Can You Be Sugar Free?

One of the worst habits  we have is eating sugar. We crave cupcakes wit sweet , gooey icing puffs,  we add more of the white stuff to already candy like lattes.We even add brown sugar  to our bacon. However that may all be changing . There's a no sugar movement going on challenging sweet tooths all over the world to give up their addiction.

Sadly we are hard wired to eat sugar. Blame it on our earliest days when a sweet flavor signified non poisonous in plants and berries. If it was sugary, like a plum or an apple , then the eater could rest easy, knowing he or she wouldn't be sick or suffer dire consequences.Then humanity  fell in love with sugar cane about 10,000 years ago in New Guinea. People got their first sugar rush and loved it. Cane syrup then was used in religious rites and as a medicine. Iit then went onto the Asian mainland where the Indians were turning sugarcane into a powder,  used mostly for healing.It went to Persia and then spread throughout the Arab world. hey combined it with ground almonds to create the addictive confection marzipan. The European Crusaders got their first taste of sugar cane during their crusades and again fell hard for it. Later Columbus discovered sugar cane on Hispaniola and that began Europe's hard core addiction with sugar.It replaced the all natural sweetener . Now we are trying to undo those centuries of sugar use. It not only puts on the weight but tricks the body  into gaining weight,. Those white grains also do extensive damage to the liver as well.The liver is the only organ that processes glucose ad eating too much will result in taxing it.It also causes extensive damage to teeth as well.

How do we curb our addictions and go sugar free? The obvious answer is give up baked goods, soda and candy. These are the easiest because the sugar in them is obvious.We can easily substitute cookies and sweets with with fresh fruit and 90 percent good for you dark chocolate. Soda can be replaced with flavored sparkling water. Hot tea and even coffee can be sweetened with honey or agave syrup.  , instead of white refined sugar . The problem is that sugar is everywhere, even in the most savory of foods.They lurk in our condiments.Ketchup has it to balance out the spices as does mayo, steak sauces and even mustard.The best bet is use spices  or herbs to flavor meats and vegetables.Salad dressing is a culprit too. It can turn a healthy bowl of greens into a sundae. Stick to a simple vinaigrette, possibly spiked with oregano or parsley.Yogurt, that much touted health food has a whopping forty-seven grams of sugar.if fruit is added Try to cut down on it or stick to plain Greek yogurt and add your own fruit. Bread is another culprit, with some of  us eating it as much as twice a day everyday. Try to sub in pita bread which has very little sugar in it. Another idea is wrapping up meats and cheeses in lettuce wraps. As for toast for breakfast, think oatmeal with a trickle of honey and cinnamon .


We can go sugar free. It's a hard task but will become easier as we distance ourselves further and further away from it. The end result is worth it.  - a healthy body.

Marriages

Columbus did a lot for food fusions despite  his many sins. The Americas opened up  world of different marriages on so many levels that could not have been possible on the other continents. Recipes were fused as nationalities mingled and married. It created a brand new cuisine.

Marriages are  the first places where fusion cooking occurs. Many Germans and Italians have intermarried in the last 140 years with them recipes. Italians learned how to make spaetzle, pasta's Teutonic cousin while Germans  experimented with brajole, rouladens's or beef roll's relative from across the Alps.Kids, hybrids, themselves had the joy of one of the most varied charcuterie's from landjager and teawurst to mortadella and prosciutto.Greeks , usually thought of being exclusive, married out and brought such diverse foods as corned beef and Yorkshire pudding into diets, rich with dolmades and pastisio. As more and more people came to both North and South America, intermarriage occurred. People from the islands came and fell in love with, not their new cities but the people in them. Rice and beans became  a side dish to such American classics as roast turkey and squash. New cuisines , such as Tex-Mex a combination of Texan and Mexican and Creole, a wide mix of French and Spanish recipes, but also influenced by Amerindians, African, along with Haitian, Italian, German and Irish.

The Columbian Exchange also brought another type of marriage. Ingredients from both sides of the Atlantic  were now being combined to create brand new dishes. Italians embraced tomatoes so much that it's hard to think of Southern Italian cuisine without them.Corn, another New World crop is the catalyst from turning polenta, that ancient recipe that first used barley , into pure heaven and a staple of Northern cuisine. Corn also brought that international snack favorite popcorn all over the globe. The South American tuber, the potato was all important in feeding both Ireland and Germany. It's big in Swabian German recipes like ,kartofelkloesse dumplings made with potatoes and zinged up with gingersnps. They're the chief component in potato pancakes or latke, along with the Irish boxties and English tattie fish. The Europeans brought  over the domesticated meats such as beef, chicken and pork. Without these Mexican cuisine would not have chicken tacos , beef flautas and pork chilis.
. The indigenous North Americans gave the world its' most famous bird, the turkey, used in every holiday dinner , both in the US and the UK.


Columbus ushered in the Age of Discovery . He also brought in marriages of diverse culture and fusion cuisines. The Columbian Exchange changed the world's lives and diets