Oblomov I agree re: substitutes, they never match up. I also think the way they market these ‘healthy bars’ as being a better choice is really exploitative because they often really aren’t. A lot of the paleo type/raw bars are 50% dates, plus they cram a lot more in for the volume as they are puréed. Dried fruit is pretty much the worst thing you can eat on this plan, so I do avoid, but a quick scan round the supermarket and you’d be forgiven for thinking these are good, healthy choices for adults and kids.
Companies have jumped on the sugar free bandwagon and all this about things being ‘no added sugar’ with *naturally occurring fruit sugars only in teeny weeny letters. The amount of people who’ve given me advice about fruit being ok, because it’s natural..... I usually just nod and smile, but sometimes if I’m feeling grouchy I’ll casually point out that sugar cane is a naturally occurring sugar.....
The best was, in a magazine article about how sugar isn’t really that evil, a journalist had written how even white table sugar only has a GI Of 50 (yes, because the other 50% is fructose which as we all know, is just as bad if not worse, and doesn’t affect glucose!) I think if we learn anything from this it’s to read all the labels on everything- eat it if you want, but eat it knowingly. People are often infuriatingly unaware of what they eat, and doing this plan definitely tunes me in to exactly what I eat and what it does to me.
My dc are still largely sugar free since January. Interestingly, we were at a friends this morning and they had a biscuit, only a little Maryland cookie. Neither of them finished it. One day last week after little Ds had been at his grandparents, he was still up at 9.00 bouncing off the walls. Quick interrogation of chat with Ds1 reveals that he’d had a Cadbury yogurt after tea. So it really does affect him, we just didn’t notice it when he was having sugar all the time.