Category: Not-So-Sweet News

Agave: What’s the Scoop About this Sweetener?

Agave_syrup1One of the most frequently asked questions I get is about agave, the honey-colored liquid that’s popular with many health-minded people.
Inevitably, the subject of agave comes up whenever I lecture or take on a new client.
Generally, these health-minded people have heard wonderful things about agave, especially that it’s low on the glycemic index.
You, too, as a health-minded person — I assume you are since you’re reading this blog — may want to know:
* Is agave safe?
* Can I use agave as a sugar substitute?
For those of you who are fans of agave, my short answer is this: I don’t recommend it.
Learn more about agave here.

SUGAR SHOCK! Defined

Since gingerbread cookies, eggnog, candy canes and chocolate geld (coins) abound at this time of year and you’ll undoubtedly often be offered those and other tempting sweets this month, I invite you to start a process of self-discovery.
That’s right, in my opinion, December is not the month to kick your sugar habit (unless you insist!)
Instead, I encourage you to learn what shock is and then do what I call “sugary soul searching” so you can learn if this applies to you.
We’re revisiting the definition of SUGAR SHOCK! — which I gave here on this blog, in October 2006 — because my new Facebook friend Terri nudged me by asking, “What do you mean by Sugar Shock Connie?? I love how it sounds!!”
So here’s my definition of sugar shock, which is also included in my book of the same name. (You can get a sneak peek of my book SUGAR SHOCK! here.)
Please bear in mind that sugar shock is a condition that affects millions of people worldwide, including some one-quarter to one-half of the U.S. population.
SUGAR SHOCK!™ defined – A mood-damaging, personality-bending, health-destroying, confusion-creating constellation of symptoms affecting millions of peoople worldwide, who often turn to processed sweets and much-like-sugar carbs, which send their blood sugar levels wildly soaring and plummeting.
The term SUGAR SHOCK! is intended to encompass the often-misdiagnosed and maligned condition of reactive hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), as well as other blood sugar disorders, from insulin resistance to diabetes.
Considerable research reveals that repeatedly overconsuming sweeteners, dessert foods, and culprit, quickie carbs (such as white rice, French bread, chips, etc.) wreaks havoc on your blood sugar levels, overstimulates insulin release, triggers inflammation, and could contribute to more than 150 health problems, including obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, polycystic ovary syndrome, severe PMS, failing memory, depression, mental confusion or “brain fog,” mood swings, Candida, sexual dysfunction, infertility, wrinkles, acne, and early aging.
Victims of SUGAR SHOCK! also may experience such baffling symptoms as excessive fatigue, headaches, dizziness, cold sweats, anxiety, irritability, tremors, crying spells, drowsiness or the opposite (sleeplessness), forgetfulness, heart palpitations, nightmares, blurred vision, muscle pains, temper outbursts, suicidal thoughts, and more.
Ultimately, this insidious SUGAR SHOCK! roller-coaster effect brought on by eating too many inferior carbs hampers sufferers’ ability to function at full throttle–or even half throttle.
Does this sound like something you or a loved one is going through? Would you like to learn more about sugar shock?
Grab a sneak peek now of my book SUGAR SHOCK! now.
Or just get your copy of SUGAR SHOCK! now to read during or after the holidays. This book is ideal to read in January so you can break free of your habit to lose weight, get energy, focus better, become happier and, of course, healthier.

Got Milk Full of Sugar?

You might be unknowingly giving your kids 3 teaspoons of sugar regularly if you’re giving them flavored milk drinks. Find out more here.

Facebook Disabled My Account: Too Friendly too Fast?

Facebook has disabled both my regular account, (www.Facebook.com/ConnieBennett), and my public page, www.Facebook.com/SmartHabitsFans. (Although I can’t post to the latter, I believe you can still join and post comments to previous posts.)
Suffice it to say that I was shocked upon being told:
Your account has been disabled by an administrator. If you have any questions or concerns, you can visit our FAQ page here.
I finally discovered my offense after carefully reviewing Facebook’s Warnings and reading such helpful blog posts as “13 Reasons Your Facebook Acount Will be Disabled” (from Thor Muller of Get Satisfaction) and “Facebook Account Deactivation, Can It Be Avoided” from Facebook guru Mari Smith.
Apparently, my violation is that I wrote too quickly to people who’d requested to be my friends before accepting them.
You see, I did what I thought was a great time- saver — I simply cut and pasted innocuous messages such as “Wow! Lots of friends in common. Look forward to your posts.” You see, I was just seeking to conserve my precious time.)
I guess you could say that a fun, apt way to describe my Facebook violation is this: I was too friendly too quickly for Facebook!
And the speed of my friendliness, along with the cutting and pasting of messages, was interpreted as being potentially “annoying or abusive.” (As far as I know, no one complained.)
Facebook, I’ve now learned, limits the number of times a user can send the same message or make the same post. (So much for saving time!)
Guy Clearly, Facebook needs to set limits to protect users from spam, but unfortunately in its zeal to do so, many of us innocents are tossed out of the site.
If you’re on Facebook, I would strongly advise reading all of Rights & Responsibilities so you don’t suffer similarly.
Anyhow, I hope to be back on Facebook soon to connect with you, but in the meantime, here’s what I discovered about the unsettling experience of being booted off the social networking site.
Every day, thousands of people are banned for a variety of reasons. Just do a Google search for “Facebook account disabled, and you turn up a whopping 38,100,000 hits.
Among those who’ve been disabled are Robert Scoble, Guy Kawasaki, and actress Lindsay Lohan, who vented about it on MySpace.

