It was a joke, but honestly it did catch me off guard. Being healthy and sweetened creamers don't go hand in hand. I think you're just fooling yourself about honey being good for you, when in fact its predominant quality is to be sweet. I think you're making all kinds of excuses to keep sugar in your life, it permeates every meal you eat and sooner or later you'll learn that. I learned it later in life unfortunately, and I've fought my sugar addiction ever since. You're still friends with sugar and you seem very young so this probably doesn't make much sense to you now - who knows when you'll be open to learning the truth about sugar. I hope for your sake it's sooner than I learned it. I posted a video in your paelo thread, did you watch it?

Furthermore, it makes me sad that our supermarkets are chalk full of foods that are pure sugar and are disguised as "healthy." If someone is young, uneducated about nutrition, and has a bit of a sweet tooth falls prey to it and this is how we've ended up with an epidemic.

thanks guys <3 keep the info coming, i'm listening!

how can agave nectar be made from high fructose if it's organic? i didn't think organic could HAVE high fructose.

High fructose is not an ingredient. This is taken straight from WebMD about agave "Agave nectar or syrup is as high as 90% concentrated fructose (a simple sugar that occurs naturally in fruit), and the rest glucose. But the agave you can buy ranges from 90% to as little as 55% fructose (similar to high-fructose corn syrup), depending on the processing, says Roger Clemens"

Basically the processing takes anything natural from it. They can still call it natural because there are no rules about what constitutes something as being natural. So the original ingredients might be "all natural" but the end result is anything but.

Other than that I don't have anything else to add that someone else didn't say already. I agree with them about the honey and fruit juice wholeheartedly.

This is WHY you need to learn about nutrition. Organic means only how the plant is grown (without artificial chemical pesticides). You can grow organic corn and turn it into high fructose corn syrup.

Fructose is a natural type of sugar. Another name for fructose is fruit sugar. Eating intense, concentrated sources of sugar is bad for health, regardless of where the sugars come from. Natural sugars (from honey, fruit...) aren't much (if any) better for you than processed sugars - and even processed sugar "comes from" natural, even organic sources. Sugar is never "made" it all comes from natural sources. Processing of corn or agave concentrates the sugar by removing everything in the plant except for the sugars.

Agave syrup isn't "made from" high fructose anything, the fructose is naturally in the plant and processing concentrates those sugars (mostly fructose) by removing anything from the plant that isn't sugar which is the same process that corn goes through to become high fructose corn syrup.

All sugars, ALL SUGARS, contribute to the sugar overdose that contributes to so many health problems including obesity, diabetes, insulin resistance, hypoglycemia, heart disease, autoimmune diseases.

If you replace all of your processed sugar with "healthy" sources of sugar like honey and fruit, you will not improve your health much, and probably won't lose much if any weight.

Starch isn't much better, because the body breaks down starches INTO sugar.


To simplify paleo as much as possible:

Eat lots and lots of low calorie vegetables, as much as you want
Eat moderate amounts of meat, fish, and eggs
Eat small amounts of nuts seeds, avocado, coconut oil, butter
Eat small amounts of berries and citrus fruits
Eat even smaller amounts of all other fruits
Eat nothing else, and if the weight isn't coming off, or stops at some point look at what you're eating and cut out the highest calorie foods you're eating - and start with the sugars first - the fruit.

When you reach a healthy weight, if you're exercising regularly, you may be able to eat more fruit and perhaps the occasional potato (ideally sweet potato).

Some folks on paleo add small amounts of non-paleo and semi-paleo foods, but to do this successfully, you need to understand nutrition and biochemistry at a level you do not. Stick to basic foods that a caveman would instantly recognize immediately as food from a distance (without tasting or smelling). Stick to foods you could obtain in the forest yourself, ideally in the form you would find them (for example fruits would be fresh and whole, nuts would be in the shell, unsalted).

Creamer doesn't pass this test - it looks like dust.

Agave nectar doesn't pass this test, because the plant has to be highly processed to create the syrup. The fiber (the good stuff) is all removed.

Maple syrup doesn't pass the test either, because like agave it has to be boiled and boiled and boiled to become syrup.

Honey doesn't even pass the test, because it also is processed, even if the procesd is just squeezing and straining out the solids (honey comb, beeswax, bees, and bee larvae). Cavemen would have chewed on the honeycomb, probably eating the wax, bees, and bee larvae within the honeycomb.

The best paleo advice I ever found in a paleo book was to imagine the work a caveman would have done to get a type of food, and try to do it before eating that food.

Fishing and gathering fruits and vegetables would require the least amount of work, but still quite a fair amount of walking. Eat the most of these and do a lot of walking.

Meat is a lot more work, and dangerous to boot, because meat fights back. If you want to eat meat, then you need to run and fight (aerobic exercise).

This advice isn't always practical, and I don't follow it myself as much as I should, but it does remind me to eat most from the foods that would be easiest to acquire if I had to get them directly from nature.

do you have any suggestions on learning more about nutrition? i've been being given some nice links and have been reading them all, but i DO need more of an understanding of nutrition, which is why i decided to take a week to study and discuss it before actually trying it.

and once im done with the creamer and coffee i have, i'm going to start using my almond milk instead. it's not sweetened (i hate sweetened milk) so i'll have to get used to the coffee being more bitter than usual, but i bet i can get used to it within a week or two.

as for the running, i have physical issues that make that impossible, but i'm walking and biking at least 4 times a week. and i am also doing some simple muscle-building exercises, because i'm not all about losing weight. i'd like to lose weight, but really my goal is for health. i want to be healthy. and im sure if my body is getting properly what it needs, not only will i feel better but i'll lose weight too. i'm not even trying to get back to 105 pounds like i was just a few years ago, but i'd at least like to be wearing a size 12 instead of a size 16. and i quite like my new curves when i dress for them properly, i'd be disappointed to lose my curves by losing too much. i really just wanna lose 30 more pounds, then i'll be happy. i'll still be quite a bit overweight, but hopefully at 150 i'll feel better than i do now at 180.

I can't run either, that wasn't my point. My point was to think about how hard you would have to work to get the food you're eating if there were no grocery stores, farms or chemistry labs. Would it even be possible.

My point was that for those of us who are overweight and unable to do much exercise, we should focus on the paleo foods that would be easiest to gather, catch.... vegetables, berries, fish, poultry... We should eat less of the foods that would have required a lot of time, strength and work (climbing, running, fighting, pounding...).


As to where you can find out about nutrition, probably the best place to start is your local library. You can ask the librarian for help, or look for books in the "for dummies" or "idiot's guide" series. These books aren't meant for dummies or idiots, they just are written in an easy to read format. The everything guide books are also good.

I'd recommend these books

Living Paleo for Dummies
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Eating Paleo
Eating Clean for Dummies
The Low Carb Bible, by Elizabeth Ward
Nutrition for Dummies
Nutrition for Life

If you find that these books are confusing, consider checking out books in the children's and young adults (teen) section aimed at middleschoolers and teens. Sounds stupid, I know - but I have done this and I have a master's degree in psychology. In fact, I am trying to learn to use my new sewing machine and the adult books on the subject were too technical, so I checked out some books that were written for junior high and high school age.

i was hoping for more online stuff, it's really hard for me to go to the library. it's miles away and it's hard to carry books back on my bike, plus i can only keep them 2 weeks, which isn't enough time to really study and absorb the information. i read Nutrition for Dummies, but i forget pretty much everything i learned. with stuff online, i can just bookmark it and look at it at my liesure.