TOP TIPS FOR KICKING THE SUGAR HABIT
S ugar is everywhere, and most people were introduced to it early in life, so it’s normal to expect sweet flavors in your foods. The good news is that you can overcome the hold that sugar has on you.
Rewire Your Taste Buds
Sugar is addictive.
It increases a brain chemical called dopamine, which is associated with the brain’s reward system.
This is the same system that is triggered by drugs, alcohol, and nicotine.
While sugar provokes a less dramatic surge in dopamine than drugs, its effect is still quite profound, especially with large intakes.
Excess sugar causes a spike in dopamine that makes you feel good, but when dopamine falls, you crave more sugar.
The cycle leads to tolerance, so you need more sugar to get the same reward.
The good news is, by decreasing your sugar intake, your taste buds can readjust and your brain can be rewired to crave sugar less.
If you are a sugarholic, you may need to reduce intake gradually.
Cut intake in half for a week, then in half again, until you are using little or none.
If need be, some of the sugar can be replaced with a natural noncaloric sweetener (see pages 85 – 87 ) while your taste buds are adjusting.
However, this too should be eliminated over time because your taste buds require a reduction of all things sweet in order to appreciate the natural flavors in foods.
The advantage of the natural noncaloric sweetener over sugar is that it won’t cause a spike in blood glucose.
Steer Clear of Beverages with Added Sugars
Nearly half of the sugar in American diets comes from sweet beverages.
The average 12-ounce (375-ml) serving of soda or fruit drink packs about 150 calories from sugar. That is close to 10 teaspoons (40 grams) of sugar per serving—and some drinks have even more. Consuming sugar-sweetened beverages is strongly linked to weight gain and diabetes risk.
If you add just one 12-ounce (375-ml) can of regular soft drink to your daily diet, you can expect to add about 15 pounds (6.9 kg) per year. While you might imagine that you would eliminate calories elsewhere, this is not always the case. When you drink your calories, your body fails to register those calories with the appetite control center the way it does when you eat solid food.
The bottom line is simple: avoid all sugar-sweetened beverages, including soda, energy drinks, sports beverages, sweetened coffee or tea beverages, fruit drinks, and sweet alcoholic beverages. Sugar-sweetened beverages contribute to the development of insulin resistance, prediabetes, and diabetes because these are conditions of abnormal glucose metabolism and high blood sugar. The last thing you want to do when you have these conditions is to consume highly absorbable liquid sugar.
Eat Whole Foods Instead of Packaged Foods
About 90 percent of the added sugars consumed by Americans come from packaged foods.
Cutting out or cutting down on these foods will dramatically reduce sugar intake. When sugar is within the matrix of a whole food that is rich in fiber, it is safe to consume.
You can’t always trust your instincts when selecting packaged foods.
Often products that you might assume are low in sugar are not.
For example, barbecue sauce, ketchup, and many other ready-made sauces get most of their calories from sugar, as do many low-fat salad dressings.
Instant oatmeal, breakfast bars, granola bars, protein bars, bottled smoothies, canned baked beans, canned fruits, and ready-to-eat breakfast cereals (even healthy-sounding ones) are often high in sugar.
See table 5.4 ( page 84 ) for the amount of sugar in common foods.
If You Eat Packaged Foods, Read the Label and Select Products with Less Added Sugar
Go to the Nutrition Facts panel and check the serving size—servings are often smaller than you might imagine.
To determine the number of teaspoons of sugar per serving of food, find the total grams of sugar and divide this number by four. (The precise conversion is 4.2 grams per teaspoon; rounding down to four makes for easier calculation).
So, 16 grams of sugar in a serving of food would equal about 4 teaspoons (20 ml).
Remember that 1 gram of sugar has 4 calories.
So, if a serving of a food has 100 calories and 10 grams of sugar, that means the food derives 40 percent of its calories from sugar (10 x 4 ÷ 100).
The total sugar listing in the Nutrition Facts panel does not distinguish between the sugars naturally present in food and added sugars. (Fortunately, in the United States, by early 2021, all food manufacturers will have to declare both total and added sugars on food labels, with added sugars appearing directly below total sugar.) On a label that does not list added sugars, it can be difficult to know how much of the total sugar comes from natural sources (such as fruit) and how much comes from added sugar.
If there are no natural sugars (from fruits, vegetables, or dairy products), then the sugar listed is all added sugar.
The exception to this rule is fruit juice concentrate, which is included as an added sugar.
If there are natural sugars from fruits, dried fruits, or even vegetables (such as tomatoes), then some further detective work is called for in order to figure out how much added sugar might be present.
You will need to scrutinize the ingredient list, and although this will not tell you the precise division of natural and added sugars, it will provide some helpful information.
Ingredients are listed in descending order according to their weight.
If sugar is near the top of the list, this is a clue that added sugars are high.
Some manufacturers try to push sugars lower down on the ingredient list by using smaller amounts of several different sweeteners, some of which consumers might not even recognize as sugar.
Of course, you will see the usual suspects, such as beet sugar, brown sugar, cane sugar, coconut sugar, confectioner’s sugar, corn sugar, date sugar, invert sugar, turbinado sugar, and other sugars.
