Monday, April 02, 2012

Secretive Spinach Sweets (and evil sugar)

Guess what folks?  Tonight for our family home evening treat we had homemade popsicles.  I let the boys choose a brown one or a pink one.  Eli and Mike chose a pink one and Isaac and Will (and myself) chose a brown one.  What they didn't know was that the brown ones actually had spinach in them.  And they LIKED THEM!  Ha.  I'm so sneaky.  Though, Eli let Will have a taste of his and then Will said, you put spinach in mine didn't you?  But he still liked his and ate it all.  On Sunday I made a delicious yogurt/strawberry popsicle and so the ones I made for tonight were banana/strawberry/pineapple.  Then I juiced some spinach and put the spinach juice in some.

So, now we make homemade bread, homemade popsicles, homemade granola bars, and homemade fruit leather.  Oh, and Mike wants to make more cheese and I want to make yogurt.

On a similar note, I read an article on sugar being TOXIC and watched a discussion about the FDA maybe one day banning sugar from foods.  It gets my undies all tied in a knot, if I'm being honest.  Mike and I have done some research on sugar this past year and have discussed reducing our sugar intake (though, we aren't eliminating it all).  I appreciate people doing research but find sometimes that when others (usually not the researcher) present the research, they do so in a biased way so that it is difficult for me to want to agree with them--their approach is just so doomsday and judgmental and biased.

What I really don't like though is when people suggest that the government should tell me what I can and cannot feed my family.  The government regulating sugar?  Really?  Let's start regulating the amount of water people can drink and air they can breathe while we're at it.  I feel it is my responsibility as a parent to research and pray about how my family should eat and be healthy and I feel that it is not the governments job to tell me what to do, and I'm all in favor of other families doing the same (even when they feel they should do very different things from what I feel I should do).  I would appreciate the government's well researched advice, but want to make my own decisions.  Anyway, those are my two cents.  I am trying to be better at stating my opinions without being so forceful.  Not sure if I was successful on this front or not.  I'll keep trying.

Note: No refined sugar was consumed in composition of this post...or in the popsicles, though Mike put some on his cream of wheat this morning.  Cream of wheat without sugar? Barf.

5 comments:

Lokodi said...

My huge issue is why all the bad for you/junk food is so cheap and all the good/healthy for you food is so dang expensive! You want to know why all those people on food stamps are so obese? Maybe if they made all the processed crap expensive, things would change a little bit in America. With this gluten free diet we have to put Eva on, our grocery bill has almost doubled. I'm glad we are being forced to eat healthier, but for heaven's sake!

I generally have a hard time with the government having a say in things too, but sometimes it's not such a bad thing. Not everyone takes the time to educate themselves on what they're actually eating.

Lindsey

Mike said...

I agree that healthy food is expensive--I went shopping on Saturday and more than half of my cart was fruit and vegetables and it was more expensive than my normal shopping trip. But I disagree that the government should take my right to choose in this matter away. As far as the food stamps go, I have no problem with the government putting regulations on what people can buy with their food stamps. Why can't the government say, "With our money you can use these food stamps for fruit, vegetables, dairy, whole grain foods, etc." (WIC does that) But I don't think they should tell me, when I go to the store to spend my own money, what I should or should not buy. It would be nice if those healthy foods were cheaper but I'm willing to spend the money to be healthy. I'm not willing to spend the money to buy the organic fruits and veggies, free range eggs, etc. Anyway, I don't think the government should do our thinking for us. I think it is a subtle way for Satan's plan to come into play for us to sit back and think, "I don't have to research or make choices about my health because the government will do it for me." It is one more way to take away our agency.

Jason said...

I, too, read that article you reference. I have very strong feelings about the subject of diet - as some of you are very aware. You hit the nail right on the head when you talk about media bias. It is important to keep in mind that every brain cell you have requires carbohydrates. The statement made in the article that sugar causes cancer because suger feeds cancer cells is foolish. All cells in your body (except cardiac muscle cells) preferentially metabolize sugar so of course sugar feeds cancer cells. That doesn't mean that sugar causes cancer. This doesn't mean that we should all go out and buy cookies and pie to get the carbs necessary for our body. We can get them through the fruits and grains we eat. The key to being healthy is to not overdo any one thing. Too much sugar can lead to increased body fat, not because excess sugar turns to fat, but because increased blood sugar leads to increased blood insulin levels which in turn leads to a decrease in fat metabolism. There are a whole host of other molecular cues in play here that lead to our current epidemic of obesity but in a nut shell, eat sensibly and exercise. If you burn more calories than you take in, you will lose weight. The type of calories you take in are also important but that is for another post.

Mike and Adrianne said...

I agree with you Jason. I just think it's about moderation. As Mike and I talk about it we think more and more that we want to be healthy and also enjoy food. I want the boys to appreciate healthy foods but also get to appreciate a piece of cake from time to time and I think if we just teach moderation and healthy eating habits and exercise habits we will eventually get there. I am not at the weight I need to be but I feel healthy and I know that as we keep up our current rate of trying to be healthier, evenutally we will bet there and our kids will see us and participate in it and they too will hopefully have a healthy lifestyle. Maybe one day we will cut out all refined sugars--now is not that day--but when we do it it's going to be because we chose it not the government.

Jess and Jen said...

Lindsey is on to stuff here...it's not that the government is telling us what we can and can't eat; rather, it's that the government is subsidizing certain food industries (dairy, beef, corn [and all its derivatives], etc.), therefore making it cheaper to produce and purchase by the end user. So they're not saying the words explicitly, but are screaming them by their actions. -Jess