Loving Laguna

The quick answer:  Get your sugar the natural way—the sugar found in Nature won’t kill you.  However the refined sugars added to factory foods, especially soft drinks, breakfast cereals, baked goods, and frozen desserts just might. 

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Managing Sugar

In the year’s repeating cycle of 13 themes, this week would normally be about sugar.  Americans love sugar but our consumption—about 100 pounds per year—is destroying our health and the cost of caring for sugar-related diseases (overweight, diabetes, heart disease, etc.) threatens to bankrupt our health system. 

Four Healthy Changes, if followed, could solve our sugar problem:

• Healthy Change #1 limited sugary drinks—real or diet—to one (12-oz) serving per week.
• Healthy Changes #4 & 10 set a bar of more fiber than sugar in purchased grain products (packaged cereal, then bread, but other bakery products also).  The ubiquitous nutrition panels on factory foods make the fiber>sugar rule easy to follow.
• Healthy Change #15 (nicely timed to Easter Week) banned candy by the bag.  A single piece won’t kill you but candy by the bag is addictive and unhealthful.

Please note that our campaign is against added sugar.  The sugar naturally found in fruits and vegetables doesn’t seem to be a problem.  Peaches are in season and we love them on our breakfast compote, or as a snack.  Now that we've covered sugar, take a look at Skip's newest book:

Loving Laguna

From time to time I like to write a book.  This is possible because our daughter Brooke is a talented graphic designer (see her blog inchmark).  My big goal is to write a book on the Word of Wisdom that would help family cooks everywhere.  I have the Quixotic idea that the modern American diet (MAD)—so well entrenched in our food culture—can be reformed.  It’s a crazy ambitious dream and this blog was started as an approach to such a book.

But the last 90 days I made a side trip—I wrote a book about the funky little beach town where we live.  It’s called Loving Laguna, A Local’s Guide to Laguna Beach and you can read about it in our local paper or at the book’s website. 

The idea behind Loving Laguna is that every town has roots, many spiritual in nature, that make it unique.  Laguna doesn’t have a lock on this but it does have an interesting history that seemed worthy of a book.   If you have ties to Laguna Beach, or wish to support Skip's literary hopes, the book is available at Amazon.com.  Thanks for your support. 

Comments

[Vicki Mason]

Having just discovered your blog, I'm interested in the 52 healthy changes. Is there a quick-list of them somewhere? I'd love to have access to it. I'm considering using it as a challenge to myself and to my friends and family.

Thanks!

[Skip]

Hi Vicki
Glad to have you for a reader; please spread the word.
I've been thinking about your request for the 52 Healthy Change list. We'll do that in the future when the list is more final--I think it can be improved.
But if you want to test yourself on the first 13 Healthy Changes, go to the search box at upper right of the blog site and search for "to live more fully" and you'll get a quiz for the first quarter of changes.
Best to you,
Skip

[Jeff]

Interesting University o Utah study on sugar:
LA Times - Scientists say sugar at levels considered safe is harmful
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sn-sugar-20130813,0,982020.story

[Jessica]

As a family cook, I just wanted to encourage you in writing that book on the Word of Wisdom. I grew up on a meat and potatoes diet as did my parents and their parents, etc. It's a hard tradition to break free from. So any insight, but especially from an LDS vantage, is helpful.

[Tami]

I'm so glad to finally have found your blog! I saw the article in the daily herald over a year ago, ripped it out and lost it. Found it today and I'm just tickled with all that you have here! I'm in total agreement that the best "diet" is found within the WOW. I've actually also tinkered with the idea of writing a book on it all, though not anytime soon. I'll definitely be spreading the word of this inspiring site. Thank you!!

[greengeeks offers]

This is really impressive post i really like it thanks for sharing.