We all know (because we have been told so many times by manufacturers of sugar substitutes and pop "nutritionists") that sugar is entirely evil, and that there is no good from any use of it. We all know it is labeled as "addictive", "toxic", and "unhealthy". And we all know these sources are reliable because they ALL PROFIT FROM TELLING US SO!

All of this is completely bogus!

And we ALREADY KNOW THIS!

Sugar is nothing more than GLUCOSE.

Refined sugar and unrefined sugar have only one difference - The body works JUST A TEENY BIT harder to sort the unrefined sugars, as compared to refined sugar (which metabolizes easily).

The truth is that YOU NEED SUGAR!

You don't need to EAT SUGARY FOODS. But you NEED sugar.

If you DO eat sugary foods, you do NOT need to feel guilty! Period!

Sugar is NEEDED for proper body function.

As in, Glucose - Glucose is the substance that your body uses for cellular energy.

Refined sugar is just a form of glucose.

It is IMPOSSIBLE to be addicted to a substance that your body uses for normal operations.

It is impossible for a substance that your body uses to power every cell in your body to be toxic!

If you eat more fat and protein, and less carbohydrate, your body will just convert the fat to sugar for energy.

The Human Body REQUIRES glucose to produce energy.

If you don't give it to your body, it will just make it, and it is chemically identical to refined sugar.

The human body also uses sugar as an elemental resource for the production of metabolic fragments, used to produce metabolic enzymes, neurotransmitters, partial amino chains, transport enzymes, to complete incomplete nutrients, and as a source of energy for PRODUCING all that and performing metabolic functions.

WATER is the most elemental resource of this type, used in more metabolic functions than any other substance. But sugar (glucose) is the SECOND most often used elemental resource.

So if you do NOT have sugar, the body goes SERIOUSLY haywire (you do know what that means, don't you? Sigh.... you don't... The farmer's term for getting bailing wire all tangled up in the mechanism so it binds it and drags it to a halt.).

But....

It IS possible for foods you eat to be overloaded in elements you do NOT need (or do not need as much of), and deficient in elements you need MORE of. When that happens, your body gets out of balance and craves sugar, because it is an EASY form of energy for your cells.

Conversion of other substances to sugar is hard work, and requires the presence of enzymes and micronutrients. If you are deficient in those, your body CANNOT convert sugar from fat (it lacks the "tools" to do so), so it tells you to EAT more sugar.

The problem is not sugar.

The problem is food that is not food.

When you switch to foods that your body digests and metabolizes better, the cravings for excess sugar naturally drop.

You don't have to deny yourself any sugar, you only have to give your body foods that it can digest and metabolize, and they are NOT necessarily the foods that the government or "science" recommends that you eat!

They are things like:

• Meat. Real meat. Preferrably NOT processed in China. And EGGS! Animal proteins (NOT the same as vegetable "proteins") are required to form essential proteins for building muscle, bone, neural tissue, endocrine tissue, connective tissue, skin, etc.
• Milk and cheese, sour cream, yogurt and kefir. Milk proteins, when intact (they are not intact in pasteurized or homogenized milk) are easy to digest and provide a wide range of metabolic support. Raw milk, yogurt, and kefir are terrific for rebuilding gut bacteria cultures, and sour cream can help with this too. Cheeses provide good proteins (the cultures help preserve the
• BUTTER! And BACON FAT! Good animal fats are necessary for brain growth and repair, and you can't make them from vegetable fats. You can use vegetable fats for some things, but NOT for everything, and they are IN NO WAY healthier than good animal fats.
• Wheat, Oats, Corn, Rye, Brown Rice, and other healthy grains. Ok, WHEAT IS GOOD! If you cannot digest it your gut has been damaged. Heal it. Stop blaming what. Corn is GOOD, though herbicides on it, and BT genes in it ARE HARMFUL to people! And yes, you CAN tell the difference in consuming it! GOOD corn is GOOD food. Grains provide excellent vitamin, mineral, and simple or complex carbohydrate forms, and if they are WHOLE grains (not processed in any way), they also contain some good essential oils.
• Fresh, dried, or canned vegetables. All three have their place, and can provide good sources of vitamins and minerals, as well as complex sugars. Watch out for excess chlorine in fresh vegetables (from dipping or spraying), in dried vegetables (from dipping), and in canned (from the water in the can).
• Fruits and fruit juices. NO, JUICE IS NOT BAD!!! It is part of EVERY historical diet! Fruits and juices are EXCELLENT for ENHANCING THE EFFICIENCY OF DIGESTION, and to provide many metabolic building blocks. Put some ketchup on your eggs, ok? (Remember, tomatoes are fruits.)
• Chocolate. This is in a food class all its own. I know, I know.... But it has so many digestive and metabolic enzymes in it that I cannot leave it out! Some people with certain health issues NEED chocolate to function well. And it always comes with a load of sugar. That's just part of the package deal. (I just tell my body to use the sugar for energy... and believe it or not, that does seem to impact the processing in the body.)