Candy-Chomping Kids Commit Crimes as Adults

Can eating too much candy on a daily basis make you commit crimes?
If you’re planning on passing out candies to trick-or-treaters on Halloween, read this first.
Kids who eat candy and other sweets daily may be more likely to be arrested for violent crime as adults, according to a new British study, which you can read about on MSNBC and other organizations.
Curiously, this startling study was published soon before this widely accepted sugar-giving holiday, in the October issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry.
Researchers from Cardiff University in the United Kingdom, headed up by Simon Moore, Ph.D., a senior lecturer in the Violence and Society Research Group, looked at data from the British Cohort Study of more than 17,000 children born in 1970 in the U.K.
Studying the data of four decades, Dr. Moore and his colleagues found that 69 percent of those children who ate candies or chocolates daily at age 10, were later arrested for a violent offense by age 34, the AP reported. Of those who didn’t commit any crimes, 42 percent ate sweets daily.

Sugar: The Bitter Truth With Dr. Robert Lustig

If you haven’t quit indulging in sugar and refined carbs, then you must see this informative, eye-opening, scary presentation from the nationally renowned Robert H. Lustig, M.D., professor of Clinical Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology Director of the Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health (WATCH) Program at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF).
I predict that you’ll get shocked into taking action — i.e., removing sugar from your life for good.
Watch now and learn why he rightly believes that “high fructose corn syrup and sucrose are both equally bad — they’re both poison.”
Incidentally, as I posted here, on the Sugar Shock Blog back in 2006, Dr. Lustig is a forward-thinking researcher, who made the news (in the San Francisco Chronicle) for his theories about our poisoned food supply.
Get ready for some fascinating information about:
* What he calls “The Coca-Cola Conspiracy.”
* How we have an epidemic of obese six-month olds.
* How the average person is consuming way too much sugar. (FYI, his figure of 141 pounds of sugar per year is too low — it’s really closer to 170 to 190 pounds per person.)
* The amount of sugar found in baby formula. (A lot! Of Similac Isomil, which contains 43.2% corn syrup solids and 10.3% sugar (sucrose), Dr. Lustig says, “It’s a baby milkshake.”
See his replies here to some questions.Listen now or anytime.

Britney Spears: Does She Have Low Blood Sugar & a Sugar Addiction?

Britney Spears may be a victim of the blood sugar blues, according to the National Enquirer, which attributes a source stating that she collapsed while rehearsing..
The 27-year-old singer suffers from low blood sugar, according to the Enquirer source, who revealed that Britney’s father has been trying to keep her condition a secret.
I’m baffled. Why would Britney’s father want to keep it hush-hush that the singer has low blood sugar?
Having low blood sugar or hypoglycemia is not a condition you want to hide, and you shouldn’t be ashamed of it.
Millions of Americans have low blood sugar, including Nichole Richie, as I also mentioned back in 2007.
In fact, more people have low blood sugar than have diabetes, but many experts believe that low blood sugar can lead to type 2 diabetes.
The good news for people with low blood sugar is that you can have a perfectly normal life, but you will need to take good care of yourself.
If you have low blood sugar, you should quit sweets and refined carbs, eat frequent meals and get plenty of rest, among other things, as I explained in Sugar Shock! (I learned all of this myself in 1998, when I was deep in the throes of my sugar addiction and suffered from many confusing ailments, including feeling faint and low on energy.)
If Britney Spears does have low blood sugar or hypoglycemia, this might explain her alleged interest in sweets, diet pills and alcohol.
Back in 2007, I posed the idea on this Sugar Shock Blog that Britney might be a sugar addict. I even posted a press release about it. I raised the issue again here.

Lakers’ Lamar Odom: Is His Candy Habit Triggering His Uneven Performance on the Basketball Court?

Why does the Los Angeles Lakers forward Lamar Odom have an uneven performance on the basketball court such as this flagrant foul?
In a blog post, entitled “The Lakers’ Lamar Odom, Sweet Tooth and Erratic Play,” Dr. Daniel Amen, a Lakers fan since a child, presents a compelling theory — the basketball player’s compulsive candy habit is to blame.
After interviewing hundreds of experts for my book SUGAR SHOCK! and suffering my own horrific, sugar-induced nightmare, the physician’s concept makes perfect sense.
Dr. Amen, author of Change Your Brain, Change Your Life and Magnificent Mind at Any Age, writes that Odom “is unbelievably talented, but often acts like a space cadet during games.
“He can play great, and be worth his 14 million-dollar salary, or he can act like he is `missing in action.'”
Indeed, acting like a space cadet or have brain fog is clearly a manifestation of low blood sugar, which can be triggered by eating too many sweets.
Kudos to Dr. Amen for pointing out that “Odom’s massive consumption of candy leads to a sugar high and then a crash, evidence of which can be seen on the basketball court.”

High Fructose Corn Syrup: Some Scary Facts to Consider Before You Gulp Down Soda

Did you know that consumption of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in the United States has increased by a a whopping 10,673 percent between 1970 and 2005? So reports the USDA Dietary Assessment of Major Trends in U.S. Food Consumption report.
Are you one of millions, who, according to the USDA report, consume one-quarter of your calories from added sugars, most of which comes from high fructose corn syrup?
And have you heard about the a recent study, which reveals that a diet high in high fructose corn syrup may be partly to blame for insulin resistance?