Sugar's many guises
There are lots of different ways added sugar can be listed on ingredients labels:
sucrose
glucose
fructose
maltose
fruit juice
molasses
Hydrolyzed starch
invert sugar
corn syrup
honey
Food labels tell you how much sugar food contains:
high in sugar – 22.5g or more of total sugar per 100g
low in sugar – 5g or less of total sugar per 100g
Some packaging uses a color-coded system that makes it easy to choose foods that are lower in sugar, salt and fat. Look for more "greens" and "amblers", and fewer "reds", in your shopping basket.
Breakfast
Many breakfast cereals are high in sugar. Try switching to lower-sugar cereals or those with no added sugar, such as:
plain wheat biscuit cereal
plain shredded wholegrain cereal
no-added-sugar muesli
plain porridge
wholemeal toast
plain natural yogurt topped with chopped fruit
Porridge oats are cheap and contain vitamins, minerals and fiber. Make porridge with semi-skimmed, 1% or skimmed milk, or water.
If you usually add sugar to your porridge, try adding a few chopped dried apricots or a sliced or mashed banana instead.
For a more gradual approach, you could eat sugary cereals and plain cereals on alternate days, or mix both in the same bowl.
If you add sugar to your cereal, you could try adding less. Or you could eat a smaller portion and add some chopped fruit, such as a pear or banana, which is an easy way of getting some of your 5 A Day.
If toast is your breakfast staple, try wholemeal or granary bread, which is higher in fiber than white bread, and see if you can get by with a little less of your usual spreads like jam, marmalade, honey or chocolate. Or you could try sugar-free or lower-sugar options.
Or make your own with hot water and a slice of lemon or ginger.
Like some fizzy drinks, fruit juice can be high in sugar. When juice is extracted from the whole fruit to make fruit juice, sugar is released, and this can damage your teeth.
Your combined total of drinks from fruit juice, vegetable juice and smoothies should not be more than 150ml a day – which is a small glass. For example, if you have 150ml of orange juice and 150ml smoothie in one day, you'll have exceeded the recommendation by 150ml.
Fruit juices and smoothies do contain vitamins and minerals and can count towards your 5 A Day. However, they can only ever count as a maximum of 1 portion of your 5 A Day. For example, if you have 2 glasses of fruit juice and a smoothie in 1 day, that still only counts as 1 portion.
You could try flavoring water with a slice of lemon, lime, or a splash of fruit juice. But watch out for the sugar content in squash or cordials with added sugar. Some can contain up to 3 teaspoons of sugar in each glass.
Dessert
Work out some ground rules. Do you need to have dessert every day? How about only having dessert after your evening meal, or only eating dessert on odd days of the month, or only on weekends, or only at restaurants?
Do you have to have chocolate, biscuits, and cake every day? If you had this type of sugary snack less often, would you actually enjoy it more?
Less sugary desserts include fruit – fresh, frozen, dried, or tinned, but choose those canned in juice rather than syrup – as well as lower-fat and lower-sugar rice pudding, and plain lower-fat yogurt.
However, lower fat does not necessarily mean low sugar. Some lower-fat yogurts can be sweetened with refined sugar, fruit juice concentrate, glucose, and fructose syrup.
If you're stuck between choosing 2 desserts at the supermarket, why not compare the labels on both packages and go for the one with the lower amount of sugar.
You must be logged in to post a comment.