“The president believes that [high-energy consumption] is an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policymakers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one.”

- Ari Fleischer, spokesman to President George W. Bush
Newsweek, May 21, 2001, p. 17

While taking a break from woods living recently, I found out the hard way just what a poison sugar is.

I found myself, on that day in town, eating uncontrollably. Twenty Chips Ahoy peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies. Four York peppermint patties. A double hamburger with fries. Two Dairy Queen Blizzards. Three plates at an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet.

I started suffering for it that day, but it really hit me the next day: irritability, low energy, a progressively intensifying headache, nausea. Symptoms of hypoglycemia. It’s what happens when you get your blood sugar suddenly spikes up and down really quickly: an overproduction of insulin, whose consequence (after the sucrose leaves the system) is a really low glucose level.

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Starting to hit my stride here.

The days have been kind of busy. We skinned, gutted, and butchered two roadkill deer a week ago. Being novices, we were butchering and labeling the parts in bags late into the night. We went to the only bar in Three Lakes that stays open late on weekdays, and I had a hamburger.

I also swam across the lake and back, which is about a mile. The water was freezing; I almost felt hypothermic. Immediately after that I made a fire to warm myself right back up.

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