Trolling for Chocolate

On a recent grocery trip, I found myself scouring the candy aisle, my sweet tooth leading the way, when I remembered a friend's facebook post which read, "How do all you dieters get your chocolate fix without blowing your diet?"

I have noticed that there are times when I have serious cravings, and other times I don't. There are several factors that lead to food cravings. Most commonly known are the hormone imbalances caused by premenstrual syndrome, and depression. Another is adrenal fatigue caused by stress, or sleep deprivation. And the least familiar cause of food cravings is the increasingly popular 'low fat' diet.

"If you eat a low-fat diet in the hope of losing weight, you unintentionally make the problem worse. If, like millions of dieters, you have eaten a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet for many years, or followed fad diets, the odds are good that you have become at least partially insulin resistant, which means your body stops responding to insulin, and instead grabs every calorie it can and deposits it as fat. So no matter how little you eat, you will gradually gain weight. At the same time, your cells cannot absorb the glucose they need, so they signal your brain that you need more carbohydrates or sugars. The result is persistent food cravings." Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP 

Address the issues above to curb future cravings, and read my suggestions below for the days when you find yourself trolling for chocolate anyway.

1. Remember that sometimes it's not about discipline and indulge yourself.
2. Know that marketers have done a phenomenal job of portraying chocolate as a dirty secret that you should feel guilty about because sin sells.The definition of indulge is: to yield to, to satisfy, and to gratify. It does not, in any way, shape or form, mean wrong, shame worthy, or any of the other negative connotations commonly associated with indulgence.
3. Make sure you buy only high quality sweets. Leave the corn syrup and colors out of it. Reach for milk and dark chocolate in things like chocolate chips, (like the kind you bake with), chocolate covered almonds(good fat!), Hershey kisses or chocolate bar, Dove dark chocolates, Nutella Hazelnut Spread, or Hot Cocoa You Can Feel Good About. 
4. Don't buy sweets (or any junk for that matter) in bulk. The more you have available in your home, the more you will eat. If the chocolate is regarded as a delicacy, you will eat less of it, and enjoy it more.
5. Keep these old cliches in mind when dealing with kids and sweets: 'Out of sight out of mind,' 'A little goes a long way,' 'And they always want what they can't have.'

With the above principals in place, I allow my children to have one small treat a day, after lunch. This small treat includes anything with more than 10 grams of sugar, like a cup of my healthy hot cocoa, a hand full of chocolate chips, pretzels or fruit dipped in Nutella, a scoop of ice cream, a couple of gluten free cookies, honey or agave sticks, etc. The point is that if they know that can indulge in small doses, and with wise choices, they don't crave it and resent the moderation. In addition, I am content knowing that the key ingredients of the treats we have in our home are high quality and pass the food prude standards.

This same concept works with adults. If you are disciplined enough to only buy treats with quality ingredients, and don't over eat them, you too will enjoy being able to 'indulge' without the guilt.

Real Sugar requires more energy to absorb, HFCS loses again...

Many people are interested in 'getting healthy', or 'watching what they eat'. Which are great motives. However, one of the basics of being healthier is being conscious of what you are putting into your body, right down to the last ingredient on every label. There is a movement in the food industry, toward more natural and less processed foods, which, in my opinion, is a great way to get, and stay healthy. This movement begins and ends with people paying attention to what they are buying, and demanding better quality.

High Fructose Corn Syrup has long been controversial, but the bottom line is that it is unnatural. It's processed, and it's in everything.

A Little History: According to the American Chemical Society, high-fructose corn syrup entered the industrial market in the 1970s. Two researchers, Richard Marshall and Earl Kooi, developed the manufacturing process in 1957, discovering that they could alter glucose's molecular composition to make fructose. Later, in the mid-1960s and early 1970s, Japanese scientist Yoshiyuki Takasaki and Osamu Tanabe further developed and improved the manufacturing process. By the mid-1970s, corn syrup had begun to replace sugar as a sweetener in many products. Partly because of the federal government's corn subsidies, it became cheaper to make, and its prominence grew.

Chemical Make-Up: High-fructose corn syrup, the most prominent type of commercial corn syrup, originally comes from cornstarch. Two enzymes, alpha-amylase and gluco-amylase, break down the starch to make glucose. A third enzyme, glucose-isomerase, turns the glucose into a mixture that includes fructose. The resulting syrup has a honey like thickness and is usually 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose.

The very fact that this common product was created by researchers is proof that it is unnatural. There are no corn syrup farms, you cannot go out and harvest corn syrup from a corn tree as you would get pure maple syrup from a maple tree.

Psychology Professor Bart Hoebel tells News at Princeton:

It appears that in HFCS, fructose molecules are "free and unbound, ready for absorption and utilization. In contrast, every fructose molecule in sucrose that comes from cane sugar or beet sugar is bound to a corresponding glucose molecule and must go through an extra metabolic step before it can be utilized. " It may well take more energy to consume real sugar than it does to consume HFCS.

So, HFCS is more readily absorbed than plain white sugar. Our bodies have to work harder to breakdown sugar, than corn syrup. It seems that there could be a direct correlation to the overuse of HFCS in the majority of processed products to the increasing diabetes epidemic in our country, and some people are starting to catch on.

Check out this article about some major brands steering clear of corn syrup, and why:
http://industry.bnet.com/food/10001771/the-death-of-high-fructose-corn-syrup/

I challenge you to read the label of everything in your pantry, or at least a few things, and see what you've been eating, what you've been feeding your family. And to steer clear of corn syrup, in all forms, not only because it's more metabolically accessible to your body, but because it's found in a lot of products that sugar isn't, and never should be.