Yes Kate, I agree. I do though use natural cane sugar, the stuff that comes in a black lump if you can find it. If people must have sugar to make cakes and so on, and I use it sparingly with sieved buckwheat for such things, then it is the best to use. Not sure how people find it in France, if we have a visit from the right part of London there is a Jamaican health food shop that buys it direct from a plantation which is brought to me. A 2kg bag/lump lasts me two or more years. Otherwise the vegetables in your list plus camotes ('sweet potatoes' I think), yams, swedes ('rutabagas' here), several squashes (pumpkin/marrow family but used as veg) such as kabota and acorn squash make it more than enough to get one with.
Fruit is wonderful, but some are delicious and deceptive, pineapple for one which for some reason stimulates appetite and makes us want to eat. Kiwis, rhubarb, raspberries (I grow loads of them) and blackberries are lowest sugar and carbs, then strawberries, all kinds of melons, papaya, peaches, nectarines, blueberries, cranberries and apricots. I eat more fruit than almost anybody I know and often put it down to laziness that they don't indulge themselves. Opening the wrapper and breaking off a piece of chocolate then rewrapping it seems to take far longer and be more effort or am I mistaken?
The programme last night was TV journalism therefore an exposé rather than well reasoned, evidenced facts. Sorry, but I am too much the scientist in that sense. For all of that, yes the message is very clear but how many people watched it? It would have been a minority no doubt... Pity.
John, I read the Guardian piece. We have environmental problems and yes Monsanto and their ilk are killing off natural species of plants and animals in order to make those of us in the more affluent countries more and more garbage to stuff down our gullets. The world is losing bees, in some places they have gone more or less missing for several years. Along with increasing diseases and accidentally introduced parasites and predators it is getting more difficult for them. Yet they do adapt so given half a chance will recover. Do the GMO growers want that though?
Mike, bans will never happen whilst vast multinational corporations pull politicians' strings and fill their pockets. We know that too well, so first we need to see the political will to change things. At present some hope of that. The tea and coffee things is interesting. Neither of my parents had sugar in either, so neither my sister nor I ever took that up. Since my early 20s I have only drunk green or white tea anyway, to which I would never dream of adding anything, ditto my single espresso every day. What your colleague said is probably true, but I have noticed when people have accepted coffee or tea and we have no sugar to offer (even if they put milk in) they more often than not accept a second or third cup, even help themselves, without much difficulty. As for fatty foods, well luckily for me, just the smell of a fried breakfast makes me feel sick. A pool of grease with an egg (I have always been egg white intolerant as it is), bacon and fried white bread alone and I am out of the room for air. It is the smell of that cooked grease alone. I consider that good fortune to be that way.
I also thank my early years in Germany for my rye and buckwheat bread preference. A baguette or other white bread seems tasteless and insubstantial to me. Yes, I have eaten it for lack of choice but find it makes me eat more bread until it satisfies. A couple of thin rye bread slices do me. Have you ever seen German sliced bread? It is really very thin and most people do not eat a large amount.