This word has a lot of meaning, when thinking of our trip to Estonia over New Years. It was the first time for me in an Eastern European country, apart from Hungary (visit Budapest, it’s lovely!), while Mr. Schön is an expert when it comes to Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, thanks to his good old couchsurfing days. From the old days, he still has a friend living in Tallinn, whom I had met on a visit in Düsseldorf. So, when we were trying to decide where to escape this years New Years, (we always try to be somewhere else on this time of year, it is the best tradition!) Tallinn was soon on the table.

A sign inside a winestore

I had seen pictures of it's beautiful little streets, all covered in 

snow and heard of Estonia's famous countrysides. You have

to know, compared to our part in Germany, Estonia is 

basically empty. A small population in a still rather wild and 

rough environment. Well, not in Tallinn.  

Tallinn is a city with great opportunities to go shopping and 

do all sorts of leisure activity. 

When we arrived, it was bitter cold , -10° and hurray - snowy. 

My first impressions were: comfortable and cute airport, a 

funny and friendly language, reminding me of Finnish and 

Astrid Lindgren books. 

Mr. Schön in our beautiful breakfast place

Our apartment was a dream. We had found it over Airbnb and it was just perfect! I had been a bit afraid beforehand, as I had seen on the pics that the building was made of wood. We don’t have many wooden houses in Germany and me being an iceblock, I was afraid of freezing if it was not well insulated.  It was, however. The heating made it cozy and snugly, the kitchen looked adorable and the whole house is a piece of art in itself. We found out later that the owner of the house is a well-known Estonian artist. She had decorated the place, everything was colourful and creative. I loved it! It turned out that by sheer luck, our friends had moved in almost next doors, so we never had to walk far to get to their place. If you would like to visit Tallinn I can recommend Eva’s place. Check out this pretty apartment

Submarine at Seaplane Harbour Museum

Seaplane Harbour Tallinn

Liis and Tanel, who went through a lot to make our stay in Tallinn a real treat, took us on so many adventures. Their passion for the cool places in Tallinn, beautiful nature, eco shops and beautiful restaurants made our whole trip worthwhile. We went to see the Seaplane Harbour Museum, which is a relatively newly opened huge hangar, where the architecture itself would be worth a visit. There is so much more to discover, though. The world’s and Estonia’s history of seafaring is documented here and all kinds of ships are shown. My claustrophobia did not allow a long stay in the submarine – how do people work on such a thing day and night is a mystery to me – but the others enjoyed it a lot to be crammed inside...
If you visit Estonia you can go here with your kids, they will love it. The whole museum gives you an underwater feeling and there is a whole corner with games for the kids. Although... being a war-hating German I have to say that I would have wished a more critical discussion of the whole idea of war, but maybe that is just my point of view.

A special treat was the drive to a part of the History Museum, or let’s say the backyard of it, as there is a dump of  Lenin statues, decaying in the dirt. In the revolution and the fight for independence, the Estonians had apparently just taken them there and dumped. Instead of giving them space in a museum, as some countries might have done, the message is very clear. I liked the intensity of all the former images of masculine and political power rotting in the rain, highly symbolic.

Lenin in the Rain

The rain was pouring down that day, so I was a bit afraid to take my new camera out for too long (I got myself the best Christmas present ever, the Canon Eos 700d), but you can still get an idea of how it looked like. Sunshine would have not fitted the place half as well, so it was perfect in a way.

New Year’s 2014/2015 can definitely keep up with our New Year’s two years ago in the quiet Swiss Alps. Although it was far from quiet in a way. Taavi and Maali, two friends of our friends, are the proud owners of a happy-Hippies- in-the-wood kind of cabin and – a great honour for us – invited us over for their annual New Year’s party. (The picture in the top shows the cabin in the background.) 

Tanel and Mr. Schön in front of the pond we jumped into after sauna

Above mentioned pond again. You can see the little hole Tanel cut into the ice

I loved the homemade chandelier in the tree. Isn't it beautiful?

