The Truth About Sugar In Our Food
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| Dawn Wiegmann Wellness Director |
I teach basic nutrition here at Wartburg, and it amazes me
every time I teach it how no one really knows how to read labels and no one
really gets (or seems to care) about the amount of sugar they consume in a
day.
Would you consider eating 12 cubes of sugar for
breakfast? It sounds disgusting
and unhealthy, but if you had two pieces of toast with jam and a few cups of
sweet tea, you just matched those 12 cubes. Thinking about that pasta salad and
carton of apple juice you’re planning to have at lunch could easily have around
16 cubes of sugar.
We all learn that “whole” wheat is good for us and we know
that whole foods in general are terrific for our health. We also know that too much salt is bad
for us, yet few people seem to think about our daily sugar intake. Sugar is naturally (and unnaturally) in
a lot of our foods.
To see how many cubes of sugar your food has, go to www.sugarstacks.com
In today’s culture of ready and convenience foods, sugar
becomes a hidden and unavoidable ingredient in our food. We often fall into the trap of thinking
that low-fat means generally healthier – and yet low fat products such as
yogurts, for example, are often much higher in sugar than their full fat
cousins.
Diets high in sugar are certainly contributing to
osteoporosis, cancer and heart disease.
We as a society have to start watching the amount of sugar we take
in.
We can’t avoid natural sugar found in fruits/veggies, but we
can watch out for the “added” sugar in our foods or our snacks that we pick
up. We must read labels to pick
out the whole wheat bread that has the lesser amount of sugar in it or which
peanut butter has less sugar. We know soda has sugar, yet no one watches the
sugar amount in other foods items that we tend to use daily.
How to avoid sugar:
- Beware of fruit juices
- Check carbohydrates – many labels will tell you how much of the carb content is from sugar (as opposed to starch), others don’t. However, virtually all the carbs in fruit drinks will be sugar, even when it’s not listed.
- Whole fruits are one of the highest sugar-containing food groups. The worst culprits are dried, stewed and canned fruit. Be selective about what you eat.
- Sauces (Asian, BBQ, hot sauces, salsa, salad dressings, pasta and pizza sauces) all are full of sugars. Look at labels and pick ones that have less sugar.
- Breads such as bagels, muffins, and sandwich bread all contain some sugar – read labels.
- Learn to pick and choose what “treat” you eat…Chocolate, cakes, pastries, and even the soda we drink all have added sugar. A king-size Mars Bar has 24 cubes of sugar, the snack size has 10, and your glass of cola might contain around 21 cubes of sugar.
Be selective and learn about your own person sugar
intake. Be a detective and read
the labels on the foods you buy!
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