Sunday, August 07, 2005

There's Sugar in Everything

My mom recently commented how hard it is to find any type of food that doesn't have sugar in it. Most packaged meals have a big dose of the white poison, and of course any kind of dessert or snack is out of the question.

This morning, I linked the sugar omnipresence to that "sugar feeling" in other things.

My wife was watching "True Lies" on satellite TV, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis. I was trying to do some work, but I found my eyes drifting back to the TV screen again and again.

It felt like sugar! I'm trying to cut my own intake of sugar as much as possible, and I know what it feels like to NEED SUGAR. It's overwhelming. But once you stay away from it for a few weeks, it isn't so bad. I no longer need to pull over in a mad rush on State Street to get a chocolate chip-wich or milkshake. I don't eat cookies for the hell of it.

But this TV thing was a unique experience. I kept making excuses to come back to the room where the TV was on to see the show. (BTW, I've seen this damn movie probably 3 times already. Why??)

When a marketer finds a "sugar" in his product, something that people can't stay away from, they start to use it as often as possible. Sweet tastes, saltiness, exploding bombs in movies, sex scenes - these are all types of sugar. I know that sugar is bad for me, but is the rest of this stuff bad for me too? In a way, it is because it takes me away from whatever I was trying to accomplish. But I wonder what other health effects it has.

For now, I'll keep on rationing sugar and not worry about the TV type of sugar. But I really need to think about this.

1 comment:

Raea said...

I absolutely agree. I quit TV a year and a half ago and now I've cut down on sugar. They are both addictive and almost impossible to get away from.