We were the only non-Eestis there and I was a bit nervous, like always when you meet a bunch of friends of friends and you don’t want to wreck it for them… Everything was perfect though. People in Estonia are especially one thing: welcoming. Teretulnud. I felt like home all the time and it was a whole new feeling for me, to be in a room full of people, not speaking their language, not understanding what they were talking about most of the time, but still feeling as being part of it. It was weird, I followed the conversations and took in all the emotions without understanding most of it. Don’t let me be misunderstood, people spoke plenty with us and their English is really good, so communication was not a problem. But even when Ded Moroz (Father Frost) listened to all kinds of Estonian poems and songs and people made jokes in their warm-hearted language I felt like a part of it. (And I am wondering whether Ded Moroz is supposed to make all kinds of sexual remarks or if this was just an interpretation of our host, Taavi… ;-)

Ded Moroz

Sauna is a big thing in Estonia, the cabin for example, doesn’t have a shower or a bath, cleaning happens in the Sauna. When I had told my colleagues of how I intend to spend New Years among Estonians in a Sauna in the middle of the forest and jumping into a whole cut into the ice of a pond… well you should have seen their faces. But that is exactly what it was like and it was fantastic.

Later, Tanel took us to a special kind of workspace, a garage a friend uses to repair old accordions. For me as a photo enthusiast it was paradise. Especially as I love black and white pictures. With all the stuff hanging, sitting, standing everywhere, colourphotos would have been much too hectic, so reducing it to just the essentials was perfect.

And Mr. Schön was also happy, because he could outlive his passion for handcraft with Leho and Tanel. They built a machine to cut any kind of shape you design in the computer out of wood or metal. Pretty cool. With a name too complicated for me to remember. Well, I took a lot of pictures, so I was not fully focused…

This one still needs a bit of repairing, I guess

A lamp in Café Josephine

Tallinns Old town, the Estonian food and the beautiful landscape were great. But it was everyone we got to know on our trip that made it so special. Loving to have guests over, we invited everyone from the Tallinn-area over for our last evening and all of them came along. We had a lot of food, drinks and later, Leho took out his accordion and played wonderful folk tunes. He sang and it reminded me of the beautiful Swedish songs I was talking about before. Estonian folk music impressed me during the whole trip, it is a tune I can totally relate to and definitely want to listen to more often from now on. (Check out this Estonian lullaby, I love it) Tanel, who is a passionate folk dancer, started dancing around with all the girls and we had a “jolly good time”, to quote something that Hanna, one of our new friends, often said.

I bet there is an old folk song about how Estonia is always in your heart, no matter where you go and this is how I feel today. I hope we will see each other again. Aitäh.

Above the roofs of Tallinn

Even the cheese packaging was beautiful

Fordi, Liis' cat. He's adorable, I feel in love immediately.

Tallinn, Old Town

Thinking - Fast and Slow

Did you have the same problem as a teenager when it came to career choices like I did? I just couldn’t decide which way to go as I had so many different interests and every choice seemed to neglect most of them.  For a few months I thought I wanted to become a doctor. (My family was very enthusiastic about it, I got several 2 kilo-books for my birthday, in order to prepare me for my medicine studies…) I lost interest however when it became clear to me what life as a doctor meant: either long hours in the hospital and never having any freetime, or seeing the same old ladies again and again, complaining about their cough, their headaches, etc. while all they really needed was company. Well, that didn’t sound like my kind of plan.

I decided to study media science and English and I don’t regret it, as it is such a wide field, that I can do anything (and nothing) with it. Being someone who is getting bored quite easily I guess it was a handy choice. There is a part of me however who has always wanted to study psychology. The human mind (or also the animal mind) is such a fascinating field of study, I love to read books and articles about rationality (or rather the lack of it), differences / similarities between the sexes and different age groups, you name it.

