Sugar Surprise! How Much Sugar Are You Eating?

' Sucrose
' Fructose
' Maple Syrup
' Molasses
' Dextrose
' Turbinado
' Amazake
' Sorbitol
' Carob powder
' High fructose corn syrup

Keep your eye out for these names on the ingredient list of your food packages. You will be surprised, j

Health professionals at close quarters the nation are urging people to decrease their intake of refined sugars to help collide rising health conditions such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and an cancers. The USDA recommends for people to consume less than 10 percent of their calories from sugar. For someone eating a 2000 diet this would equate to everywhere 12 teaspoons of sugar a day. Seems simple doesn’t it? Unfortunately, it’s a little trickier than you might think. The harsh reality is that on average, Americans consume about 20 teaspoons a day.

It can be quite confusing to figure out how much sugar you are consuming especially when some of it comes in natural forms such as fruit, and fruit juices. The easiest way to eliminate this problem is to back off the juice and don’t worry too much helter-skelter the sugar you take in from whole fruit (unless you have diabetes or hypoglycemia). Juices are pretty much pure sugar yet they are marked for you than soda in that beside with the sugar comes loads of vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients. However, this sugar will still lead you to gain weight so it is best to limit juice to a couple times a week and drink only a 6 ounce serving size. As far as the whole fruit goes, if we were only getting our sugars from eating just fruits an vegetables we’d be cap off and would have a lower risk of deep-seated diseases.

So how can you tell how much sugar is in your foods? Read the labels! The first place to look is the sugar section on your food label which is located under Total Carbohydrate. A quick way to convert the sugar grams to teaspoons is to divide the number of grams by four. For example, if your food label shows 16 grams of sugar, divide that by four and you will get four teaspoons of sugar per serving. Now that you know this little trick you will be staring how quickly that sugar adds up. Remember…your goal is in a circle 12 teaspoons per day or less.

The next thing to be streetwise of is hidden sugars on the ingredient list. Here are some disguises of sugar:

• Sucrose
• Fructose
• Maple Syrup
• Molasses
• Dextrose
• Turbinado
• Amazake
• Sorbitol
• Carob powder
• High fructose corn syrup

Keep your eye out for these names on the ingredient list of your food packages. You will be surprised, just picking up a can of desiccated shows molasses, sugar, and fructose which are all driving the sugar content up.

Keeping sugar to less than 10% of your calories will go a long way towards managing your weight and health. Limit the obvious sugars such as sweets and sodas but also look into some of the civil foods you buy and see if there are any sugar surprises that you have found.