Biscuits
Seafarers of old had to survive on as little as a ships biscuit in a day and yet biscuits, sometimes called cookies have in our day become known as a luxury item. They are now far removed from their origonal form and have become a source of sugar rich, highly processed carbohydrate and if we are serious about cutting sugar and processed carbs out of our diet they cannot be on the menu.
And yet my earliest memories of feeling happy, safe and ok are of having a drink of sweet tea or a glass of milk with a biscuit, be it a ‘jammy dodger’, a ‘squashed fly biscuit’ ( biscuit with raisins in it and stupidly named as a child as it sounded funny ), a ‘garibaldi’, ‘custard cream’, chocolate coated ‘digestive’, ‘bourbon’ or ‘rich tea’ … oh and believe me, the list goes on, and on. No doubt you have other such ‘family favorites’ that you remember from your childhood, ‘oreo’ anyone?
So somehow, this sugar rich, highly manufactured product has found itself into our most inner thoughts and feelings of well being and happiness. At least it did in my case. Forgive me if I amd wrong for you, the reader but I suggest it safe to say that this is true for many.
If I were to eat just 2 biscuits a day, which would be rare, closer to 3 or 4, maybe 5 ? Lets be honest, the compulsive eater, which I am sure I was at some points in my life, would think little of demolishing half a packet of biscuits in a weekend I could easily tot up a typical family size tin of biscuits in a month.
Its so easy, you just pop them in your mouth with a coffee or tea or whatever. They practically eat themselves for you. And they are not meals, they are snacks and we need to snack, right? Well, not if you are trying to lose weight and not if you are trying to cut out sugar and processed carbs they are not. But I, like many had become hypnotized by clever marketing of the food industry and the fact that they are so easy to eat and so compulsive to eat.
Where as I would argue that we are not ‘genetically wired to be fat’, we are however ‘hacked to have our bodies become dependent on sugar and processed carbs’ and this is the reason why a lot of us now are fat.
The purpose this serves is not to keep us well nourished and healthy, rather to keep us buying foods that will never make us feel full, will make us hungry soon after eating them and will make money for the food industry.
It can seem almost impossible to give up sugary foods and some think it a sort of ‘right’ to have a ‘treat now and again’ and that is okay, so long as that is the way you can live your life and with such self control. But if you, like me have become an over eater, foods like this need to go out of your life. And when they do, you wont look back. Suffice to say, you will not miss them as long as the replacement is healthy fat based, low carbohydrate and not man made processed food.