In our prayers on Ash Wednesday we are called to prayer, reflection, repentance, fasting, and self-denial. Prayer and reflection are an everyday activity for me. Repentance is not easy, but necessary. I’m not very good at fasting although I have done it. Theologically, I don’t agree that we should set aside a time to fast anyway. I think we should be fasting daily. Fasting from all of the excess and over-doing that goes on day in and day out. I think they are catagorized as the seven deadly sins: Sloth, envy, greed, gluttony, pride, wrath, and lust. I know that I probably commit some form of them on a regular basis. So, I am going to try to avoid them on a daily basis and hope that bit by bit I will become a better person and a better Christian.
During Lent many people “Give up” something as a fasting discipline. Chocolate or sweets is a favorite. A favorite activity is another. Others give up a favorite food like red meat. Sometimes people give up caffeine and others give up sugar. Our family was discussing a lenten fast, more as an item of interest than of doing anything serious about it. But during our conversation we got hooked on sugar. Not just any ordinary sugar, but high fructose corn syrup sweetener. I actually think it is the addition of this, and other sugars, that is part of our national problem of obesity.
At any rate, our conversation got around to giving up high fructose corn syrup for lent. My daughter and I agreed, my spouse waffled. We’ll see. And so, as a consequence of this “fast” I started going through the cupboard reading labels. Do you know we have sugar in our salt and salt in our corn syrup? How crazy is that? The list of chemicals in anything in a box or a can is as long as my arm and unless you have a degree in chemistry, one can’t even pronounce most of them! It was a frustrating excercise and in my main pantry I found few items that were pure of any type of sugar. They were raisins, vinegar, olive oil, olives, and peanut butter. The only reason peanut butter made the list is because we stopped buying the kind that included sugar and chemicals about a year ago. I didn’t count herbs and spices.
Most everything else in my pantry has some form of sugar or high fructose corn syrup, or corn syrup, or dextrose, or maltose, or any “ose” which indicates a sugar. I can see that the real redemption in our lenten fast will be that we will surely lose weight just by cutting out some sugar. Did you know there is sugar in a can of kidney beans, sugar in ketchup, high fructose corn syrup in a can of stewed tomatoes, and sugar in dry roasted peanuts? Go check your cupboard – you’ll be amazed! I can feel myself getting thinner already.