What’s Really in Your Food!

It seems like every time people diet, or cut out sugar, they end up with raging cravings that inevitably lead to bingeing. We go on and on about how we’re not addicted to sugar, our diet is healthy. But when we think about living without it, suddenly it seems like there’s nothing to eat! If there was ever a food villain, it would be sugar.

First off, it’s really not that hard to avoid sugar (and I’m talking about artificial, refined, and added sugars. Not the sugar you’d consume when eating fruits/veggies). If you stick to the outside aisles of the supermarket you already have a head start. The stuff in the middle is what gets you. The cereals, the cookies, crackers, even breads!

If you look at the back of any packaged/processed food I can almost guarantee you will find MULTIPLE additions of sugar. But it may not be obvious at first. But you need to remember: Sugar by any other name is still sugar.

Here’s some help in identifying sugars in your foods.

• • Ingredients ending in -ose. For example
    • Lactose
    • Sucrose
    • Fructose
  • Ingredients that contain the word “syrup”
    • Maple Syrup
    • Corn Syrup

Here are some other common hidden sugars to watch out for:

These ones are sneaky! Sugar, Syrup and “-ose” are not in the names!

Now all this sugar talk, it doesn’t mean you can’t ever eat those foods again. It doesn’t mean you can’t eat foods with those ingredients. When looking at an ingredient label, look at how many total carbs and how many grams of sugar there are. The lower the number the better. Use those items for little treats every now and then, not an everyday snack. Trust me, I could never give up ice cream. But now I only enjoy it once or twice on the weekend, not every night!