Hey sugar lumps! I need your help.

It’d be really sweet if you could give a little bit of your time :-)

So, I am starting a neat independent project in which I become inquisitive about the presence of sugar and all it’s forms, in both food and drink, and the Way and Why we consume it.

There are many ways in which we interact with food and drink, and each strategy for building our relationship with them is different from person to person. Be that to success or to heartbreak.

At a basic level, low glycemic foods keep our blood sugar levels even, giving us a level mood and appetite until we eat our next equally low glycemic meal and/or snack.

With that in mind, I think it would be great to draw on the expertise of people from multiple professions and backgrounds to gain insights in how we might succeed or fail on this health journey.

From the central source of learning on the food substance being from nutritionists who specialise in this way of eating, to calling on the assistance of people who engage with the more macro concerns of our eating lifestyles, that is, the largescale societal practice and policy created by those in public, and how these practices and policies interact with the planet and the economy.

I will of course be carrying out a lot of the research prep myself, as rigorous and air tight as I can hope to make it at my lil desk from home, and will have plenty of questions for the experts on the back of this, but I would be so grateful if you could give me your Jessica Fletcher and Colombo-style questions so that we can all get something out of this.

So I have created a Survey Monkey which I have linked at the end of this piece.

To bring you into my thinking on the subject as a way to spark your own questions for the experts, I’ll show you a few leading questions that I would ask these indivuals. In their essence, they are questions in my mind that have made me to want to create this project.

Take The Nutritionist for example: perhaps you might want to know whether we should go cold turkey. Or ask, “no carbs?!?”, or what in the world is a glycemic load?

For The Dermatologist and/or The Beauty Expert: For me sugar, if I eat too much of it, most definitely displays itself on my skin. Gives me psoriasis and makes me look older. What would you need cleared up here?

For The Doctor and/ or The Pharmacist: We get loads of devices stuck up us if we’ve had a heart attack, like we’re in an episode of Nurse Jackie. Or we go see the nice person behind the counter in the pharmacy to pick up our prescriptions, some we need because of our blooooood.

What would you ask these dudes?

For The Climate Expert: is it better to use the energy effeciency of food factories and the Research & Development departments they have to eat meals produced on their production lines? With all the ingredient jargon on their lables?

Or can we manage our own energy better from the original hearty recipes we prepare from home where we have a direct relationship to the packaging they come in? The. List. Goes. On.

For The Mental Health Professional: so much of our eating is tied into our lifestory. From our relationships and their inherent boundaries, to our own habits and wanting to eat our feelings away. Have you and the missus been at the Just Eat app too many times this week.

Or perhaps we simply looove eating ice-cream in the cinema!

What do you want to learn for yourself from a mental health professional who deals in our relationship to food & drink?

Do I need to bring on a seperate someone who specialises in alcohol addiction if you feel this effects you or someone you love? The floor is yours.

The Food Sociologist, Economist and/or Careers Expert : Isn’t it sometimes a de-railing moment to our new health kick when Elouise in Engineering brings back Hershey’s Kisses from her trip to New Orleans? No. Just me? Or do the grocery shops seem to be piled high with share bags of crisps and slabs of chocolate? Just me again. Damn.

In a Claire Byrne sort of interview- I joke, I can’t give out to people like that. I’m a wallflower, ha!- what questions would you like to see included for someone who really understands these concerns?

If you will please, give equal weighting in your mind when you approach the text box. I hope to capture this end of things really well, but I haven’t figured out if I need all three experts yet.

The, Kind of, Suprise Guest. You probably are thinking right now. “Katherine, YOU’VE LEFT OUT SOMEONE REALLY OBVIOUS. DUH!” that could be interviewed.

Tell me the field of expertise and person you need to see explored here. And, yet again, what would you need to ask? I’ll do my best to include them and this line of questioning. Subject to fact checking requirements of course.

And finally. Would it help to have a chat with a few people who have been through the woes of sugar in their lives to give the project meaning? Perhaps following the plan to varying success. Or have too much going on to even manage starting it? Tell me what you think.

I want to so tell you exactly what my project is, but if I give ALL my cards away so soon, because this project is very much in it’s ‘pre-production’ stages- whatever that means- knowing me, will morph all the time until I have given birth to it/have lit it on fire (although lets not have it be the latter)! I would love for this survey to be passed around everyone at the metaphorical dinnertable like it’s a basket of tempting fresh hot dinner rolls from the oven as the more people can provide me with questions, the more people can hopefully have their problems around eating and drinking solved better with the help of this eating plan.

In traditional weight loss groups, I’ve noticed it’s a bunch of ladies discussing food issues from their own unique experience of the world around them. I’m with ya sisters! I’ve been there. I’m not here to judge, but I would love this project of mine to be for as many people as possible from all walks of life, because when we leave the hotel’s Room of Requirement of said weightloss group, our life is actually filled with people of all shapes and sizes. Ethnicity, orientation, sexuality, gender, and identity. Ability and disability. Life goals, budgets, and demands. People with differing hobbies and interests. You name it. (Have I bitten off more than I can chew, lol).

So please pass the survey around to people who you wouldn’t immediately think of who might benefit from it.

And where can I find that survey, you ask? Why, click on or tap the following link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CNPXS72

If you have been able to answer my questions, and will be able to pass the survey around, you’re marvelous! I imagine hugging you til you’re blue in the face. I would like to buy a round of low glycemic drinks, including if you want to go no-alcohol, for all of you when I have helped change ALL of society for the better on the back of this tiny one solitary project…As James Acaster of Off The Menu food podcast fame says, “no more jobs!”

If you have not been able, I hope on some level you have gotten something out of this short piece.