One book I recently detected (still reading it. I have to admit, I am a cross-reader, meaning I am always reading several books at the same time. Normally it is a non-fiction one and a novel, so I can switch, depending on my mood – as told above, I get bored easily.) is “Thinking – Fast and slow” by Daniel Kahnemann. I hadn’t heard of him before, but it was lying around at a friend’s apartment and once I had read the preface I was hooked.

Kahnemann differentiates between two kinds of thinking (as the title suggests, dah) “fast” and “slow”. The fast thinking (System I) reminds a bit of intuition, it is the instinct, emotional response and doesn’t cost much effort. The slow thinking (System II) on the other hand is more rational and costs effort, which is why the fast thinking dominates. Most decisions need to be made instantly (taking a step to the side to avoid running into someone, e.g.; ), driving is a good example. In drivers school everything is incredibly hard and our brain feels overloaded with all the gear-shifting, braking and turning at the same time (while trying to avoid running someone over). With a bit of practice driving becomes more intuitive though and we almost instantly decide when to shift gear, when to stop, when to go on and so on. Parking however might always be something that takes some effort, and System II needs to take over. The division makes sense and explains a lot of phenomena, that Kahnemann describes in his book. Take a look at the famous example (almost everyone knows the “mistake” we make here)

Even though you know that the lines have the same length (System II working here), System I dominates the brain and makes you feel as if they are not.

Kahnemann also describes the anchoring effect, especially interesting for people who work in marketing. People make irrational and illogical assumptions, depending on the presentation of the problem. When asked whether they think it probable that a bad catastrophe will hit somewhere in the US, within the next ten years, killing more than 10.000 people, most people think this highly improbable.  When you ask whether they think it probable that a bad earthquake could hit California and kill more than 10.000 people within the next 10 years (which should be included in the first scenario), much more people think it likely to happen. All of us know about the forecasts of another bad earthquake in the area being overdue and so on, so the irrationality seems to make some sense and most of us would have made this mistake.

I like about Daniel Kahnemann that while he is certainly a very self-reflective mind, (thinking about decision-making so much should make you able to make more rational ones, shouldn’t it) he still likes to tell about his own mistakes and appears to be quite modest.

I can highly recommend his book, it is one of the most intriguing read I have had in a long time and it definitely makes me see my surroundings somehow differently.

Goodbye summer, hello autumn!

Boho at Fusion

August comes to an end and with it, summer has long said goodbye. Although I tend to get depressed in fall and winter, due to missing sun, I can see the good sides of autumn. I love every season when it is just starting, I adore the first scent of spring, the first hot day and the first crispy frost. Autumn means cuddling in bed with a good book, knitting, drinking hot tea and watching series. We all get more homely, more gemütlich, as you say in Germany. There is no real translation for this feeling of cozyness.

Summer has been great fun.

We went to Fusion Festival, a hippie-summer-loving week of joy and music. I always find so much inspiration in creative fashion, building and food on the fusion. Some great friends came along to experience the festival for the first time. I was quite nervous, as it is certainly not everyone’s taste, but they loved it just like me and like me, they reported to be on a “Fusion-vibe” for quite a while after the festival had finished. I know this feeling, I tend to wear more boho-ethno style clothing and think that all the work-for-money business is absurd and how I should be an artist. All those daydreaming goes away after a while, but the believe, that people in themselves can be good and live in peace, remains.

After the Fusion Festival, me and Mr. Schön went to Mallorca for the first time ever. Mallorca has been Germany’s holiday island no. 1 for a few years now, and I never wanted to go there, as towns and countries with foreign customs and languages seemed much more appealing than just having a “sunnier version of home”. It was fantastic, however. The island is so diverse, it offers great

landscape, beaches, mountains, I could go on and on. Thanks to our little Fiat 500 there, we saw a lot. Palma is such a great city that I am considering going back here in winter for a weekendtrip. We went there to celebrate a friend’s 50^th. He found the most beautiful Finca, it was such a dreamhouse and was even more beautiful than on the website. Two dogs, belonging to the owner of the house, loved to spend time with us and play with us, it was so much fun! Everyone loved the young border collie and he loved us, it was the perfect match. We were by far the youngest teammembers, but a team it was, 14 people and we got along so well, no conflicts, no stress, everyone was cool and relaxed. If you ever want to spend a longer holiday on Mallorca, book a Finca. With a pool. And an outside kitchen. It’s heaven.

