Life is sweet

Our resident type 1 columnist, Rob Palmer, counts his blessings that sugar-free treats have evolved since carob Easter eggs

I remember an Easter way back in the depths of history when eggs meant so much more than an over-priced commitment to a chocolate sugar rush up to three months either side of a date for the celebration of the actual Easter event. In fact, now you can have Easter eggs almost all year long, and they aren’t even called Easter eggs. OK, whinge over.

The point is, when I was diagnosed with type 1 at seven, Mum asked the Easter bunny to look into a sugar-free option so I could participate in the Easter Sunday egg hunt and have something to eat without sending my nervous BGLs up through the ceiling of tolerance.

And then, carob. Whoever thought a carob egg was a good idea has probably never tasted one. Even at seven I was diplomatic enough not to spit it out on the grass by the bush I found it under. No point insulting the bunny after the effort it had obviously gone to. My name was even on it.

The sugar-free options in the ’80s weren’t what you’d call the tastiest of treats. Whether it was rubbery sugar-free jubes, diet cordial, diet jelly, jam or sugarella, there was this chemical taste in most of them I found as discomfiting as mushrooms and pumpkin. In fact, as a seven-year-old, I’d almost take a mushroom sandwich over a bowl of (diet) sugar-free jelly. Almost.

On the upside, I found my taste for sugar waned and I began to enjoy the natural taste of foods. Mum, knowing what I thought of artificial sugar, began experimenting. She started using a quarter of the recommended amount of sugar in cakes. Imagine a coconut and orange cake that actually tasted like coconut and orange. Who needs sugar? Fast forward to today and there are almost as many health food stores as chemists… maybe more. We are learning to enjoy natural flavours minus the spoonful of sugar. The medicine goes down just fine.

That said, I have always managed to get hypnotised by ice cream. Even when my BGLs say, “no way”, I’ll sometimes slip a spoon in the tub. Nobody’s perfect, nor should they have to be.

They say fortune favours the bold; now it also has favoured my diet. A naturally sweetened ice cream has been created that defies any bitter memory I have of carob eggs and chemical-tasting sweetener, yet it parades around at about 99 per cent sugar free.

For the first time in my living memory, I ate a half-litre tub of Denada – a creamy, chocolatey ice cream – while watching my CGM like a hawk, and saw next to zero effect on my BGLs. Incredible.

Without getting all techy on how they do it, the sweetness comes from a vegetable extract called xylitol and the flavours are all natural. Our society’s obsession with health foods has finally, according to my tastebuds, paid dividends.

I’ve rediscovered ice cream pleasure and freedom – and it only took 35 years. ■

We are learning to enjoy natural

flavours