You may find a variety of syrups, such as agave syrup, brown rice syrup, corn syrup, corn syrup solids, high-fructose corn syrup, malt syrup, and maple syrup, along with other easily recognizable sugars, such as honey and molasses.
However, you may also notice ingredients such as dextrin and maltodextrin or ones that end in “ose,” such as dextrose, fructose, glucose, lactose, and maltose.
All of these are sugars.
The following tips will help you keep added sugars to a bare minimum
■ Purchase products labeled “unsweetened” or “no added sugar,” such as nondairy milks, applesauce, nut butters, oatmeal, and canned fruit.
■ Compare products such as tomato sauce, salad dressings, and condiments, and select a product with no added sugar or with the least added sugar.
■ Don’t let words such as “natural” or “organic” fool you. These words are no guarantee of low sugar.
■ If you’re buying a sweetened product, such as a bar or cereal, select one that uses fresh or dried fruit as the primary sweetener instead of sugars or syrups.
Don’t Be Duped into Believing That There Is a Healthy Sugar
The simple truth is that the differences between various concentrated sugars are of relatively minor consequence to health. Most sugars are essentially glucose, fructose, or some combination of the two. Although a few sweeteners contain tiny amounts of nutrients, you would have to eat far more than you should to make a significant contribution to your nutritional needs (see table 5.3 , opposite page).
One notable exception is blackstrap molasses, which is an impressive mineral source. For example, 2 tablespoons (30 ml) of blackstrap molasses provides 353 milligrams of calcium, 7.2 milligrams of iron, and 1,023 milligrams of potassium—more calcium than 1 cup of milk, more iron than an 8-ounce steak, and more potassium than two large bananas.
Date sugar is made from dried and ground dates, so it’s a whole-food sugar, which is preferable to refined sugars. Coconut sugar is dried coconut nectar, and it is more nutrient dense than typical refined sugars.
Regardless, the bottom line is that sugar is sugar. Even the sugars derived from whole-food sources, such as date or coconut sugar, will have a significant impact on blood glucose and should be minimized. The best advice is to kick the sugar habit and get used to foods with less sweetness.
Make Fruit Your Go-To Sweet Treat
Fruit is an ideal sweet treat that provides significant advantages over added sugars.
Fruit is rich in fiber, phytochemicals, antioxidants, and a host of vitamins and minerals.
It is convenient and relatively economical.
Eat fruit whole, chop it into a fruit salad, slice it and serve with a little nut butter, freeze it and blend it to the texture of ice cream or sorbet, or bake it.
Step outside of your comfort zone and try fruits that are new to you.
Dried fruits can be used in place of sugar in homemade cereals, baked goods, desserts, and treats.
Although they are naturally high in sugar, dried fruits, when used judiciously, are healthful, high-fiber, nutrient-dense alternatives to sugar.
TABLE 5.3. Nutrients in Sweeteners
Source
Take Advantage of Herbs and Spices to Flavor Foods Instead of Sugar
Use vanilla beans or vanilla extract, citrus zest, or spices, such as allspice, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and star anise to bring out the natural sweetness in foods.
Not only are these seasonings sugar-free, but they also are great sources of antioxidants and phytochemicals.
Add them to cereals, puddings, baked goods, and beverages.
Some of them also work well in savory dishes.
You can enhance the flavor of commonly sweetened savory foods, such as pasta sauce, with herbs and caramelized onion.
Root vegetables, such as carrots and beets, also add sweetness to main and side dishes.
TABLE 5.4. Sugar Content of Common Packaged Foods
Source
THE GOODS ON ALTERNATIVE SWEETENERS
A lternative sweeteners are divided into two categories: sugar alcohols and high-intensity sweeteners. Sugar alcohols are nutritive or caloric sweeteners (that is, they contain calories). High-intensity sweeteners are mostly non-nutritive or calorie-free.
Sugar alcohols (also known as polyols) are a distinct category of sweet carbohydrates.
Part of their chemical structure resembles a carbohydrate, while another part resembles alcohol.
They are resistant to digestion, so they behave a lot like fiber.
The effects are similar to those of oligosaccharides; they go undigested into the large intestine and are fermented by the bacteria that reside there.
When consumed in large amounts, sugar alcohols can cause gastrointestinal distress, such as abdominal pain, gas, bloating, and diarrhea.
Even though sugar alcohols exist naturally in foods such as fruits and vegetables, most are manufactured from starches and sugars and are used in processed foods. Because they provide on average about half the calories of other carbohydrates and are thought to be relatively safe, sugar alcohols are often considered excellent sugar substitutes for people with diabetes. However, in order to train your palate to prefer less-sweet tastes, it is still best to minimize their use.
The most common sugar alcohols are erythritol, maltitol, sorbitol, and xylitol. Erythritol has the fewest calories at 0.2 calories per gram, while the other sugar alcohols range from 1.6–3 calories per gram (compared to 4 calories per gram for carbohydrates).
Erythritol is the one sugar alcohol that tends to not have adverse digestive effects because it is mostly absorbed into the bloodstream and excreted in the urine rather than passing through into the large intestine.