Thursday, March 31, 2016

Added Sugar Rant

OK, tiny rant.

I'm diet conscious, though not doing a great job of regulating things right now.
STILL...I see that I should limit my "added sugars" to 6 teaspoons a day.
Fine.  But unless I'm the only adding these, and using a teaspoon measure, that doesn't help me.

On food labels sugar is listed in GRAMS, not teaspoons.  While, yes, it is easier for me to picture teaspoons, I doubt it is for people who don't cook much.  JUST TELL ME HOW MANY GRAMS!!!

Cripes.

So, I googled it.
A teaspoon of sugar is 4 grams.
That means 24 grams of added sugar, or less, is best.  It has to do with insulin resistance, satiety, diabetes, obesity, etc.  So it's fairly important.

Unfortunately, food labels do not require the added sugars to be listed separately and hence people think the naturally occurring sugars in things like beans and carrots and sweet potatoes are the same.  Yes, they are sugars, but since they come in a giant fiber filled package compared to straight sugar added (and by "sugar" I include all the forms from cane sugar, beet sugar, fructose, high fructose corn syrup, maple syrup, honey, maltose, dextrose, sucrose...most of your "...ose" ingredients.  Find a list and learn it) to a processed food.

Like I bet that ALL of the sugars in a cola are added since the other primary ingredient would be water.  No sugar in "water" until it is put in.

I think the best way for me to learn to limit added sugars is to eat actual food.  Like produce, meat, dry beans, nuts, fish, and grains bought as grains and flour.  I'm not saying I'll NEVER eat processed food etc or that I can hit that 24 grams of added sugars or less every day, but it's a good target.

I've been off target on my eating since last fall and need a reset.  Might as well do it now.
It's a simpler way to eat and if it  helps my health, then it is definitely cost effective.

A good movie about this, though they don't make clear the grams of sugar per teaspoon, is "Fed Up" which I recently watched.  Here's the trailer:


Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Liar Liar Pants On Fire!

I'm NOT a liar.  My actual pants were on fire.  Apparently really on fire for reals.
I like to heat up my jammies and my morning outfits on the woodstove.  Usually the stove isn't that warm, much less HOT like FIRE.  Anyway.  My jammies are/were a hooded sweatshirt, sweat pants, and knee high wool sox. For some reason I didn't warm up the sweatshirt.  I must have already had that on.  For some other reason, I put the sox on then got distracted before I put on the pants.  Also non-standard for me is/was owning partly polyester sweat pants.  I normally try to go with all natural fibers. But I had grabbed these at a thrift store and compromised my principles.  To my detriment as it turns out.

So, the stove was much much hotter than normal.  The pants sat on there for more than a minute.  The sox actually also got scorched but I hadn't noticed that yet.  The pants were charred.  I tried folding the charred bit to the inside to smother the issue but they were pretty hot and stinky and when I looked...quite a bit was scorched.  So, being tired, I threw them out the door into the rain.  Then I found some long underwear and went to bed.

When I got up I left the house and was looking for the pants.  No where to be found.  There was a scorched spot on the ground (which is covered by an old coir rug...so really a scorched spot on the rug). It was windy, but not THAT windy.  Eventually I notice some charred bits off to the side caught in a wet shrubbery.  Uh...those were the remains.  The pants BURNED UP ENTIRELY...or almost entirely.
My pants were on fire.  I doubt there were flames.  I think I would have noticed flames and I doubt they flared up in the rain after I threw them out the door into the rain onto the soggy rug/ground.

I could have called this entry "liar liar totally scorched pants" but that didn't have the same ring somehow.


Friday, March 4, 2016

Dead Mouse Stinking

I must say I am underwhelmed by the new formula of De-Con (I have no relationship to the company at all and had to pay for the crap so this is unbiased except I'm ticked off I paid for the crap).  I AM glad the new De-Con apparently won't harm other wildlife that may eat the dead mice.  The old stuff was still toxic in the remains apparently.

This stuff however...it does not seem to actually kill mice.
There IS a dead something or other in the car, presumably the mouse who either died of obesity from the amount of De-Con it ingested, or of old age having lived a long, healthy and well fed life.

3 of the little cubes of putative poison were well gnawed at for over a week with one being about half gone.  The number of poops in the car indicate that there is a lone mouse.  I had removed all other food sources to my knowledge and am not sure a single mouse could have eaten more than the amount of missing De-Con.  The one cube I left properly in its protective case, which is supposed to shield it from any animal larger than a mouse and keep your house cat or dog from eating it, remains completely untouched.

And now the car stinks.  Like a dead mouse.  It freezes over night, thaws and stinks during the day.  This is probably slowing decomposition so it will stink for a good long time.  I made a half hearted attempt to find it and may try again today.  The thing is, I'm mostly at the car at the beginning of the day before I've even had breakfast or coffee and it's dark, cold and rainy out. Or at the end of the day after work ...once again dark, cold and rainy.  Today is a nice day so maybe before lunch I'll go out and try to find the little bugger.  If I find it I'll lose my appetite so it will help the diet.  If I don't find it, it must be stuck up in the upholstery somewhere and I'll just have to ride it out for a couple of months of stank.  Won't be the first time I've had a stinky car.

The last car leaked under the dashboard.  Probably from windshield run off.  During the summer it was dry and didn't stink.  In the fall, spring, and warmer bits of the winter a hell of a mold would get going and it would smell musty.

I did get some peppermint essential oil as the hippie-dippies seem to think that will chase away the mice.  I'm also hoping it will chase away the mouse stank.  So far I've only remembered to open it up overnight once.