The Plan:
Day 1: White beans and bacon, Homemade applesauce
Day 2: Veggie fajitas, Guacamole
Day 3: Homemade pizza
Day 4: Beef and butternut squash stew, Crusty bread
Day 5: Homemade tomato soup, quesadillas
Day 6: Lasagna (frozen supply) with super greens powder
Day 7: Quinoa salad with feta, carrots, radish, and purple cabbage
This meal plan was curated using local foods that are in season now or preserved during the peak growing season in the U.S. Midwest. The plan is an exact replica of what our family is eating this week unless we are out of town. Meal plans are developed using whole foods and my meal planning system (click here!) and are meant to be healthy and easy to prepare. Most recipes will take no more than 30 minutes of active cooking time. Occasionally meals may require all day slow cooking, advanced prep, or some oven time. Recipes are provided when available. I sincerely hope this will help with your own meal planning!
Pantry Shuffle:
Out of Storage: (preserved when in season and coming out of my root cellar, freezer, canned, or dehydrated stash)
- Bacon, stew beef from Mastodon Valley Farm meat share (freezer)
- Sliced peppers and onions, Tomato soup, Lasagna (freezer)
- Carrots, radish, purple cabbage (refrigerator “root cellar”)
- Onions (root cellar)
Into Storage: nothing this week
Notes: Sweet Destruction (The Impact of Sugar on Your Body)
Welcome to my 3rd installment of dietary principles that I follow to be healthy. These are the principles that you will see repeated in my meal plans. The first principle is that I eat a whole foods diet. Second I avoid vegetable and seed oils. This week I want to explore sugar and the impact on your body and why I think it is important to eat less sugar in order to be healthy.
The History of Sugar in our Diet
I think most of us know it is not good to eat cookies, candy, ice cream, and soda on a regular basis, but there is a lot more to know about sugar in your diet. The average person consumes 17 teaspoons of sugar each day, which is about 85 grams!! This is 1000% more than people consumed 200 years ago.
There have been two major changes that caused this shift in our sugar consumption
1 – About 70 years ago fat was proclaimed to be the cause of our growing health problems. As a result, fat was removed from foods and replaced with sugar since food without fat doesn’t taste very good.
2 – An explosion of food science which has lead to more processed foods and development of cheap forms of sweeteners.
What Does Sugar Do To Your Body?
If your diet is high in sugar, your body releases hormones to help regulate it, specifically insulin. Insulin is a storage hormone and the more you have in your system, the more weight you gain and fat that is deposited around your organs (especially your liver). If your blood sugar is constantly high your body systems eventually become resistant to the insulin and all hell breaks loose. The sugar is everywhere and your body can no longer lower it. Your heart, kidney, liver, eyes, skin, blood vessels, and immune system are damaged. Nothing works as it should. You will feel tired, have brain fog, feel sick, and get infections more often.
Did you know that eating 100 grams of sugar might stop your immune system from working for at least 5 hours? It is not hard to consume 100 grams of sugar. That would be one 20 ounce bottle of Coca-Cola (65 grams of sugar) along with a Yoplait Original yogurt (19 grams of sugar) and an apple (19 grams of sugar) for lunch. This really puts things into perspective for me. It is not only the long term effects of sugar on your body, but also the immediate impact.
The good news is that you can prevent and even reverse some of the sugar damage by changing your diet.
Hidden Sources of Sugar
Lowering your sugar intake is HARD! And it isn’t all your fault. We naturally have sweet taste buds, which were very helpful in the evolution of the human species to ensure adequate calorie intake. Unfortunately, now that we have an abundance of food our sweet tooth works against us and food companies have figured out how to capitalize on this innate process. Almost everything that is processed contains added sugar, but it can be hard to identify because there are so many different names for sweeteners.
Different names for sugar (there are many more than this!):
- Corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup
- Brown rice syrup
- Dextrose
- Sucrose
- Cane sugar, cane juice crystals
- Glucose
- Maltose
- Lactose
- Agave syrup
- Honey
- Maple syrup
- coconut sugar
- Confectioner’s sugar (powdered sugar)
- Beet sugar
- Brown sugar
- Dextrin
- Maltodextrin
- Barley malt
- Molasses
- Carob syrup
- Evaporated cane juice
- Fruit juice
- Malt syrup
- Fruit nectars
Hidden sources of added sugar: ketchup, sauces, pickles, salad dressing, taco sauce, salsa, frozen dinners, crackers, pasta sauce, yogurt, dried and canned fruits, cereal, sports drinks, nut butters, bread, protein bars, non-dairy milk, granola bars, fruit juice, applesauce, smoothies.
All of these foods can also be made with little to no added sugar. So make sure you are reading labels carefully!
Tips for Eating Less Sugar
- Tackle the low hanging fruit first. Clear your home of the obvious sweets like candy, cookies, ice cream, pie, and soda. If it isn’t around you won’t be reaching for it.
- Fill up on healthy proteins and fats which will keep you feeling fuller longer. If you feel full you will be less likely to reach for the easy sugar hits.
- Drink lots of water. Sometimes, you are actually just thirsty, not hungry, and drinking a glass or two of water will calm the feelings of hunger and sugar cravings.
- Have low/no sugar snacking options handy for when the cravings hit. Often a couple of dark chocolate chips will satisfy me. Other options are a spoonful of peanut butter (make sure there is no sugar added), a piece of fruit, slice of cheese, nuts, beef jerky (check ingredients for sugar), dates (19 grams of sugar, but also LOTS of fiber which slows the sugar absorption), plain Greek yogurt
- Read labels very carefully to avoid those hidden sources of sugar.
- Switch to condiments that do not contain sugar or make your own. Salad dressing is easy to make with oil, vinegar, and lemon juice.
- Dilute fruit juice and other sweetened beverages with water slowly overtime until you are used to a less sweet taste and then substitute with a no sugar drink like sparkling flavored water, unsweetened tea, black coffee, or just plain water.
- Cook with ingredients that have no added sugar (Whole Foods Diet!!)
- Cut the sugar in half in homemade baked goods. I have found that most recipes turn out just as fine and I don’t miss the sugar.
It took me a few years to conquer my sugar addiction. Now, I can’t drink a soda because it tastes sickeningly sweet. My diet is not rigid. Both me and my kids do eat some sugar. However, I have made a conscious decision to make sure that we are the ones controlling how much sugar we put in our bodies. I think this is one of the most important things we can do for our health.