Good food is the foundation of a healthy diet. Good food that is actually FOOD, not a food-like substance.

Now, I am not recommending you eat nothing but refined foods loaded with sugar. There is no doubt that this results in a diet that is OUT OF BALANCE.

But I also have NO PROBLEM with deserts, even daily. Ours are mostly chocolate.

I've totally come to terms with sugar. I don't go seeking out high sugar snacks or foods. But I do put it into recipes that call for it, and I do NOT feel guilty about doing so!

I use many things that are condemned for their sugar content.

I use chutney, ketchup, sweet pickles, salad dressings, barbeque sauce,  jam, cookies, peanut butter or other nut butters, a few dry cereals, chocolate (did I need to say that again?), soda pop (ok this is an entirely different issue, I use it for the sodium benzoate, which chelates ammonia, due to a familial metabolic condition), hot chocolate mix, and many other things. These things DO NOT MAKE UP THE BULK OF MY DIET!!! But I use them, and do not feel guilty!

Be conservative if you like. But there is no reason to fear every crystal of sugar that crosses your path!

Sugar is not toxic, nor is it addictive.

It is just GLUCOSE!

NEWSFLASH!!!

• There is no such thing as "Cauliflower Mashed Potatoes". If there were, it would have POTATOES in it... and then nobody would eat it, because it had CAULIFLOWER in it!
• "Cauliflower Rice" is NOT rice! It is chopped cauliflower.
• Cauliflower is NOT "Bread", nor "Pizza Crust", nor anything else bread-like. It's a VERY hard sell!

Honestly folks, this isn't the kind of thing you can slip past your kids without them KNOWING something is up!

It seems that the "rule" lately is that anything white that is out of favor with trendy foodies and food-paranoid types, may be replaced with cauliflower.

One problem. Cauliflower has a DISTINCTIVE flavor! It fairly SCREAMS "I AM CAULIFLOWER!!!".

It does NOT taste IN THE LEAST like Bread, Potatoes, or Rice.

It is my opinion that all the recipes shared on social media for replacing various foods with cauliflower spring from three conditions:

1. Caulifllower is just unpopular enough that not enough people KNOW it tastes like it does, and the Cauliflower Promotion Association figured they could put one over on the entire world simply because people DON'T eat it a lot. It's white! What's to know?

2. We have ample evidence that social media users SHARE but rarely TRY the things they share. This is why people believe that you can grow a plant in an icecream cone. And the same phenomenon explains why people think they can substitute cauliflower for pizza crust and still enjoy the pizza as though it had bread under it!

3. If you say it often enough, people will believe it, even if they know it is untrue. Social media, again, proves this point undeniably.

But let's say, just for the sake of variety, that it does make sense in some weird world, to substitute cauliflower for other foods, just because they happen to be the same color. We have a whole new realm of food possibilities, and the variants are endless.

Try some of these delicacies - we PROMISE you will NEVER KNOW that cauliflower was inserted in place of the original.

• Cauliflower Tortillas - Just cook it, mash it, roll it out and pretend you have tortillas.
• Cauliflower Oatmeal - Chop fine, cook, and serve with your usual additions.
• Cauliflower Pasta - Puree with egg, shape, and boil until firm. Hey! It could work!
• Cauliflower Ice Cream - If you add enough sugar and vanilla, it will be so overpowering that you'll forget it is the cauliflower making it taste bad!
• Cauliflower Oreo Filling - Trust me, they won't EVER GUESS!!
• Cauliflower Cake Frosting - Just do that mashie whip thing, and spread it on. Add a few sprinkles if you don't think they'll buy it!
• Cauliflower Cookies - Substitute cauliflower for wheat flour, and go to town on it. All sorts of possibilities! Mama's Chocolate Chip Cookies will never be the same!
• Cauliflower Tofu - Is ANYBODY going to care? Really?
• Cauliflower Milk - If you can milk almonds, surely you can milk cauliflower!
• Cauliflower Popcorn - You don't even have to cook it!
• Cauliflower Cereal - Chop fine, soak in milk. Sugar is not needed. Really!
• Cauliflower Crackers - Surely Oprah has a recipe for this somewhere!
• Cauliflower French Fries - Ok, so it is a little difficult to cut fries from cauliflower... But WORK with me here!
• Cauliflower Chicken Nuggets - They can form them from minced chicken, SOOOO... Whose to know?
• Cauliflower Fishsticks - White mushy stuff, formed and breaded. Clearly the same!
• Cauliflower Cheese - Shred and substitute for shredded cheese. Raw cauliflower substitutes for hard cheeses. Cooked for soft. What could be easier?
• Cauliflower Filled Donuts - You can even dye it for fruit fillings.
• Cauliflower Cream Chocolates - Cook, mash, roll into balls. Dip in chocolate. More in keeping with Halloween than Christmas.
• Cauliflower Banana Pudding - Slice, cook, and use in place of bananas. Unforgettable!
• Cauliflower Salad Sandwiches - Use raw or cooked, cut up, and use to replace chicken, tuna, turkey, or ham. Very versatile.
• Lemon Pie with Cauliflower Meringue - That whip thing again... Browns beautifully.
• Cauliflower Macaroons - You can actually make these LOOK like real macaroons!
• Wedding Mints - Cook, form into balls, and dry just enough so they don't stick together. No need to add mint extract, they look convincing enough without it!
• And lest we miss it.... Cauliflower Turkey! Recommended by Delish as a substitute for Turkey for vegetarian diners. I can't even imagine being satisfied for more than10 minutes with a serving of cauliflower instead of Turkey!

