Fizzy drinks and the infinite boredom of winter fruits

mango and apple juice

I saw that it had been published recently an study showing how people are dropping cokes, fantas and even robinsons in favour of mineral water, smoothies and juices. I think it is quite interesting, at least because I have made exactly the same.

Past year, when sml! came to London, we were having some dinner on a shawarma & kebab place near Old Street, and he said he was drinking coke as it was an special event, as he had stopped drinking it recently. I was looking at him and thinking "woh... he can't be talking seriously!" But some months after, for some reason I realised our diet is not good. I read somewhere we are living in the Sugar Society. And it sounded quite right. Everything is edulcorated, more and more each day - as we get used to that sweetener level and can't manage to distinguish, we need to have even more sugar in our food. Same goes with the salt. Add more and more until the body explodes. Luckily I am not a salt-fan; I prefer to use other spices as parsley, garlic, rosemary, etc.

So to stop using sugar was a good step. No more sugar in the coffee - honest! At the beginning I added some honey but I got used to not to add even honey and just enjoy the coffee in itself, without saturating my senses with loads of sugar. It was the time to enjoy fruits too. A pity it is winter, and winter fruits are extremely boring. Apples and pears. And pears and apples. You can get all kinds of apples here, but all of them are plain boring. I hardly can find an apple that I really like. Either they are too acid, too bland, too like a crude potato - boring. I still had a bit of hope with pears, but they have also dissapointed me. I don't know if I am idealising the pears I ate when I was a child but they were sweet and juicy, their skin was terse and didn't look like plastic. I have been looking for those for some years and I can't find them, neither here or in Spain. Maybe they are an extinguished species. Who knows.

I would love to have summer fruits all year long. Peaches, apricots, grapes, watermelons, strawberries... you know. Nobody can get bored with them, so many colours and suggesting flavours and smells. A pity that artificial, greenhouse fruits do not taste exactly like the real ones, I have to wait until the right time comes.

Meanwhile I am enjoying this great new situation in which I haven't drunk a single coke or fizzy drink for almost two months - when before I drank at least three times per week, accompanied by a crisps bag to make it worse. It is extremely recomforting to know that each time one drinks a coke can, is also drinking ten sugar spoons, which are of course completely unneeded and artificial. So welcome water, juices (specially natural ones!), fruits, milk... and let's just stop intoxicating our bodies.