agreement about it. And even where there is agreement about what is best, some people argue you can -- nay should -- have a certain level of bad food so that you don't feel deprived and can stick to the diet forever.

For lunch today I had leftover roast from last night. Three thin slices of rare beef, one small piece of potato, tiny onion, one floret of broccoli. And half a cucumber. Well, excellent, yes? Natural meat and plenty of different types of vegetable. But most of it had been cooked with oil. Bad? Olive oil. Good? I put salt on everything. Bad. Too much meat (maybe 100g)? Not enough carbs? Too many?Evil potato, even in a two-mouthful quantity? No dairy included. Bad? Good? At least I know there was no added sugar.