Sugar can cause a lot of health problems such as diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and heart disease.
In children, too much sugar will cause tooth decay and weakening of the immune system.
Here are ways to reduce sugar in your diet.
1. Look For Sugar-Free Or Reduced Sugar Products.
Be smart when doing your food shopping read the label and see if there are any alternatives foods with less sugar.
Food labels which state less sugar, reduced sugar, no added sugar and sugar-free are better alternatives.
2. Swap Sweet Puddings For Fresh Fruits.
Puddings are packed with sugar. Try limiting the amount of sweet, sugary puddings you eat or you could eat them once in a while for a little treat.
Try limiting the amount of sweet sugary puddings you eat or you could eat them once in a while for a little treat.
Swap pudding for fresh fruit which has way less sugar and contains vitamins and minerals that your body needs.
3. Avoid Keeping Sugary Snacks At Home.
Chocolates, sweets, ice cream and cakes should be a treat and not an everyday thing.
Keeping these at home will tempt you to eat more of them so to avoid this by choosing not to keep them in your house. “Out of Sight, Out of Mind.”
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4. Cut Down Sugar Slowly
Try to cut sugar in your diet slowly.
For example, if you put three teaspoons of sugar in your tea or coffee reduce it to 2 ½ continue reducing it by the ½ teaspoon until you don’t put any sugar in your tea.
5. Understanding Food Labels
Labels on food tell you how much sugar is in the food. It’s important to understand the labels and colour-coded system.
It’s important to understand the labels and the food colour-coded system.
The food colour code system consists of green, amber and red just like the traffic lights system.
Green is for foods that contain no sugar or fewer amounts of sugar these are the food you should go for.
Amber is telling you to be aware that sugar in that food is getting too much.
Red tells you that there is too much sugar in that particular food. Avoid buying foods in this colour code.
Using food colour coded traffic light system the right way will help you to choose and pick foods with less sugar when you are doing your grocery shopping.
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6. Stop Drinking Sugary Drinks
Water is a good alternative for any sugary drink. Energy drink, fizzy drinks, squashes; contain too many teaspoons of sugar.
Take for example a Coca Cola 330ml can contain 35grams of sugar.
A teaspoon of sugar has 4grams in total this means coca cola cans has almost 9 teaspoons of sugar.
Would you put 9 teaspoons of sugar in your cup of tea or coffee?
7. Stop Eating Sugary Cereals
If you want to reduce the sugar in sugary cereals you can swap them for oats or weetabix.
These are much better alternatives in reducing sugar in cereals.
8. Look Out For Hidden Added Sugar Substitute Names.
Sugar can have lots of names look out for these names on labels as they are added sugar.
- Glucose
- Corn syrup
- Inserted sugar
- Honey
- Sucrose
- Maltese
BONUS
5 Foods Packed With Hidden Sugar
There are many foods you should be aware of that contain a lot of sugar.
Most of this food is processed or pre-packed foods.
Here is a list of food with hidden sugars.
1. Sweetened yoghurts contain a lot of sugar, swap them for natural yoghurt which have no added sugar.
2. White bread contains more sugar as compared to brown bread.
Make a choice of substituting your white bread for healthy wholemeal bread.
3. Ketchup and Salad dressing have sugar added to them. Swap your store-bought salad dressings with homemade salad dressing.
Make your own homemade ketchup which has less sugar than store-bought ketchup. Jamie Oliver shares this delicious easy to make homemade ketchup recipe.
4. Sauces are easy to make why not make your sauces from scratch at home instead of buying sauces which are full of sugar.
5. Smoothies are very healthy they contain a lot of vitamins and minerals which are much needed by your body.
However, buying pre-packed smoothies defeats the whole goodness in smoothies as store bought smoothies contain a lot of added sugar.
Instead, prepare your smoothies at home which is less expensive and more healthier.
Invest in a good blender or smoothie maker and a good kitchen knife set and a chopping board and you are ready to start making your smoothies at home.
Finally
Cutting back on sugar will have many healthy positive benefits to your body including reduced risk of diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
Start cutting your sugar intake today to ripe these benefits.
Over to you…
How many teaspoons of sugar do you put in your cup of tea or coffee?
