Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Sweet Tooth Gene

I now have an excuse for not being able to control myself around sweets. Apparently researchers have found a sweet tooth gene that makes the people who have it consume more sugar. I have been struggling with this problem my whole life. I'm sure there are some environmental factors (ice cream after dinner as a child, chocolate for presents) but it's kind of nice to know that I'm struggling against myself. The real answer of course is that I should be eating the low-sugar macro sweets instead of the freaking cupcakes that someone handed me yesterday! (I just have such a weakness for cupcakes, even non-vegan ones.) Macro sweets tend to have a slower acting sugar than the straight white crack that we use in everything else. Brown rice syrup is broken down slower in your body than cane sugar. So you don't get the big up (and resultant crash) with a macro treat that you usually do with regular sugar stuff. But that doesn't stop me from eating it, even knowing that I will feel a bit ill later. I'm getting a reputation as a bad vegan, but I feel like it's an addiction. I seriously can't control myself. Sigh.