You know how
when people ask if you want sugar in your tea/coffee and, being virtuous, you
don’t take any so say, “No thanks, I’m sweet enough.” Well, that’s not me.
About two months
ago I read some startling ‘facts’ about sugar. According to Robin McGraw’s book What's Age Got To Do With It? sugar bonds with
something or the other and may help cause wrinkles. Plus they’re a toxin. I’m a
bit hazy on the details but the bottom line is I decided to give up sugar.
Robin, bless her
cotton socks, gave up sugar for an entire year. She probably had her husband,
Dr Phil (I found out they're married when I tried to google* her
book) providing all sorts of fabulous moral support. An entire year, people! No cookies, no cake, no chocolate,
no lollies. Hm, now that I write it out it just doesn’t seem possible. Who
could be that virtuous?
Anyway, inspired by
both Robin and vanity I decided to cut out sugar for two weeks. A year seemed a
bit excessive. I thought I’d start with something more reasonable.
Cakes and
biscuits weren’t too hard to forego, although those TimTams in my fridge did
have a very loud siren call. And my beloved lemon sherbet lollies which I turn
to two or three times a day were reasonably easy to kick but tea without sugar proved not sweet enough.
In the past
friends have expressed horror that I have two teaspoons of sugar in my tea. “Two!”
they exclaim with dismay. But it’s not that bad, I don’t have that many cups
of tea in a day, maybe four on a bad day.
Not anymore, tea
is so disappointing without sugar I have maybe two cups a day. I’ve survived
the two weeks without sugar and now am back to eating a little tiny bit but
still have no sugar in my tea.
So disappointing. Tea is no fun at
all. (Did I mention that already?)
So I’ve become a
bit of a tea slut, trying Lady Grey, Russian Caravan (ugh), Ceylon, Oolong,
Darjeeling. They all sound exotic, some taste better than others, but all would
be improved by a couple of teaspoons of sugar.
Alas.
* When I wrote "google" on my iMac, it came up as spelt incorrectly. Is it just me who sees the irony here?
