Okay. Now I'm pissed off. Beloved and I, and the mother-in-law, have discovered by complete accident that there's one place they put sugar, and you'd never suspect it at all.
Table salt.
It seems impossible. How can they add sugar to salt, right? You'd notice, wouldn't you. Well. Not so much.
Rewind to yesterday, we were having what we thought of as a nice, keto friendly broth and veg, and everything seemed to be fine. Until Beloved took their blood sugar reading and revealed it to be a whopping eleven point nine!
Normal humans don't get a reading much above six.
Meanwhile, I wasn't having much fun, either. My feet were swelling. Something they haven't done since I dipped below 90 kilos of weight. My fingers ballooned up and it was very uncomfortable for me to stand or sit.
Mum-in-law was also having trouble staying on Keto. Her ketone levels are rising and improving, but they're still way too low to be in ketogenesis. She'd cut out every kind of carb, she's been eating cheese, making lots of yummy food for herself, and can't figure out how she's still not in ketogenesis.
I was pondering this, too. There was little in our meal that could have spiked Beloved's sugar levels. I spent hours trying to unriddle it.
And then, as it frequently does, it hit me on the way home. The table salt.
I knew, but remembered way too late, that table salt contains an anti-caking agent designed to prevent clumping that can occur in an open-faced shaker. And what do they use, my dear readers? Corn starch. Otherwise known as dextrose.
Dextrose is a monosaccharide. A form of sugar.
So yeah. They put sugar in everything. Even your salt shaker.
In a proper, balanced diet, you don't need iodine, because you're already getting plenty from other sources. Therefore, you don't really need iodized salt. Heck, I've been using cooking salt and ground rock salt for years and I never had the faintest sign of a goiter.
On to other news - My Health!
I have recovered a mobility that I haven't seen in twenty years or more. I can run up and down staircases.
For years, I've had arthritic deposits in my knees. I've had crackling since I was sixteen and difficulty with stairs since my mid-twenties.
It's such a firkin joy to do that again that I do it every chance I get. No more wheezing waddling up and down the wheelchair access ramp. I can zip up the stairs licketty split. I love it so much it makes me laugh.
There's still stiffness in my right knee and a little bit of crackling when I sit down, but it's no longer painful to get up and down.
Hell, I'm even doing elementary yoga poses in my computer chair. It's lovely.
I'm not sure what I reacted to, yesterday. Beloved hypothesised that it could easily also be the kale in the soup. What I do know is that I had an asthma flare-up this morning, and swelling for the remainder of the previous evening.
So, today, when I break my fast and have some nibbles, it shall contain a couple of kale leaves, fried lightly in butter, and drizzled with more butter and cream cheese. A nice Keto meal. And since I now own egg-poaching pouches, you can bet I'll wanna try them. If the same swelling happens post-kale, I will know it's yet another food to avoid. If the swelling doesn't happen, I can point solidly towards the other variable in the equation, the sudden encounter with dextrose.
I don't think I've had table salt since 2014... so a sudden reaction seems to be in order, given the length of deprivation.
Into family matters - MeMum has seen what I had to say about GP's and instantly wants to back out of our deal for me to talk to hers. Science or not. I've been spending the past week rehearsing about it already and I have solid plans to remain civil and curious. I have some snappy comebacks stored if the doctor gets snarky [Them: "Are you a dietician?" Me: "Are you?"] and some educational info if they get confused. Confusion is easy because the wheat/corn conglomerates want it that way.
I am a writer. I research things for fun.
Cue evil laughter.