SUGAR.
It’s a hot topic at the moment. I recently posted on my Facebook page and asked for reactions to the word SUGAR. The responses were fascinating.
- evil
- poison
- guilt
- fat
- white death
- danger
WOW – that is quite a scary list.
I would like to offer advice to anyone reading my humble little blog post. The same advice I give to all of my fitness and fat loss coaching clients. .
We need to take the emotion OUT and look only at the FACTS.
- Sugar is a highly concentrated energy source. As we all know, If we put in more energy than our body needs it turns to body fat
- Foods high in sugar can spike and crash our blood sugar. Which can leave us hungry and lacking energy soon after eating, rather than leaving us full and satisfied
- Foods high in sugar may result in us wanting and craving more of them
- However, sugar is NOT poison, evil, white death or any of the other emotional terms that spring to mind.
- I believe that our body does just fine with a small amount of sugar each day. Operative word being SMALL.
I have no doubt that a LOT of people eat WAY too much of the stuff. (Myself included at certain times)
The World Health organisation advises us to keep our added sugar intake to less than 30 grams of sugar per day. That is approximately 6 teaspoons.
The problem with eating too much sugar goes way beyond the little white grains that we sprinkle into our morning cup of tea or coffee.
I believe that a much bigger problem is that sugar is hidden in most packaged foods. You might be eating LOADs of sugar and not be aware of it. If I am going to limit my sugar to a small amount each day, I would MUCH rather eat it in the form of something I really love and enjoy, rather than “wasting” it on foods such as BBQ sauce and low fat muesli bars.
This is a BRILLIANT video from The Checkout. It pretty much says it all
I am loving the Natvia range of products at the moment. So much lower in sugar but still with a great taste. No artificial sweeteners are used either. Stevia is the main ingredient and is made from a leaf. You can check out more here.
See my comparison between Natvia BBQ sauce and regular BBQ sauce. Even I was shocked when I saw the visual comparison of how much sugar regular BBQ sauce actually contains.
I am using sauce as an example of course, but realistically you should be checking for hidden sugars in ALL packaged foods. Especially those labelled “low fat”.
NEVER believe the marketing hype on the front of the packet. ALWAYS look to the nutritional label on the back for the true story.
Eat less sugar, you are sweet enough already.
Chriss.