We're sweet enough!

18th March 2016

You're not a mess, you're brave for trying!

Oh dear, it's weigh day, it's not been my greatest week, I've just had a liking for food this week and not really the stuff that's good for me, once again proving it's hard to resist the stuff that's right under your nose!   However I'm good, I haven't focused on weight loss, but at the same time I haven't gone out of my way to overeat and gain weight either, there hasn't been any self destruction buttons pressed, I've just enjoyed eating those foods I wouldn't normally chose too, like fig rolls and chippy tea last night.  It's out my system, I'm ready to resume some normality again.

We talked a lot about sugar yesterday thanks to the sugar tax news on the radio, it put it back in our minds.  I'm not a political animal but I think the sugar tax is a good idea in principle, I think there's so much more that needs doing too, there are so many things with hidden sugar in that it's a real minefield out there when it comes to eating healthy!  I picked a tub of plain oats out of the food bank basket in my meeting last night and of the 50g pot, 10.1g was sugars!  That's two and a half teaspoons of sugar in a pot of oats!  It's not good.

Take this image I noticed on Facebook this morning, it's one of my brothers friends, I'm not sure if it was a complete joke or he was being serious (which some folk would).   He'd wrote;

"Believe it or not, that's my Dinner. Granola, nuts, 2 nanas and go ahead biccies can't wait."

We are led to believe these things are 'healthy' and good for us,

A 100g of Granola is about 16sp, and 20-30% of it is sugar, some of them it would be added sugars.

The Go head biccies, well 3 of them would be 7sp and have 16g of sugar in them, it's the 3rd ingredient on the packet.

The Jumbo Salted Peanuts & Cashews, if they're the Sainsbury's ones I can see on the WW website, they're a 200g bag, only 13g of sugar in the entire bag but 39sp because they have 18.8g of saturated fat in them and 1,228 calories, so yeah they are good for us but we don't need a 200g bag, I know I'd pick at them throughout the day and demolish them.

The bananas are zero Smart Points ;) there's roughly 62sp in that photo, makes you realise looks can be deceiving.

Yeah the sugars in foods have increased dramatically and something needs to change, the manufacturers are making our palette want sweeter food and it's not helping at all.  Start checking the packets, compare like with like, different brands use different ingredients, compare them.

It's one thing adding the sugar to food ourselves, but not even knowing it's there, that's a whole different thing all together.

Right I'm off to get my jobs done so I can make time for me and my meeting, whatever you're doing today, work or play, enjoy. Xx

Here's a delicious Smart Point recipe.

Butternut squash, pasta & stilton

serves 4, 14sp per serving

23g blanched almonds (or pinenuts) (4sp)       

1 butternut squash peeled & cubed about 2cm sq

5 slices streaky bacon (9sp)                                

3tbsp sherry (2sp)

125ml water                                                            

tsp paprika

3 diced onions                                                       

Low fat oil spray

260g papperdelle pasta (or any pasta) (25sp)  

100g stilton (or any blue cheese) (16sp)

1 red pepper from a jar (or use fresh and add at same time as butternut squash)

Use a big non stick frying pan with a lid (if you haven’t got a lid use a baking tray on top of the pan does the same thing just gets hotter!)  Squirt two pumps of WW oil and fry onions until softish, then add streaky bacon and paprika. (about 5 mins total)  Add butternut squash, sherry and water and cook for 20 minutes until squash is cooked  (not too soft).  After about 15m add the pepper from jar.

In the meantime cook your pasta for as long as it says on packet.  Crumble stilton and break up almonds.   When pasta cooked, keep a cup of the water to one side, and drain the rest. 

Stir this into the squash mixture and add a little of the water if needed to loosen it up a bit.  Then add crumbled stilton and almonds, stir and serve.