A type 2 diabetic at a dessert show: I know it sounds like a terrible joke, the most exquisite torture or, at the very least, a bad idea. But there I was at Sweet Fest in Atlanta, rumored to be the sweetest day the city had ever seen.
I strolled slowly by dessert display after display: decadent banana puddings; strawberry-stuffed muffins; brownies in shades of blonde, velvet and the darkest chocolate. I lusted after every sugar cookie, ice cream scoop and candied apple. But nothing quite piqued my interest like the bread puddings made by small, home-based bakeries.
Once called poor man’s pudding for its humble ingredients – stale bread, butter, cinnamon and nutmeg, raisins, sugar – bread pudding is my kryptonite. Like many other people, sweets intoxicate me.
With deep regret and equally deep determination, I kept it pushing. Bread pudding or any sweets rarely touch my palate these days.
I was on a dual mission. I wanted to imagine life before diabetes, when I could indulge a sweet tooth that I can no longer give full rein. But I was also acknowledging my life now, looking for any of the event’s 100 or so vendors who would answer yes to my desperate inquiry: “Do you have a sugar-free option?”
Seven years ago, I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancers there is. I’m one of the 12% of survivors to reach the five-year survival mark (unbelievably, that percentage used to be far lower). I traded part of my pancreas, the organ that produces insulin and therefore keeps blood sugar in check, for my life. That procedure, a distal pancreatectomy, removed the “tail” of my pancreas. And the operation can have a life-changing result for many survivors, as it did for me: onset of medically-induced type 2 diabetes. My body can’t use its insulin to process sugar as it should, and my blood glucose can be dangerously high.
Keeping my sugar intake low and stable is now my daily dietary mandate. I’m always doing the nutritional arithmetic: calculating carbs and proteins in my mental balance sheet, making a smoothie with keto-friendly riced cauliflower, thinking about the breading on that restaurant calamari. Avoiding sugar is a slippery slope, a death by numbers, always a potential smoking gun with my own fingers on the trigger and the fork.
If I’m being honest, this tussle I have with sweets is killing me in ways pancreatic cancer did not. I know what I must do to stay healthy, but my relationship with sugar isn’t just about what my tastebuds want. Being diabetic not only strains my romance with sugar. It pisses on my love affair with holidays, celebrations and treasured memories.
My family tree has deep roots in the south, known for its regional sweet tooth, luscious pies and other baked goods, and syrupy sweet tea. And in my family particularly, sugar features heavily in our meals and our fellowship.
I learned my aunt Hattie’s secret for the tenderest collard greens for New Year’s Day: half a cup of sugar. What, really, was a Thanksgiving dinner without my granddaddy Lonnie carving a candied ham glazed with brown sugar, cherry and pineapple?
My uncle Willie Brad, who helped Hattie raise me, was a man of few words, but he lived and loved through actions. He worked second shift throughout the week and picked up a weekend gig that limited our quality time. What we lost in time got redeemed in his homecoming Sunday evenings. All us kids would pile into the kitchen once he poured a mix of Chick-O-Sticks, Lemonheads, Laffy Taffys, Nerds, Now and Laters, Ring Pops, Skittles, Sugar Babies, Tootsie Rolls and Twizzlers in an avalanche on the table.
That gesture closed the gap between absence and exuberant presence, and I indulged in a real-life version of Candy Crush decades before the digital game existed. My grandfather and uncle are no longer with us, and eating sugary cured pork or tangy SweeTarts is now a distant and dangerous act.
But I still remember. Family desserts tell the history of my relationships. Consumption was simple then. Love tasted like my grandmother Clara’s pound cake, true to its name: baked with a pound of sugar, a pound of butter and a pound of flour. After her death, I struggled with a cousin for the recipe book where that recipe lived on yellowing paper. I now fix that recipe for others in my grandmother’s bundt pan, but can’t enjoy myself except on the rarest of occasions. But maybe love is sometimes about giving what you cannot experience yourself.
It’s the process of baking for me. Rounding up my materials. Gathering the essentials. Spreading them across the countertop and arranging them in the order of operation like Clara once instructed. Preheating the oven; buttering and flouring of the pan; mixing the ingredients; beating the eggs; whipping the batter; pouring the mixture. Licking the bowl. Popping the pan in the oven.
I often reminisce about the sweeter exchanges between Clara and me when she called me “sugar” as she imparted her baking prowess and showed me love through baked goods. In many African American communities like mine, kisses or affection are referred to as “sugar” (who hasn’t had an auntie or grandparent say, “Gimme some sugar” and force us into a hug?). We often call diabetes by the same name, as if we shouldn’t summon its real name, like it’s some kind of dirty word.
But we must call its name because nothing about having diabetes is sweet and diabetes can literally do us dirty. In this country, Black people consume sugar at a higher rate than other ethnic groups, and that’s 20% more than white Americans. That disparity is as much about – if not more about – access as behavior or willful dietary dysfunction. Plenty of what is available on the supermarket shelves in my community is riddled with unhealthy sugars, not to mention unhealthy options overall. And the results are devastating; in 2018, Black Americans were 60% more likely to develop diabetes than their white compatriots. The dirty part: out of 200,000 people who suffer amputation, 130,000 have diabetes. And the majority of them are racial minorities.
I know the statistics and how ultra-processed foods are dumped in my community. But I still wrestle with my love of sugar. The sweet things I can consume like berries and dark chocolate: I don’t want them. I want the satiating ones that complicate my life.
I’ve become a sugar detective because desserts can make me feel punch-drunk. I scan ingredient lists for the sugar that tells the truth, easily revealing itself in ingredient lists, and the sugars that lie, hiding behind names like fructose, lactose, maltose, sucralose, aspartame and sugar alcohol.
I ventured to Sweet Fest because I wanted to sniff the confectioners’ sugar I once smelled in Grandma Clara’s kitchen. I wanted to wrap myself in the aromatic chemistry of caramel and chocolate. I wanted the pleasure of unwrapping hard candies and placing them on my tongue. I wanted to stand at the intersection of taste and touch, licking buttercream off a spoon. But I knew better.
When I visited Sweet Fest, I also knew my search for a sumptuous diabetic-friendly treat was a shot in the dark. I knew there’d probably be no pastry party in my mouth. But I hoped the event would be a truly inclusive fete that, for once, might consider the metabolic challenges of people with type 2 diabetes, people like me. I hoped we might be seen and literally served. Because I’m part of a vast swath of Americans – nearly 100 million people or a third of the US population – who are diabetic or prediabetic. Surely we are a constituency worth addressing or, thinking more cynically and economically, worth courting for our spending power.
But I came home empty-handed. Of 100 vendors, only one sold a sugar-free option. Some seemed baffled or confused by my query: one vendor – claiming to be a “certified” pastry chef – offered gluten free-cupcakes as an alternative (as if gluten and sugar are the same). Another offered vegan cookies.
That both considered their flour-based carbs to be healthier options and substitutes for sugar-free items was disappointing. Finally, an older vendor offered sugar-free candy sweetened with sugar alcohol. At least, she knew the distinction, though she was oblivious to the fact that sugar alcohols still raise blood glucose, albeit not as much as sugar itself.
Perhaps I was foolish to think an event centered on sugary sweets might offer items without refined sugar or smaller amounts of it. After all, 75% of Americans consume 300% above the daily recommended amount. We love sugar in this country, and we are an obvious and attractive market, apparently far more so than the share of us who have confirmed or undetected prediabetes (many of whom are still eating those unholy amounts of sugar). And who wants to change that when sugar sells? But a diabetic girl can dream.
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