Parlez-vous Sucre? Part 3

An afternoon snack? How can you say no? That would be rude!

(Continued from Part 2)

After having eaten a small chocolate in Bubry it was all over for the rest of my visit to France. I began to look for excuses to eat sweets and justified desserts by telling myself I’d appear rude if I didn’t partake. Then I found myself annoyed that people would be watching me as I ate (while we visited with family) so I couldn’t just binge on all of the sweets in my sights. Luckily Gwenn’s Godmother insisted I eat two helping of King Cake during our visit to her home. She also offered us hot cocoa and some chocolates!

Me and my feve.

Eating King Cake is a tradition that happens once a year in France. It’s a sweet pie of sorts with a ceramic “feve” baked inside. Whomever gets the feve is the king or queen and they get to wear a paper crown that comes with the cake. I won twice during my trip. That means I ate about half or more of a whole King Cake. Heated up slightly, King Cake is a dangerous treat.

Gwenn, Claire, and a €40 Nutella.

Gwenn noted that she could tell what kind of day it was going to be by whether or not I had sugar first thing in the morning. On the days where I ate a fresh crepe (or two) filled with Nutella, I’d be especially interested in sweets the rest of the day. However, after eating crepes with Nutella I started to feel sick and eventually stopped eating them in favor of other sweet things. While at the department store BHV, Gwenn and our friend Claire spotted a huge €40 jar of Nutella for sale! Are you reading Adams peanut butter? As for Nutella, it always made me feel terrible so I’m off that stuff for good.

Junk food begets junk food. (Upper left corner image = Paris face.)

A little voice in my head started telling me all the things I needed to eat before returning to America. There were aisles of interesting cookies to try at the supermarket. There were things in the bakery and pastry shops. Just as an experiment, I had some French peanut M&Ms—you know, to see if they’re different. We also had McDonald’s French Fries for lunch (also to see if they’re different) and compared them to Quick’s (the France version of McDonald’s) french fries. McDonald’s won the taste test.

In Paris we stayed at a place that offered cafeteria style breakfast. They served Cocoa Puffs cereal and milk in the morning, which I ate along with my croissant and egg. By the third day I had no interest in the croissant and egg but instead wanted a second and third bowl of chocolaty sugar cereal. Things got pretty bad.

These cookies were supposed to be my last.

We stopped in a small pastry shop and I purchased a chocolate chip cookie. As I was warned, it wasn’t good. Apparently the French don’t do chocolate chip cookies well. While there I also got a single chocolate dipped cookie like in the image above. For the next day and a half I was craving more. After looking all over the city I ended up going back to the same pastry shop and purchasing the box in the image above. As I ate all of them I remembered that my grandparents used to purchase that type of cookie and bring them over on special occasions. What I forgot is that the cookies have some kind of jelly on the inside which gets dry and becomes a tiny sheet of grossness—so I ate around the jelly like I did as a child.

Macarons in a fancy, jewelry-like display.

It’s true. The French are serious about their sweets. We went down a tiny street somewhere in Paris and on each side of the road were small sweet shops selling expensive, high end chocolates and snacks. I wonder if Parisians ever eat at those shops of if it’s just tourists who think that paying $2 per macaron in Paris is très romantique. 

Edible chocolate sculptures in a window display.

In Paris there were many stores that sold sweets of all kinds. Some places (like in the photo of a window display above) had edible chocolate sculptures while other stores had every kind of gourmet chocolate snack you could imagine in bins and for sale by the pound. As a tourist it would be difficult to stay off sweets in Paris.

Physical Reactions

My entire mouth felt odd, as if my taste buds had been numbed. I wasn’t interested in real food but instead sought out more and more chocolate variations. Being in the center of Paris made that easy.

My hands swelled up with temperature changes as I went in warm buildings and out into the cold air. That used to happen to me a lot, especially as a kid. My hands haven’t done that for such a long time that I forgot about it until this trip.

I crashed. We moved a bunch of furniture and household items and I felt weak. Yes, I was jet lagged but I have had enough sugar crashes to know the difference between them and jet lag. Because I was loaded up with sugar, I nearly dropped my half of the washing machine as we were carrying it—not fun.

People’s Reactions

We had dinner with an acquaintance who said she had gone a week without sweets once but felt no physical difference. As for my being tired she said, “That could be anything. It could be jet lag.”

Had I NOT eaten sweets at people’s houses I think they would have been really put off. I don’t eat meat. I don’t drink alcohol. Imagine if I didn’t eat dessert! Only once did I choose to say no and it seemed to offend our hosts. When you can’t understand the spoken language you get keen at listening to body language. So no meat, no drinks, no dessert, and I don’t speak fluent French?!

Consommation

Over the course of two weeks I ate the following sweets:

• Peanut M&Ms
• King Cake
• Chocolate dipped cookies
• Mikado chocolates
• Granola brand chocolate dipped digestive cookies
• McVidie’s brand chocolate dipped digestive cookies
• Crepes with Nutella
• McDonald’s French fries
• Quick French fries
• Lots of chocolate
• Speculoos cookies
• Ice cream
• Chocolate cookies
• Two bites of a brownie
• And more…

Eating the last pack of McVidie’s digestive cookies.

Things got pretty bad. I went for a walk alone and secretly purchased a sleeve of McVidie’s chocolate covered digestive cookies and ate them all by myself before getting back to the house. Then I got another sleeve and kept them to be the grande finale of my sweet time in France. However, I just kept going after the finale.

Back on the Wagon

Newark Airport cookie.

It wasn’t hard to stop being sweet upon my return to Portland. I did however, continue to eat sweets long past when I said I would stop. For instance, we were delayed and put up in a hotel in Newark so I extended my sugar eating to last until the final flight back to Portland. I ate a peanut butter cup, chocolate chip, chocolate dipped cookie in the airport and got another one for the flight. It was way too much and I wasn’t feeling good physically by the time I got home. With my stomach full and my veins coursing with sugar it was easy to make the choice to return to my no sugar lifestyle once I got home.

Roller Coaster

Eating sugar is a little like riding a crazy ride at an amusement park. It’s sort of fun and exciting the first time. The second time is just okay. The third time is too much and the fourth time you start to look forward to going home and getting your feet on the ground. 

Any Regrets?

Sugar junkie.

I don’t regret jumping off the wagon. However, I think I’d have felt better about myself had I stuck to my guns and been writing this blog post about how I did NOT eat sugar in France. While the sweets were good, there was nothing I ate in France that I couldn’t find in America and nothing worth an “I just HAD TO have it” kind of justification.

Fancy Paris ice cream.

It would seem to me that the best part about eating sweets in France is simply being in France. From an American standpoint, being in a European city means getting outside of the usual routine and experiencing a different culture. Being on the trip overseas and outside of my everyday should have made my life sweet enough. Next time, I’ll stay off sugar—I think. At least I’m going to try.

My “last” sugar in Paris.

There are so many photos of me eating junk food because I kept asking Gwenn to take my picture while eating my “last sweets of the trip,” as if having a photo would stop me from going on to eat the next sweet thing. I wish now that this post had photos of not eating sweets. We’ll just have to go to France again so I can avoid sugar and make up for this entire mistake!

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