One week count-down!

This is going to be a pretty busy week- for just about all of us. Good Friday and Passover are next Friday, Easter Sunday follows on April 1.  And our Spring Cleaning starts one week from today on Monday April 2. No worries if you can't really start that day- feel free to jump in at any time! During this week I will be posting things to start thinking about to get ready for the next weeks- the main foods to avoid and the main ones that will become a large part of our diets for a few weeks! The types of foods to think about eliminating entirely are foods that promote gut dysbiosis, blood sugar swings, and general inflammation. One of the main culprits is sugar- in all its varied forms. Although sugar in and of itself is not bad- it has become so very prevalent in our current diet that the average American consumes on average 150 pounds of sugar each year! Yikes- that is a LOT of sugar- and this is not just the teaspoon of sugar added to coffee but in the amount of added sugars to so many processed foods. When you read labels of a wide array of processed foods it may surprise you to count the numbers sugars in different forms- from cane sugar, to evaporated cane sugar, brown rice syrup, and on and on. And then of course there are the artificial sweeteners- not sugar but as food for our unhealthy bacteria they are a virtual feast! All this excess sugar contributes to blood sugar swings and can lead to insulin resistance, prediabetes, metabolic syndrome and nonalcoholic fatty liver. Think about your current diet- look through your cupboards- read your labels and plan to get these foods out of your life for these uupcoming weeks!