By Guy Lawrence

‘For all but the last few hundred years (a heartbeat on the genetic evolution time scale), really sweet foods have been difficult to find.’ – David Gillespie

Sugar… It’s a delicate topic. Unless you’ve been living in a cave lately, you will know that sugar has been copping a lot of flack from the media over recent times (and rightly so I feel). But even with all this media attention, it still washes over many people’s heads and gets thrown into the all too hard basket, with my mate included.

I’ve been guiding my mate now for quite some time with the misconceptions of weight loss and his health kick. He felt that eating fruit salad would help his weight loss plan, counting calories and drinking diet sodas was a healthy choice, following the food pyramid was  beneficial and hours and hours of running a week was going to improve his health. Then I challenged him and his way of thinking and asked him to reconsider his approach, and thankfully he has so far.

We caught up for a cuppa and a chat recently, and as he puts a great big spoonful of honey in his tea, he looks at me and says “this is ok isn’t it? I mean, it’s natural right?”

He then tells me he’s stirring lots of agave syrup into his porridge in the morning too. O’ dear… Continue reading →

By Guy Lawrence

“They may be free of calories but not of consequences.” - Professor Helen Hazuda speaking on diet soda.

After knocking the wind out of my mates sails regarding his healthy fruit salad and apple juice (click here if you’ve no idea what I’m on about), the next topic that came up on the radar was his diet soft drink. You see, the next logical step for my friend to take whilst on his weight loss plan was to be drinking the ‘diet’ stuff instead of  ’normal’ stuff.

I mean, if a soft drink has the word ‘diet’, ‘sugar free’ or ‘low cal’ etc… It’s got to be healthy for you right?

His new found enthusiasim for his health and weight loss plan had already taken a dent regarding fruit and sugar, so I understood the switch to sugar free soft drinks. After he finished guzzling down his cold can on a sunny day I said one word to him… Aspartame.

In a nutshell, this was my response…
Continue reading →

By Guy Lawrence

One fine Saturday morning in the Coogee Tropicana Cafe after a very enjoyable ocean swim…

Friend: May I get the muesli fruit salad and a freshly squeezed apple juice please…

Me: Uh?? What happened to the big brekkie and long black you always order?

Friend: This is the new me mate… I need to drop a few kilos so I’m on a health kick!

I order an omlette and congratulate him on his new found enthusiasm for his health kick and weight loss plan. At this point I have two options:

A) I could sound like a food nazi and tell him my thoughts on what he just ordered… or B) Keep my mouth shut and wish him the best of luck.

I choose the latter… the last thing I wanted to do was dampen his spirits with my thoughts with weight loss and fruit, so I thought I’d put into a blog post instead and mail it to him… Continue reading →