Dahlem-Dorf (near Berlin)

Middle of August is a quite dull time at work as everyone is on holiday. So I decided to take my overtime now and not like last year in December and go to Berlin. It seems to be the most fertile city in the world as about 80 % of all of my friends there have children

Fusion

now. So I took all my knit babies-clothing and went there (sadly, without Mr. Schön who had to work), visiting tons of friends, (and their babies, which were all well behaved, thank you for that) and walking though the city. Man, it is big. But as the weather was fairly good I walked and walked and walked. And went bouldering and shopping. It was so relaxed, I didn’t have a single migraine attack.

Last week I went to London with my mum. She has never been in an English-speaking country before (she is one of the typical Mallorca-people, afraid to leave the German-speaking zone while I think, people around you speaking another language is part of the charm of a holiday). Well, I have also never been on holiday just with my mum before, so

House or Parliament as seen from London Eye

this was new for me as well. It was quite cool. We hang out, had a lot to eat and walked a lot again (24 km one day is our record).

You know.

Too bad that it rained the first day. No, not rain, it poured. Our shoes were soaking wet after a while, so we decided on resuming our tour on the bus. It was a good decision, I have visited outskirts of London, I have never seen before. A good tip for London, not only in the rain is the Natural History Museum in the beautiful South Kensington. It ia free entry (in summer there is a lot of people waiting in front, but outside the season it is alright), we saw dino bones, a lot of diamonds and other stones and mostly adored the pretty building that was built to be the Natural History Museum some hundred years ago. Pretty amazing. Also a tip for bad weather: shopping centres, like Liberty. So pretty!

The weather improved during our trip, so on the last two days we could go back to walking. We saw typical touristy things, took a night ride on the London Eye (the best thing you can do, no 200 metre line (no line in fact) and a much prettier sight than at day) and saw the change of the horse guard, which was much less spectacular than expected. We even had afternoon tea, something my mother wanted to do, and it was pretty yummie.

Back in Düsseldorf now, Mr Schön and me will do an Altstadt-Tour with my parents and their best friends. I see a lot of booze and even more parent-kids-time. We will soon have to take holiday from each other, as I am certainly not that used anymore to hang out with my family, but the pub-tour through our hometown is always great. Cheers. And when in Düsseldorf, say hello J

Something is drawing me to drawing

The weather in western Germany hasn’t been nice during those past weeks, or at least not reliable with some heavy thunderstorms. I have to admit that I like it. I like thunder, lightning, rain. Especially, when I am at home, snugly, with a blanket and some tea.

For ages I wanted to rediscover an old hobby of mine: drawing. When I was at school I often used pencils

 to draw portraits.
I have to say, that I almost never drew from scratch, but copied photographs.

When you draw, everything around you vanishes, you concentrate on the next line, which pencil to use for which part of the portrait, the delicate lines underneath the eye of the person, their nose (always tricky) and their special features. Funnily enough, even when I had the most amazing sitting, drawing for hours and hours, I am never satisfied with the result. Often the portrait looks alright in the beginning and then I start to get impatient and rush over the hair, e.g. You can see it in the one picture I have drawn so far, it is a French actress, I cannot recall the name, but this 1960s portrait of her is so pretty, I love it.

I like the concentration that lies in her whole posture and the melancholy expressed by her eyes.

