At the beginning of this year, I made it a goal to cut back on sugar. I’m not a dessert person so this wasn’t a big deal. Sure, I like to eat ice cream or frozen yogurt once in a while, but I don’t really like cakes, pies, cookies, or brownie types. I also have a complete aversion to “sweet” flavored foods. I want good food to be deep, rich, and ummm…yummy, without any of those false sweet flavors.
Unfortunately, once you add sweeteners and flavorings to your dairy products and mix in a few shots of espresso, you’re out of luck. Between the coffee drinks and the neon green glow of Mountain Dew, I love sweet drinks, but even such indulgences are relatively easy to curb.
However, it’s not just abstaining from soda, candy, cookies, and chocolate that makes things even more complicated. Too much sugar in unexpected places, like salad dressings and protein shakes. These have become known as “added sugars” or, a little more spookily, “hidden sugars.” harvard health to johns hopkins It raises the alarm about how prevalent they are. But in our current food system, where Americans increasingly eat ultra-processed foods, is it actually possible to avoid ultra-processed foods?
“If you don’t know what to look for, they’re just ‘hidden,'” says Jessica, a clinical dietitian, nutrition practice owner, and national media spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Sylvester says.
Added sugars are simply defined as sugars that are added in addition to naturally occurring or existing sugars, such as those found in fruit. Added sugar is typically used to “enhance flavor, texture, shelf life, and other properties,” said Nicole D’Andrea Russert, a nutritionist and author of The Vegan Athlete’s Nutrition Handbook. is.
“If you don’t know what to look for, they’re just ‘hidden.’ ”
D’Andrea Russert argues that some products are advertised as “healthy” when in fact they are simply not, just because they are not made using traditional sugar. It warns you that it is just that. Deborah Markoff-Cohen, a certified diabetes care and education specialist, says she has 62 different names for sugar, from agave and malt syrup to glucose and malt barley. Also, be wary of sugars ending in “-ose” such as fructose and glucose, as well as syrups, cane juices, and concentrated fruit juices (as D’Andrea Lasato says, “It is concentrated and does not contain If it is in the form of a whole fruit, it is considered to have added sugar. ”)
by american heart association, men should limit their sugar intake to no more than 36 grams per day and women to 25 grams per day, but in a world of added and hidden sugars, that threshold can be reached relatively quickly. There is a gender. You may be out on the town consuming certain products every day that you mistakenly think are “healthy” and may actually be increasing your sugar consumption exponentially.
For example, Professor Markov Cohen gives the specific example of Greek yogurt. A plain carton contains a total of 3 types of sugar with no added sugar, while a flavored yogurt carton contains a total of 11 types of sugar and 7 grams of added sugar. It has been. There’s clearly a big difference, and the key to understanding it lies in the pesky nutrition label.
While it may be tempting to avoid nutrition labels, Markov-Cohen urges consumers to become “label detectives” to avoid these secretly sweet products and items, especially if you want to prioritize your health in the new year. is recommended.
In addition to yogurt, D’Andrea-Lasert points to salad dressings as a big culprit when it comes to hidden sugars, while Markov-Cohen points to other foods such as pasta sauce, ketchup, barbecue sauce, cereals, coleslaw and dried fruit. Other common causes are listed. Drinks such as soft drinks and alcoholic drinks are often loaded with sugar. D’Andrea Lasato also specifically notes that chocolate milk “contains up to 12 grams of extra sugar, which means just one cup of chocolate milk contains a whopping 24 grams of sugar.” is mentioned.
So where do you start if you want to cut added and hidden sugars from your diet? Malkoff-Cohen has some straightforward suggestions. The first is to prioritize foods that come without packaging, such as fresh fruits and vegetables. This is because these foods do not contain sugar to extend their shelf life. When it comes to sweeteners like honey and maple syrup, she advises people to “eat the real thing” in small amounts. She also says that in many cases, artificial sweeteners can actually be even more of a concern than “real sugar.” From aspartame to acesulfame potassium to sucralose, all ostensibly “better for you” substitutes can actually increase your risk of coronary artery disease.
Are you worried about how your body (and taste buds) will react to that change? Well, did you know that our taste buds actually change every week? “Your perception of taste is influenced by the foods you’re used to eating and changes in your taste buds,” he said, noting that even if you legally cut out all sugar and artificial sweeteners, you’d still be surprised by how natural they taste. are doing. Many sweet foods are actually made of themselves.
She urges consumers to test it for themselves. Cut out all sugar and artificial sweeteners for two weeks and notice any changes in your preferences, behavior, or physiology. You may be surprised at how certain “diet” foods, drinks, and candy can contain unpleasant sugars. (This is often due to the fact that most artificial sweeteners actually have much more “intense sweetness” than sugar, in Sylvester’s words.)
D’Andrea Russert agrees that it is completely doable to eliminate all added sugars from the diet, and that over time “added sugars can be minimized and eventually eliminated from the diet.” Utilize whole foods, fruits, and date pastes, make your own salad dressings, and eventually enough, your “taste buds will slowly become accustomed to less sweetness.”
Hunting down these nefarious sugars may be a pain, but it’s certainly doable and possible. You may need to be a little more vigilant and research when deciding what to have for dinner or what to have for a snack.
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