The question is, are we born with a sweet tooth, or are we driven into that by our upbringing? This debate I am having with myself is related to yesterday's dental story (I had a filling) and my love of all things sweet. My colleague here thinks that it is a result of nurture, that our parents who were brought up in the war and had to endure rationing of sugar etc. when they were growing up, actually overdosed us on sugary things in the 60s to sort of compensate for their lack of it. It was also the time of new innovations in the food business, with loads of processed foods suddenly appearing on supermarket shelves. Supermarkets themselves were very rare in the 60s, so our parents were given a relatively unprecedented range of new, fancy foodstuffs to try out on their families.
However, I am reasonable convinced that the love of sweet stuff is a genetic i.e. nature rather than nurture trait. Even though I am well known in our family as a cake fiend and I can point to some obvious parental pressure to consume sugary foodstuffs, I know that my dear wife was exposed to a similar if not greater amount of sweet things and prefers savoury over sweet any day. I don't suppose this sample of people is any where near the required amount to make a decision, but it does show how there are exceptions if there is a rule, or it could be a totally meaningless debate and I've wasted part of my life thinking about it. Not for the first time I guess.
As for the sporty stuff (or anti-cake as it should called for me), I managed to do a few miles running last night after the downpour without any after effects and I'm trying (reasonably successfully) to up my cadence and land on my mid-sole to minimise impact and knee issues. The problem is to concentrate and keep remembering to do it.
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