I have to admit I experience a significant amount of pride when I get out there and do a sweat-worthy workout in my twice-weekly sessions with my trainer, which in my deductive mind, allows me license to eat a hearty after-meal, then pop a few cookies in my mouth, or enjoy a chocolate bar picked up at the health food store, without a twinge of guilt. I believe in sweets as both a reward for a job well done and, as a tonic for a quite a few of life’s difficult days, though, I do have qualifications for the kind of sugary products I will ingest. I need them natural and organic. My particular choice of sweetener doesn’t coincide with my diabetic husband’s, nor with my younger cousin, who can’t have any kinds of sugar, because she’s been known to scream down into a long slide of an emotional rollercoaster, if she consumes anything with an ingredient that has “ose” on the label. Too much of any kind of fructose, sucrose, etc, causes inflammation in the body and, as we all know, have our blood sugar jumping up and crashing down in dramatic fashion–definitely not good fora healthy mind or body.
I’m judicious, or think I am, about what’s best for my body. Though this hasn’t always been true, as white bread with a slab of margarine and a spoonful of C&H cane sugar sprinkled on top, was my favorite after-school treat when I was in middle school. (The google machine says these are called “sugar sandwiches”—who knew?) If I had just one bite of that carb-and-fat loaded “treat” now, you’d have to pick me up off the floor and put me to bed for a week. I have evolved over these many, many years from white sugar to brown to honey to maple syrup to agave, to my current favorite, coconut sugar. Don’t give me those Keto options (Sorry hubby, Monk Fruit leaves a sour taste in my mouth and, at worse, induces a gag reflex.) or those pink packets of cooked-up-in-a-lab chemicals masquerading as sugar-like, lo-cal and oh, so good for you. My tastebuds won’t have it. Those “sweeteners” are just not real and, like a poem, the substance has to be authentic, leave me enlivened, perhaps even a bit dizzy, but certainly not poisoned. And, perhaps, as I sit and consume my particular sweet delight, after a helluva day, like a poem, it just might give me pause to savor the moment, charge my weary spirit and have me sinking into a state of gratitude for that small taste of heaven on my tongue, as I navigate, as best I can, through this perplexing and sometimes bitterly challenging, world.
Graphic image by Felicia Britton
Hari B Poet 