Already Sweet Enough

By Pearl Bullivant on August 21, 2014 in Other

Hi, my name is Pearl and I have a sugar addiction. My addiction has such a grip on my life that I cannot function without a breakfast of two English muffins (gluten enriched, of course) spread thickly with sugary orange marmalade, followed by a sucrose packed pear and banana. A few hours later this sugar high is topped up by a cappuccino with full cream milk and two sugars, and I solemnly declare that I often sneak in a second cappuccino and a little homemade cake once my skinny body has hit the afternoon slump.

I know I’m already an outcast in Clovelly, but this addiction is sorely impacting on my cool, hipster street cred. I don’t do quinoa or ancient grains, but I do love ancient sugar. I so desperately want to overcome the looks of absolute disgust I receive from baristas all over the Eastern Suburbs when I insist on the addition of the twin evils in my takeaway coffee; the knowing look that makes me feel 100kgs with a muffin top oozing over my skinny jeans and ‘I’m from The ‘Rith’ tattooed on my forehead. And then there are those rare times I elect to ‘drink-in’ and the barista takes matters into his own hands, serving my cappuccino with only one sugar on the saucer, forcing me to grovel for a second addiction stick. Where else but the Eastern Suburbs can food cause such ‘status angst’?

Where else but the Eastern Suburbs would people feel the need to ‘regressively’ eat like a caveman to feel special? Where else would foods like kale, activated almonds and coconut water be labelled ‘worthy’? Where else would pickled vegetables (once a dietary hazard) become ‘on-trend’?

A few years ago gluten was the trendy evil, despite only one percent of the population suffering from coeliac disease. But the baddies in your bread have been usurped by sugar, which is the new ‘food crime’. Sugar has become such a dirty word amongst the affluent that anyone consuming or cooking with it is likened to a smoker. Strict anti-sugar regimes have become fashion forward and the anti-sugar zealots are making a small fortune touting their newfound food religion, despite having qualifications more appropriate in a court of law or a newsroom than a food laboratory.

Even banking giant Credit Suisse couldn’t resist putting their two cents worth in, warning of a “growing negative trend towards sugar. Big sugar will become like big tobacco”. With so many ‘experts’ in the sugar field, is it any wonder shock jocks and mining executives can validly comment on global warming?

With a huge number of Australians being overweight, the only place I’m seeing a negative trend towards sugar is in the Eastern Suburbs, and it’s a negative trend with much hysteria attached. How many people do you see sucking on a can of Fanta on CloBaby Road these days (although I do see lots of kiddies sucking on warm juice to keep them quiet)?

Our supermarkets are full of disgusting, adulterated foods laden with fats, sugars and chemicals and the negative impacts of real sugar abuse – as opposed to a Clovelly fantasy – are clearly evident in low socio-economic areas of Australia, in the US as a whole and in Coca-Cola controlled Mexico. If the hipsters, bohos and Yummy Mummies really wanted to make a worthy impact on sugar consumption, shouldn’t they start making noises about the unethical behavior of Coca-Cola and other junk food multinationals rather than bragging about amaranth and kale and picking on Pearl and her four teaspoons a day addiction? But that would be way too hard, I suppose.

Pearl xxx