Your sugar intake will blow your mind!

Most of us have no idea how much we’re consuming but, trust us, your sugar intake will blow your mind! Here’s why you could be consuming more than seven times the recommended amount.

We’re a nation addicted to sugar, consuming over one million tonnes a year. That averages 15 teaspoons a day per person. If you don’t consider yourself sweet-toothed, think again. You could very well be consuming a small mountain of sugar without even realising it.

Like so many of my weight-conscious friends, I watched BBC 1’s documentary The Truth About Sugar. The programme held a personal fascination for me because I quit sugar a year ago. It wasn’t the only thing I quit – I altered my entire way of eating – but giving up sugar was the most beneficial change I made and I have no intention of ever going back.

Hooked

Our addiction to sugar is undeniable. Forget what you’ve read about fatty foods creating an overweight nation; refined sugar is the real killer. This stuff has a powerful effect on the reward centres in our brain: it releases the feel-good chemical dopamine. When we regularly consume sugary foods, these receptors down-regulate. The next time we eat something sweet the effects are blunted and we need progressively larger doses to attain the same ‘hit’. I talk about sugar as if it’s a drug, and that’s exactly what it is. Make no mistake, the addiction is no different and the withdrawal symptoms can prove just as powerful. It’s only the social consequences that are not as severe.

How sugar-free do you think your daily diet actually is? A year ago I was fat, sick and tired. But I truly believed what I was eating was OK. Not brilliant, not super healthy, but in my eyes fairly balanced. I’d have the odd takeaway at weekends, I liked a glass or two of wine in the evenings, but most of the time I’d stick to low-fat meals, healthy snacks and diet soda. I had absolutely no idea why the weight kept creeping on. I didn’t even have a very sweet tooth, I wasn’t a chocoholic and sugary foods didn’t particularly excite me. Given the choice, I’d pick crisps over chocolate any day.

Hiding places

It turns out that my arch enemy was sugar, I just didn’t know it. Sugar is hidden in so many of the foods we consume. Confusingly, it’s not always labelled as ‘sugar’. Corn syrup, dextrose, molasses, sucrose… there are more than 50 alternative titles for sugar. Manufacturers know we’re starting to take note, so they’re changing labels, making sugar content less immediately obvious to spot. It’s shocking to learn just how much is snuck into some seemingly innocent meals.

A couple of years back, this would have been a typical food day for me. Not a boozy weekend with copious amounts of snacks and takeaways. Just a regular, working weekday with meals I thought were healthy.

Breakfast: I would often start my day with the best of intentions. What better breakfast than a pot of healthy real-fruit natural yoghurt. Low in fat, high in protein, Danone’s Danio even contains a superfood. But it also contains a crazy amount of sugar. The pots aren’t particularly big, you’d polish the lot off in a few mouthfuls – but this seemingly healthy breakfast contains a frighteningly high 4.5 teaspoons of sugar. I’d eat this accompanied by a fresh apple juice made from concentrate – another nine spoonfuls. That’s more than 13 sugar cubes before your day has even begun.

Mid morning: Snacks were always a toughie. Something to keep me going until lunch without the temptation of reaching for the biscuit tin. A fruit and nut cereal bar seemed like the perfect solution. It has to be healthier than the vending machine selection, right? In fact, an Eat Natural bar contains the same amount of sugar as a Kinder Bueno.

Lunch: A warming tin of tomato soup was always my cold-weather default lunch. Quick, easy, satisfying and healthy… aside from the five teaspoons of sugar, plus another for the wholemeal bread roll. Down a sports drink with it for that mid-afternoon energy boost and you can virtually triple the sugar hit.

Dinner: Pasta was probably my favourite food in the world. I’d eat giant platefuls of the stuff. I’d cook it at home and I’d eat out at Italian restaurants more than once a week. I truly loved it. I never felt good afterwards – I’d be swamped by that sleepy, bloated lethargy. I don’t eat wheat pasta at all anymore but back then my perceived healthy choice would have been wholewheat pasta with tomato sauce. When it comes to pasta sauces, Seeds of Change Organic Tomato looks like a healthy option but it actually contains more sugar than many of the cheaper brands. Combined with a small plate of pasta, that’s another 3.5 teaspoons of sugar to add to the day’s tally and we’re not quite done yet.

Dessert: Desserts were never a daily thing for me, but you’d be forgiven for treating yourself to a Weight Watchers chocolate pot, presuming it to be a guilt-free option. When something says low-fat on the packet, alarm bells should start ringing. In reducing fat content, manufacturers have to replace the missing flavours with something else. More often than not, that something is sugar. A whopping five teaspoons in this tiny fat-free chocolate pot.

Supper: If I was working late, I’d always fancy a snack before bed. Eating dinner at 6pm and not sleeping until midnight left a six-hour gap for hunger to creep back in. Dried fruit and nuts seem like a healthy choice. Be aware that dried fruits, especially the sharper, tangier ones such as cranberries, often contain added refined sugar to sweeten them. Snack on small palmful of trail mix and you may as well chuck a handful of sugar down your throat. Another couple of cubes to add to the stack.

Total consumption

So that’s it, day complete. Yoghurt and fruit juice for breakfast, soup for lunch, an energy drink pick-me-up mid afternoon and pasta for tea, with a fruit and nut bar and trail mix snack. Sounds fairly healthy, right? But that totals 45.5 sugar cubes (one cube equals one teaspoon). The World Health Organisation advises people to aim for no more than six teaspoons per day, and I was overdosing sevenfold most days. Bear in mind this doesn’t even take into consideration alcohol intake. You can add another handful of cubes to account for the wine I drank alone.

Quit the habit

It’s no wonder we’re getting fatter and more unwell. We’ve been doing the food shop all wrong. The low-fat fad of the mid-1980s hasn’t helped to slow our combined weight gain; the hundreds of ‘diet’ products lining supermarket shelves are not effectively combatting the obesity crisis. Our collective waistline has expanded in line with an increase in sugar. Stop counting calories, avoid anything that claims to be low-fat and look instead for low- or no-sugar foods. Cut your intake right down or quit altogether – it will be the most beneficial change you make to your health this year.