Diet Pepsi: According to my past review of sodas, I have not yet covered the important topic of Diet Pepsi.  What a shocking oversight!  Anyway, I am taking a sip of it right now.  …Hmm.  It tastes pretty much like Diet Coke.  So, in other words, like sugar-water mixed with crushed-up aspirin, except it’s slightly sweeter than...

Ever since Galen, the Roman physician, people have trusted their health to doctors- and doctors, at least in the last century and a half, have often deserved such trust.  In antiquity it was common for  medicine and food to be variants of the same ingredient – certain spices or roots might flavor a stew, and mitigate the symptoms...

Everybody knows that if you want to see what’s in the food you buy in the grocery store, all you have to do is check the ingredients list. All foods are required to list all their ingredients, ranked by prevalence, somewhere on the label. Therefore, if you want to get a rough sense of how much high fructose corn syrup is in...

People who drink more soft drinks are more likely to develop pancreatic cancer, claims a new study from Singapore.  The researchers followed about 60,000 people for around a decade, and found that those who consumed more soft drinks–around 5 drinks per week–were 85 percent more likely to develop pancreatic cancer than those...

How do people with diabetes embrace their inner Julia Child (insert favorite chef here) when traveling abroad?  Do we stick with what we know because it is safer? How can we enjoy food and manage our blood sugars when everything is unfamiliar?  And what do you do if you relocate abroad, as I have, leaving everything behind including...

As a child, I don’t think I ever thought of buckwheat as food.  To me, Buckwheat was the character in the television show The Little Rascals that I watched at my grandmother’s house, and nothing more.  I sat on my grandmother’s flowered couch (which was covered in flowered bed sheets), and she fed me chicken noodle soup and something...

Coca-Cola: I love the fact that Coke-Cola has managed to tie itself into the concept of “America,” and waving flags, and the 4th of July, and…  polar bears.  And such.  And hey!  Do you remember their old ad campaign?  “Coke Is It.”  That slogan always cracked me up.  It’s vague, and yet ridiculously imposing at the...

Our family jokes about how our dinner conversation is always in regard to what is on the menu for the next meal.  We like to eat.  We like to eat almost anything, although we also consider ourselves gastronomical snobs.  None of us ever stops in at a fast food joint, even in a dire emergency.  Food is just too respected among us to...

Yacon Powder Every diabetic has a strict hierarchy of artificial sweeteners. For me, Sweet’N Low is firmly at the bottom, cursed by its chemical, saccharine taste. Aspartame-based Equal is next, followed by the top of the artificial sweetener pack, Splenda — made from sucralose, a substance my roommate once described to me...

Regular versus sugar-free candy — who will win? Full disclosure:  I’m not diabetic.  But my step-sister is — and in point of fact, she learned that she was diabetic after over-gorging on Halloween candy at age ten.  This did not stop her from occasionally over-gorging on Halloween candy in later years, with occasional predictably...