A tricky thing when you begin to draw a portrait is always proportions. First of all I try to sketch the whole head in very fine lines to decide where the nose has to be, how big it is compared to the mouth, etc. you know what I mean. In the fist picture you can see those lines if you look closely. I loved the drawing of the hands. It was not particularly easy, but the good thing if you are copying black and white portraits is, you just have to draw what is ACTUALLY THERE. Now, that might sound easier, than it is, but it is, in fact, easy. So if you apply line by line, hands appear out of nowhere. It was great fun.

The nose gave me some trouble, I made it too long. The eyes are still a weak point of the portrait and I am still not satisfied by it. Worst part is the hair. I was impatient and it is not easy to draw it, so I rushed over it.

Nonetheless, it was great fun and I hope to have more time for practicing my drawing skills in the next months. (Maybe even the next week, as I am doing a one-woman-travel-experience to Berlin, wohoooo! Tons of people to meet, though, so cross your fingers that I will find some time.)

Bouldering, what a joy!

Hey folks, what have you been up to these last months? It has been an amazing time for me with a lot of

short trips, weddings, parties and a lot of work, which is why I am looking forward to my holiday in Mallorca starting this Saturday. Friends of mine have been there for a climbing holiday and this is exciting me even more, as Mr. Schön and me have been discovering climbing as a new passion. Or let’s be more specific: bouldering. For those who have never heard of it before, it basically means climbing without the use of ropes or harnesses, only with either water underneath, or more common bouldering mats, crashpads, or in halls just very soft floors you can fall onto. You do not boulder in heights people reach when climbing, roughly four meters is the maximum, in order to give you the possibility to jump when you lose your strength.

I am afraid of height, I even hate crossing bridges sometimes and being in a crag in Cologne last year made me freak out, so you can imagine that it was not my dearest wish to try out bouldering. I have been climbing, with the harness and this kind of stuff, but I never really enjoyed it. Especially not the part about sitting back in the harness and coming down again. But when I heard that a friend of ours who suffers even more from vertigo than me is coming I felt like a wuss not to go too. We went to a great bouldering hall in Dortmund, a new, huge one, with all kinds of problems (the path a climber takes is called a “problem”. Fitting if you ask me. You can see the problems easily, they are all of one colour.) The climbing walls were about four meters high and when you reached the end of your path you could climb on top and just sit there or walk to an easy ladder-like path to climb down again. I loved the hall, the people who helped one another and how easy bouldering actually was for me. My legs and feet are pretty strong from running, so the straight and leaning-towards-the-wall kind of problems were cool to climb.

There was some horizontal climbing which was a lot of fun, too, as height was not much of a problem here. Almost all of our group were newbies, but whenever we had difficulties with a path, someone gave us good advice. Most of the time it was something like “Try to place your right hand here instead of your left hand” and you know what? It worked! I was impressed at seeing how much skill in bouldering derives from tactics and not so much from strength. It was good that difficult and easy problems were mixed in the hall, in order to also mix experienced with non-experienced climbers. Even my friend with the huge fear of heights got over her fear and climbed fairly high. I think that day was kind of a triumph for her and it was great for the atmosphere in the team. After two hours though, my arms and shoulders were pretty weak, so bouldering a day is out of the question at the moment. It is great though to just sit and watch people solving the most difficult problems. I have seen people do things that I would have thought are impossible.

After our experience in Dortmund we searched for halls nearby, and found a hall in Düsseldorf, which sadly is not nearly as impressive as the new hall in Dortmund. It is a) much smaller and b) not as well equipped for beginners as the one in Dortmund. There are a lot of problems including overhanging surfaces where you have to rely heavily on the strength of your arms and shoulders. As mentioned above I have some work to do in that area and was therefore kind of frustrated by the hall in Düsseldorf. They have some interesting and challenging problems for beginners however and we will definitely go again soon and maybe get some climbing shoes on our own. Maybe we will even have the chance to try some Deep Water Solo, as the climbing water is called in Mallorca. Try it, and tell me about your experience!

