I am sooo fed up with this fake sugar stuff.  Okay, we have all heard the story about the woman at the fast food store ordering a huge hamburger and french fries and then a diet coke.  Everyone I know has snickered about this little human habit.  But I am all about subtlety and how that human habit should shed light on what everyone does, which is to put a decoy out there to disguise my really bad habits.  Fake sugar in the coffee is the biggest offender as far as I am concerned.

Avid, vociferous opinions are shared about the fake sugar in coffee, sugar packets range from pink to blue, to yellow.  Sugar itself is only 15 calories per heaping teaspoon (BTW, a packet is NOT a heaping teaspoon).  I have NEVER met anyone who is congruent about fake sugar.  People talk trash about sugar, put a yellow packet into their coffee and then eat 2 donuts and a sweet roll.  Really?  Really.

I do not think that this – in itself – is the problem.  I think the problem is that people actually believe that switching out that daily packet of sugar helps.  This dupes people into believing they can have a sweet roll, like the lady eating a fast food burger and drinking a diet coke, it doesn’t work as a diet, or as a healthy eating strategy. 

You have to have a collection of good eating habits in order to have a healthy body.  You cannot use a pink sugar packet and imagine that you are on a diet or eating healthy, it is just not enough.  In my mind, this is a much bigger lesson for life as well.  In our behavior with others, we often offer up a little bit of evidence to show that we are “trying” to change, when in fact, we are putting the pink packet of sugar out there in hopes that you will not see the sweet roll.  Interestingly enough, we lie to ourselves as well as to others and it is so damaging that it can actually shorten our life span.  How sad is that?