Well, it turns out after observing my own behaviour for a few days that I consume:
1. Sugar in my coffee creamer (most often drunk with herbal chai tea)
2. Sugar in my almond milk. The stuff from the store is insanely sweet.
3. Chocolate, and twice lately, coconut ice cream.

I consume the first two daily.
Otherwise, I don’t like candy. I just don’t eat it.
I don’t even like sweet fruit!
And now that I have suddenly become intolerant to wheat(?) I haven’t the urge to touch
a cookie. Too much pain!

I noticed when I was in Georgia protesting the School of the Americas that there’s A LOT of unexpected sugar in US foods. The SECOND!!! ingredient in a “whole wheat” bread, for instance! All kinds of fancy names for sugar in everything!

Ooops and what I want to improve is:
My awareness of my sugar consumption.
My awareness of WHEN I consume sugar.
Plus
I would like to use stevia if I am adding sweetener to anything.
I would like to re sensitize myself to sweetness - the store bought almond milk has me spoiled!

I haven't bought sugar since August, so I am putting it off until children MUST make cookies.

I wasn’t shocked by anything, but the idea that sugar can act like a poison is creepy. I WISH in a weird way that I drank pop, so that when I quit I could lose excess fat. The truth is that I don’t have much sugar to cut out of my diet, relatively speaking. I’ve vowed to try to eat fats early in the day to get the furnace running.

Strange that just after reading the book Food Renegade I made a birthday pecan pie with treacle and the dreaded corn syrup that had been in the cupboard (in a tin in a bag) for 6 years. It was good pie!

In my opinion, the healthiest carbohydrates are:
whole grains, especially rices
whole fruit

We use bulk maple syrup, raw honey and stevia herb and tincture at home.
I have a "thing" though for sticky dark demerarra sugar!

And I have a place in my heart for the bulk agave nectar I got through a coop for Oxacan farmers. We don't use it though, just look at it so far!
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Sugar in the absence of food is poison.

I count on sugar in the presence of fats say like coconut ice cream fats, and chocolate chip fats, and raw nuts in cookies fats, to be non toxic!

My eldest daughter bought a 1 litre jug of clarified apple juice and it made my youngest daughter quite wonky. She was unable to pay attention or read and ended up collapsing in exhausted tears. Such is the price of a sugar high!

While we shun sugar added fruit juice, we do enjoy making our own lemonade from maple syrup and lemon juice.

I'd rather see sugar on the label than HFCS or a maltodextrin sounding word.

We buy fair trade evaporated cane juice, demerarra sugar, raw honey and bulk maple syrup and use these mainly for baking.

The sugar I am most concerned about is that which is added to our store bought almond milk.

"When God made the poison he packaged it with the antidote”. TRUTH! If it ever looks like Creation is screwed up, it's just that we don't understand enough yet. I could never believe that something truly natural is unhealthy.

I feel good about eating whole fruit.

ASSIGNMENT
Do one or both of the following:

The Apple Test
Not all naturally-occurring sweets are made equal. Take apples for example. The level of sugar in an apple depends 1)on the variety of apple, and 2)how fresh that apple is (hint: the older it is, the more sweet it gets as all the starches break down into sugars).

What You’ll Need

3 apples, of 3 different varieties
a knife
an iodine solution (you can buy this at a local drugstore, in the antiseptic aisle)
What To Do
1. Pour the iodine solution into a shallow glass container to a depth of 1/4 inch. Cut each apple in half horizontally across the core and put the exposed surface of one of the halves in the iodine solution. The apple stem can serve as a convenient handle, if the top half is used.
2. Wait 1 minute before removing the apple half. Repeat with the next test apple.
3. Compare the patterns of black spots, which indicate the presence of starch.
4. Score the amount of sugar present on a scale of 1-9 using these pictures as a reference. Also decide whether or not the apple is immature, mature (ripe), or over-mature using the “Evaluating Test Results” section just above the pictures.
5. Now, taste the other half of the apples (do NOT, under ANY circumstances consume the iodine-dipped halves) and record how sweet they were. Did they taste as sweet as you expected them to, based on the results of your sugar test?

Using Natural Sweeteners
Adapt one of your favorite recipes for dessert to using natural sweeteners (and properly prepared grains, if need be).

For your Main Lesson Book: Document your food experiments with pictures!

If participating in this course for a grade, please email your results to me at kristenATfoodrenegadeDOTcom by Thursday night at midnight (CST) two weeks from now on 12/1. (We’re taking next week off for Thanksgiving!) You may send me a photo or scan of your Main Lesson Book page(s), or you may simply write a detailed description of what you did and your conclusions.

If you have any questions not directly related to the content of the videos or discussion questions, please ask them here!