Sugar Rush – The time is now

Health care bills are rising. Our medicare here in Australia has gone up just over 50% in just the last 10 years alone – with a 5 billion dollar projected increase in just 3 short years from 2013 to 2016 (source: Aph.gov.au website)

It is time to realise as a nation that we MUST change our food habits.

Let’s start with the fact that we need to actually eat more real food. It has to stop being ‘weird’. It has to stop being ‘hard’ to do.

My Real Food Manifesto is this, which I wrote back in 2012 and you can now get as a gorgeous, ethical organic cotton shopping bag.

 

It’s pretty simple and if enough people align with this manifesto, we may just be able to stop these medicare costs from rising so dramatically as well as the health challenges our society faces in growing frequency and numbers each year. We may even be able to reduce costs and reverse the health crisis – is it not worth a red hot go?

Imagine: Eat more real food. Save the economy. Sounds sexy to the new treasurer surely?!

We must stop waiting for politicians to save the economy, when a lot of our daily lifestyle habits are hurting the economy, hurting us and hurting the planet.

Here’s to programs like Jamie Oliver Documentary SUGAR RUSH. which you can watch free online in full.

Sugar is a huge problem, not because the odd scone with jam and cream or delicious dessert or cake at your friend’s birthday is a problem. Those should be enjoyed with gusto and appreciation.

Enjoy and be sure to enjoy it free from guilt when you do. We do need to however start realising that sugar consumption rather than labelling it ‘evil’ is actually and quite simply out of control and THAT is what the problem is.

It’s the liquid or processed cereal breakfasts, the sweet morning tea, the poppers, the sultanas, the sweet squeezies, flavoured yoghurts, sweetened processed biscuits, sauces, sweet treat to pick you up at 3pm, soft drinks, sports drinks, fruit waters, the dessert and the day in day out. 100 years ago we ate the same amount of sugar in our whole lives as an 8 year old today has already eaten in their short life so far. Our biology hasn’t caught up to that processing challenge.

Enough is enough. When you read that the earliest diagnosed Type 2 diabetes case due to lifestyle has been diagnosed in a small child, you know: It’s time.

Take control. Bring your child into YOUR REAL FOOD WORLD. Don’t let them go into the marketed alternate universe paradise of fakeness that big sugar has created to addict them early. In marketing speak, this practice is called recruiting an ‘early adopter’.

No one is born into the world craving foods with added sugars and processed treats.

We teach it. The TV teaches it. The well meaning people who reward with sweets teach it or end tantrums with it teach it. The movie theatres teach it. The kid’s menus teach it. The drink machines teach it. The canteens teach it.

We must regain control. We must teach our kids right and give them the chance to thrive on what we were born to eat: Real Food.

Let’s teach them that old school grandma food is the norm and challenge everywhere that it’s seen as daggy and deprivational, because it just isn’t. It’s more than time for a shift here.

And if you’re one of the people forging a new way and people think you’re the crazy one? Well, we just have to keep on keeping on. Host a screening of Sugar Rush or That Sugar Film at your school, make the teachers watch it and set some rules at school and drive awareness. Teach kids the link to them getting to do all they love to do in life, and real food helping them do it all. Do what you have to do. The change makers are always treated as crazy in the beginning. Be courageous. Keep on keeping on knowing deep in your heart that you’re doing the right thing. May the force be with you!

Need some extra help? Sonia from Natural New Age Mum has a post on ‘what to do if your friends and family don’t support your lifestyle‘  and Alisa’s 123 Nourish Me has a great open letter to grandparents explaining something I always discuss in my talks: Treats aren’t what they used to be which I also wrote a book about with recipes Real Treats and Redefining Treats.