I have this package of Brown Rice Snaps, by Edward & Sons and I'm wondering if I want to eat it, since I am no longer eating sugar. The ingredients all sound great — Organic brown rice flour, organic white rice flour, black sesame seeds, organic tamari (water, organic soybeans, salt, organic alcohol), sesame seeds — until I get to the very last ingredient listed: organic evaporated cane juice. Does that count as being "sugar"?
I know that white granulated sugar is made from sugar beets or sugarcane, and that it undergoes a very lot of processing, each step in the process creating something further away from nature, from a natural food. I also know that white sugar is extremely yin. So what about "evaporated cane juice"? Is it less yin than white sugar? It probably contains the vitamins and minerals from the original plant, but none of the fiber or other yang parts, unless the dehydrating process removed more than just water?
For a diabetic, the answer is probably a "no-brainer" — don't eat it. It's the same as sugar. Or, at least, the effects are the same.
So how strict do I want to be?
I also need to decide whether to continue eating SunSpire's Grain-sweetened chocolate chips, which contain whole-grain malted barley and corn, unsweetened chocolate, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, and vanilla. (They're delicious, by the way!)
I think that what I'll do is follow the advice I read from one of George Ohsawa's books. I'll wait until I know the answer inside me, and not eat either one of these food products for now. I think that if that makes me feel sad or deprived, then it may well mean that those ingredients are more like sugar than I realized, containing an addictive quality that is unhealthy for me. (Sugar has always affected my emotions and will power.)
Okay, this is what I'm going to do today. I'm giving the rice crackers to my friends and I'm packing up the chocolate chips and putting them in the freezer. Then I'll do some more research on how these two food ingredients are made — evaporated cane juice and malted barley or corn — and observe how I feel without eating them. Sounds like a plan.
