How to Spot the Hidden Sugars Lurking in Healthy Foods
Thu 10 Mar 2011
Julia FitzGerald BSc MBANT, Nutritional Therapist at Still Point House
01626 830536 www.korunutrition.co.uk
There are all sorts of reasons why diets fail. Sometimes
they are emotional, sometimes medical. For many though, it’s simply because of
mis-education. Pick up any newspaper or flick through the TV channels and
you’ll receive weight loss advice whether you want it or not. Unfortunately
substance and common sense are often sacrificed for style and sensationalism.
The advice is simplified and reduced to sound bites and slogans which allow
important details to get lost.
One of the key diet saboteurs is hidden sugars, particularly
those found in apparently healthy foods. This isn’t about chocolate, soft
drinks and donuts. It’s about fruit and smoothies, cereal and cereal bars,
yoghurt and yoghurt coatings.
Fruit juices and smoothies contain a lot of sugar. Compare a
carton of fruit juice or smoothie with a soft drink such as cola. Per 100ml
these very different drinks actually contain a very similar amount of sugar –
around 10g. This isn’t ‘added sugar’ it’s simply the sugar that naturally
occurs in the fruit. Natural or not, it’s still calorific. Now if you’re only
having one small glass a day with your breakfast then that sugar content isn’t
going to tip the scales (and of course its providing vitamins and counting
towards your five a day). However if you then decide to buy a bottled smoothie (250mls)
with your lunch you’re clocking up around an extra 150 calories thanks to those
natural fruit sugars.
Cereal bars are another big weight loss saboteur. They are
typically marketed as a healthy snack choice – the sort of tag line is
something along the lines of ‘this product can help weight loss as part of a
calorie controlled diet’. If you think about this sentence for a moment it
doesn’t take long to realise that it could actually be applied to any food, including
your favourite chocolate bar.
There are healthy cereal bars out there, but you need to
check the small print. A quick scan of the ingredients list of one of the most
popular cereal bars reveals sugar, glucose syrup, cranberries, pineapple syrup,
pineapple juice concentrate, fructose, dextrose and lactose – that’s eight
sources of sugar in a single product! This is a common trick. The ingredients
list has to be there by law, and usefully it lists items in order of quantity
so if you see sugar or fat at the top of the list then that’s a good sign that
the product is likely to be laden with calories. So, if manufacturers make their
ingredients list look sufficiently long, dull, small and difficult to read then
fewer people will bother to look.
If you’re a numbers person then the nutrition information
table can also be useful, but remember there is no legal requirement to provide
that information on the packaging if space is tight (it can usually be found on
their websites though). The Food Standards Agency advises that more than 15g
sugar per 100g is considered ‘a lot’. Most cereal bars are twice this. Another
useful figure is to see how many grams of sugar are in the actual bar. Anything
from 5g to 25g is typical. It’s worth remembering that a teaspoon of sugar
weighs 5g. Suddenly that natural cereal bar starts to look a lot more dodgy
when you realised it contains the equivalent of five teaspoons of sugar.
Yoghurt is another food that can increase the calorie count
if you don’t look at the small print. Low fat and fruit flavoured options often
come laden with sugar, so you are better to choose plain, live yoghurt and add
some fresh berries or a little jam or honey if you require it sweeter (at least
that way you are in control). Also don’t be fooled by yoghurt coatings which
are mainly sugar and fat (check the ingredients list!), and thus have far more
in common with chocolate than yoghurt.
Successful dieters can (and should) indulge in the
occasional treat. The secret is to take a little time to read the food labels
rather than trusting manufacturers to look after your waist line.
Get more info from: www.nhs.uk/livewell/goodfood/
Julia FitzGerald is available for individual consultations
at Still Point House in Bovey Tracey on Wednesday afternoons. Please see www.korunutrition.co.uk or call
01626 830536 for further info.
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