So try your hand at some new delicacies! No one will EVER notice you used Cauliflower!

DISCLAIMER: Don't misunderstand me. I LOVE Cauliflower. Cooked. Never raw. Smothered in cheese sauce. Or seasoned and roasted - tender, not hard. THAT is Cauliflower.

I NEVER try to pretend that Cauliflower is something that tastes nothing like Cauliflower!

Sometime during the last decade, Sweet Potato growers did a bang up job of marketing, and managed to persuade promoters of several popular diets that Sweet Potatoes were somehow a better food than ordinary Potatoes.

Slick marketing aside, there is little truth to what you are being told.

Using slight of hand, values on the two are often given by Standard Serving, rather than by weight or volume.

Russet, Red, Gold, etc., potatoes are valued on an 8 oz potato.

Sweet Potatoes are valued on 1 cup of cubes (about 4 oz). So of course, Sweet Potatoes measure lower in calories and carbs than other Potatoes.

When compared BY WEIGHT (rather than by "standard servings), the comparisons are illuminating.

1. Sweet Potatoes are NOT "lower in calories" by any meaningful amount. A Sweet Potato has 26 calories per ounce, and a Russet has 27 calories per ounce. That is NOT a significant difference.
2. Sweet Potatoes are NOT "lower in carbohydrates" either. In fact, they are HIGHER in carbs than Russet Potatoes. 100 grams of Sweet Potato has 20 grams of carbs, and 100 grams of Russet Potato has only 18 grams of carbohydrate.
   
3. "Glycemic Index" has been pretty well debunked, so claims that Sweet Potatoes are magically lower in carbohydrates when they are not actually, are false. Glycemic indexing was another slick marketing ploy to persuade people who are afraid of sugar, that certain sugar alcohols are healthier than granulated sugar (the claim was that since some carbohydrates are broken down and absorbed more slowly than others, that a certain amount of the slower ones did not need to be counted). Not so - not only is the conclusion wrong, but the difference in absorption times is almost negligible. I used insulin at one time, and when you do, you notice which foods impact, and which do not. I promise you that foods sweetened with xylitol (which is generally ignored as a source of "impact" carbs even though it is very high carb) have EXACTLY the same impact, carb for carb, as those sweetened with granulated sugar, and the time it takes for them to impact is not different enough to even notice when doing blood testing every 5 minutes after consumption. So higher carbs in a sweet potato are just that - higher carbs. The ONLY "non impact" carbs are fiber that goes through unprocessed, and there is very little of that in Sweet Potatoes (about 3 grams total fiber per 100 grams, and less than half of that is undigestible, compared to 2.2 for regular Potatoes). BOTH kinds of potatoes create alcohol when fermented - an indication of sufficient simple carbs to impact blood sugar, and they can both create enough to cause intoxication.
   
4. SOME, but not all, Sweet Potatoes are higher in Beta Carotene (a Vitamin A precursor which is counted as Vitamin A by many nutritional sources, even though it is incomplete), and in several other vitamins and minerals than ordinary Potatoes. But they are not a "powerhouse of nutrition", compared to a weak and pathetic Potato. To the contrary, Russets and their kind are very nutritious food, and even more so with skins on. Sweet Potatoes with darker orange flesh are higher in beta carotene than potatoes, but the paler colored sweet potatoes are equivalent to Yukon Gold potatoes.
5. Russets are often tested without skins. Approximately 20% of the nutritional value in Potatoes lies on the underside of the skin, and in the top layer of the potato. Eating potatoes with their jackets increases the nutritional content considerably, and gives them additional fiber. ANY nutritional info regarding potatoes is suspect unless it is specified in the information, whether the values were gathered on peeled, or unpeeled potatoes (and often a single listing of nutrients may have some with the skin, and some without, and not specify that this is so). They are especially good sources of Vitamin C, Potassium, and B-6, even without the skins.
6. Both are starchy vegetables. Both are classed as vegetables, and count as a vegetable on the plate. Both are nutritious, both are served with similar condiments.

So there is NO NEED to apologize for eating Potatoes. And there is NO NEED for Real Food proponents to be running around trying to elevate the Sweet Potato to some kind of status of superfood, while recoiling in horror at the thought of eating baked Potatoes or Mashies for dinner!

Get over it! The actual facts don't support the myths!