This video gives you a good impression of what bouldering is, much more impressive than a video of our feeble first moves:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QrvLoxFAM4

Delicious sugar-free Mousse au Chocolat

Being the sweet tooth that I am, I could not resist temptation and searched for sweet alternatives. Xylit seems to be one of the cheapest and healthiest alternatives to sugar, which is even good for your teeth. It tastes quite similar to sugar and doesn’t have a weird aftertaste like stevia. At amazon you can get 1 kg of xylit for 10 Euros. Compared to sugar that is a huge difference, but I would say it is worth it. Xylit is also called wood-sugar, as it is made out of tree barks. It has much less calories than industrial sugar and it does not rise your blood sugar levels. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylitol)

Last weekend we tried a recipe with xylit. It was also lactose-free, but instead of soycream we used regular cream. You can try it with soy cream, I bet it will still be delicious. Not being too fond of mousse au chocolat myself, I still know how much my better half enjoys it, which is why our first xylit-dessert came to be mousse au chocolat. We loved the coconut fat, and I found quite different opinions on it in the net. They all agree that coconut fat has lots of saturated fat, but there are hints that these saturated fats act differently from others… Hm. I can say it is delicious, as it adds some coconutty flavour to the mousse au chocolat, it was so tasty. The good thing about organic coconut fat, if it is really not good for you, we won’t have it often, as it is fairly pricy.

Try the recipe, I bet you will love it as much as we did:

4 eggs

100 g Xylit

60g coconut fat

70 g cocoa powder

300 ml cream (soy)

Attention: The mousse needs to cool in the fridge for a few hours in order to make it firm enough. We were pretty impatient and ate it after about an hour, which was great already.

Separate the eggs from the yolk, beat the yokes for a while and add Xylit and cocoa powder.

Beat the egg whites till they are stiff. Melt the coconut fat (microwave), add it to the cocoa-yolk-mass. Add the beaten egg whites carefully.

Whip the cream and add it to the rest. Put into the fridge for about 4 hours. Enjoy J

Dr. Lustig's approach on sugar

Reading can be such a joy. Knowing this for ages, one resolution of 2014 is to read more. I have always enjoyed reading a lot, but being a student of English and media science, it feels like all you have to do all day is read. For your studies. So reading for sheer pleasure while you had roughly 600 pages lying next to you that you SHOULD read, not fun. So I didn’t read much for myself during my studies.

Though working at university, I currently do not have as much to read for work (will change when I start my PhD. Big time…), plus I am spending roughly three hours every day sitting in a train. Purchasing books is one of my favourite leisure time activity, I own dozens of books, still waiting to be read. Having put roughly ten of them right next to the couch in the living room, I am reminded on a regular basis to take one of them with me whenever I leave the house, or just read when I am at home. I am enjoying it a lot and can only recommend it. As mentioned earlier “Fat chance” by Dr. Robert Lustig was one of the best reads I have had for a long time. It is pretty unbelievable how little I knew about our bodies and about nutrition, although it is such a large part of our life. (At the moment I am reading “Thinking fast and slow" by Daniel Kahnemann. Also new insights into everyday life. I will tell you more about it when I am finished, but I definitely recommend it.)

If you are interested in the fight against sugar and how exactly sugar works in your body, read “Fat Chance”. For those with limited time, I collected some of the most important facts:

-        a mantra used to be “A calorie is a calorie”, so if you use up as much as you take in you should be fine. Dr. Lustig makes clear: not every calorie is like the other

-        40% of normal weight Americans (so not only obese people) suffer from metabolic syndrome in some way [type 2 diabetes, lipid disorders, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, dementia]

-        Obesity is not the result of gluttony and sloth, but of a defect in energy deposition

-        Today, the obese outnumber the undernourished on the planet by 30 %

-        The body decides whether it uses your energy intake for storage or the business of living

-        Different calories are metabolized differently, the difference is: insulin

-        High blood sugar leads to a release of big amounts of insulin, which will store energy that is not used by the muscles and the brain in fat cells.

