British Chef Jamie Oliver may be trying to create a “Food Revolution,” but his efforts pale in comparison to those of my parents in the 1970s. They graduated from college in 1973, moved to Indiana and stopped eating sugar after reading a book called Sugar Blues. And I don’t mean they stopped eating Twizzlers. They eliminated all forms of sugar, including white flour. No Coke, no cookies, and whole wheat pancakes only. Like any good gateway drug, the no-sugar diet also led them to eliminate meat from their diet. They made all of their meals from scratch and maintained a huge garden, and they even canned the leftover produce. They maintained this lifestyle of sugarless vegetarianism for EIGHT years. Chalk it up to the revolutionary spirit of the times I guess.
Then us kids came along and messed everything up. My dad was walking on the New Jersey boardwalk in 1982 with my then-four-year-old older sister who wanted ice cream. He bought a cone for her and nervously ordered one for himself. He hadn’t had any form of sugar for nearly a decade and worried that it might cause a bathroom emergency.
Fortunately for him and the patrons of the Wildwood Boardwalk, nothing happened.
It all devolved from there. My mom now makes some of the best brownies in the world and my Dad recently ate some monstrosity of a hamburger as a food challenge at a local restaurant for Father’s Day. He had his picture taken with his empty plate and signed it with a silver pen before the waitress hung it on the wall of fame. ‘Twas a proud day for our family.
So my parents are no longer sugarless vegetarians, but they reminisce excitedly about those days. Once I became meatlessly-inclined a few years ago, my parents dusted off their recipes from the '70s and made me one of their famous nut burgers. It tasted like I was cannibalizing the Planters Peanut Man.
They've redeemed themselves since that incident. Like the kids who discover their dad is Peter Pan in Hook, I've discovered the hidden talents of my parents as I've developed a new interest in local, sustainable, and healthy food. We re-birthed the garden together this past May, as I detailed in my last post, and we have tentative plans to make our own bread and to can our leftover veggies from the garden.
So I'm happily on board for gardening, vegetarianism, and from-scratch cooking; but giving up sugar...that's just crazy, right?
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