Dreaming of fried, chocolate covered Wheat Thins

I'm learning quite a lot on this journey of restricting refined sugar just for the fun of it. For even more fun, I also included regular granular sugar (which, depending on the hardcoreness of the reviewer, is looked at as badly as something like corn syrup) and the fake stuff as well. I've always tried to avoid the fake stuff only because I think anything natural is better for you than anything that has been changed by man in any form.

When searching the Internet for information on refined sugar, it's entertaining to see the different levels of the dislike of it. Some seem to hate anything that ends in '-ose'. I seem to lean more towards the less hardcore believer. Some say that you should not eat anything with lactose but, if my research is correct, this is a naturally occurring sugar so to compensate, I'm no longer buying the pre-fruited yogurt (with added sugar) and instead, making my own concoction with the plain yogurt, a little vanilla extract and fruit. I should fess up that so far, I have yet to try this but I do have plans to once I quit being lazy about it (but it was so much easier to just tear off the foil top and start eating the yogurt than having to mix everything up...).

Another tough spot is cold cereal. I was researching the Kashi brand cereals which are suppose to be oh so healthy for you but they have evaporated cane syrup which is another type of refined sugar. I then researched plain shredded wheat but besides the fact that it will taste like you're eating a bird's nest, it has BHT added to it to 'preserve the natural wheat flavor'. Organic it may be but I prefer not to ingest anything that is also used in rubber and jet fuels...at least knowingly. So far, that leaves only Grape Nuts which is horrid when not in yogurt.

I had a feeling that giving up fried foods wouldn't be a problem but who knew that going without chocolate would be easier than this? Right now, if I had a choice between chocolate or a Wheat Thin cracker with refined sugar, I just may pick the cracker.