-        Subcutaneous fat is not the devil here, in fact it seems to be healthy to have some fat stored on your thighs, hips, arms, but the visceral fat makes you really ill. It is the fat surrounding your organs, which you cannot see, apart from the size of your belly. A lot of people have too much visceral fat and not only if they have a big belly. Even slender persons can have vast amounts of visceral fat, putting them as much at risk for diseases as someone who is obese.

-        I guess we all know, that our bodies are still programmed for droughts and ice age times, when food was scarce and who stored best got farthest

-        Sugar is as addictive as alcohol, the same part of your brain derives pleasure from it, which is why the food industry puts sugar into anything (ketchup, burgers, all kinds of processed food)

-        Your hunger is managed by a substance called leptin. Whenever the fat cells are full, and you have eaten, blood sugar is high, then there will be a lot of leptin in your blood, telling your brain that you had enough

-        Problem is: when you eat a lot and a lot of sugar that is, your insulin levels will rise high, as well as your leptin levels. After a while though, the cells will ignore both substances as they always exist in such abundance that your body suffers from a type of burn-out, it just gives up, resulting in insulin and leptin resistance.

-        Those resistances have a lot of horrible consequences, most interestingly, the body of an obese person releases the same signals as a starving one: the brain cannot see the leptin anymore, therefore it signalizes GET FOOD and DON’T WASTE ENERGY, SO DON’T MOVE. It is not only the sheer body mass of obese people that keep them from working out, ironically it is their brain, being afraid of starving.

-        Processed food is full of glucose, fructose, fats and proteins

-        Obesity is no result of behaviour, it is mainly the result of nutritional alterations of the last decades that drive insulin levels higher

-        Our bodies produce twice as much insulin as the bodies of people 30 years ago, even for the same amount of calories or glucose, which is one difference, the other: there is much more sugar and sweetener in our diet than 30 years ago

Factors and reasons

-        stress, little sleep -> biochemical response is to store more fat; sugar makes you happy and satisfied for a short amount of time

-        fructose (50% of refined sugar is fructose) activates pleasure centre in brain, but liver has a hard time to metabolize it -> liver fat -> metabolic syndrome

-        tans fats: increase shelf-life of products, mitochondria cannot digest them, they stay in your liver, your arteries, a.s.o. -> metabolic syndrome

-        omega 6 fatty acids: are essential, but too many lead to inflammatory compounds, intake of omega 6 acids (e.g. canola and corn oil and protein from animals fed by it (as most of them are today) has to equal omega 3 (e.g. in wild fish)

What to do to fix it?

You have to give your liver and your mitochondria a break. Insulin levels need to get down to fix the resistances.

Cooking fresh food containing

a) fiber

slows the rate at which body turns food into energy, therefore regulating blood sugar and insulin levels. Processed food lacks fiber to make it freezable and prolong shelf life. Fiber also activates leptin, tells your brain that you are full. [Dr. Lustig identifies not only softdrinks, but especially fruit juice as bad, as it is still considered healthy by a lot of people, containing as much sugar as coke and no fiber and therefore really dangerous.]

b) Omega 3 fatty acids

Anti-flammatory, wild fish and eggs from chicken fed with omega 3 fatty acids, flaxseed, linseed oil, walnut oil, a.s.o.

c) micronutrients

fruit and vegetables, especially wild ones, containing healthy micronutrients and antioxidants -> combat inflammation, keep cells intact and can protect you from cancer and Alzheimer

Eat real food, cook it yourself, when cooking or baking, take less sugar than in the recipe and experiment with healthier sugar alternatives, like stevia or xylose. Move -> movement refreshes the mitochondria and helps you to shrink your fat cells.

Read the book, it has helped me to see sugar differently and understand our bodies and our problems much better.