It’s very fashionable these days to be having some kind of battle with sugar.  We’re all meant to be waging war on every last monosaccharide and polysaccharide in our diets.  Cutting it out completely from our lives in the name of pseudoscience.  My world view on sugar is simple these days.  Life is too short and too precious to be living in a state of perpeptual deprivation.  Everything in moderation and with as few chemicals and additives as possible.

So.  It’s been out with the Equal.

Even the Naturally Sweet version with Stevia – which tastes bitterly unnatural.

And in with a teaspoon or so of raw sugar in my morning coffee.  I’ve also stopped drinking Coke Zero on a regular basis.  I know, who would have thought?  And I don’t actually miss it.  In fact, I seem to eat less sweet things these days.

But when I do, I make it count.  Some dark chocolate with a cup of green tea after lunch at work helps keep me sane.  I also feel less ‘deprived’ knowing that I have this to look forward to every day.

In this brave new world of mine, there’s also no more diet yoghurt craziness.  Those bland and drippy textured pots of nothingness are now well in my past.

In their place, reduced fat yoghurt that tastes like a dairy product because it is a dairy product and not a collection of low calorie vegetable gums and binders in a tub labelled yoghurt.  And do you know what?  That simple pleasure of eating yoghurt that tastes like yoghurt each morning before work puts me in good enough spirits to get out the front door and join the rest of Sydney in the peak hour commute.  I won’t lie and say I do so with a skip in my step and a smile on my dial but I get out there with vigour and purpose.

Other surprise benefits from my new relationship with sugar include a renewed dedication to home cooked dinners on most weeknights.  It isn’t always easy and it’s tough to find the energy some weeks days but in the last few weeks I’ve managed to restock our freezer with individual portions of foods that freeze well and that were also pretty easy to cook from scratch.

Korma curry paste, chopped coriander stems and low fat coconut milk formed the basis of a pumpkin and lentil curry I made last night.  It was a quick and easy Woolworths recipe but the result was inversely proportional to the effort put into the cooking.  The recipe made a gazillion portions (each one full of veggies and chickpeas) and all I have to do when I want to eat it again is to remember to buy more salted cashew nuts for the garnish because Mr SSG has already scoffed down the rest of the packet I bought yesterday.

And as the weather gets cooler, let’s not forget the health benefits of a few portions of cottage pie in the freezer.  I used a recipe from the Australian Women’s Weekly because the AWW never get a recipe involving mince wrong.  Ever.

This post was inspired by Merowyn at Blithely Unaware and Heidi at Apples Under My Bed who together have recently launched a Live Love Glow campaign on their fabulous blogs.  Their aims include eating for health and vitality and their approach is very real world and accessible.  Thank you girls, for the inspiration.  Keep up your good work with encouraging us all to bring real food back into our lives and kitchens.