We eat too much sweet. If we had sweet scales most of them would be at the high end - well past sour, bitter, and even salty flavours. Unfortunately, sweeteners of one sort or another are in almost every processed food. As we rely on more and more processed food in our homes and restaurants, we encounter more sweet. Over-consumption of sugars contribute to many health problems from tooth decay to diabetes, heart disease, immune disorders, child hyperactivity, some cancers, and obesity yet food manufacturers continue to increase the amount of sugar in their products. Their 'hidden' sugars and artificial sweeteners are making us crave more and more of that sweet goodness. Even recipes that include 'alternative' sweeteners like Stevia, honey, maple syrup, cane sugar, etc. include amounts that mimic the sweetness of refined white sugar (sucrose). We need to eat less sweet and a good beginning is to learn why and where the sweets are.
Sweet, real or artificial, is hidden in just about every processed food product we consume. The primary reason for this is taste - we will be more likely to purchase or re-purchase a product if it tastes good. Ever since man ate his first piece of fruit or had his first spoonful of honey, he has been hooked on sweets and has been attracted to that taste. So beware of every processed food. Sweets flavour salad dressings and condiments. When food manufacturers remove the tasty fat from a product they must replace the flavour with something familiar - like sweet. Low-fat products tend to be loaded with sweet, even low-fat lunch meats. Baked as opposed to fried products like potato or corn chips also tend to contain sweet. Toothpaste often contains sweet in an attempt to make brushing the teeth more agreeable to children. "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down" and can be found in many cough syrups and over-the-counter oral preparations. Even bread can contain sugar because sugar helps yeast to become active.
Unfortunately all this hidden sugar is consumed along with the obvious sugars in candy, cookies, cakes, and pastries leading to an average of 2/3 of a cup of sugar being consumed daily by every man, woman, and child!
It's easy enough to say read labels and don't buy anything with sugars but
manufacturers are getting crafty. Sugar is becoming a dirty word for the calorie
and health conscious so sucrose (refined white sugar) is finding its way to
a product's ingredient list far less often. Sucrose is a disaccharide sugar
made up of two monosaccharide sugars - glucose and fructose. You are more likely
to see those two sugars listed instead of sucrose. In fact, any time you see
a word ending in "ose" on a food package you can safely assume it's a sugar
of some sort. The words corn syrup or high-fructose corn syrup also indicate
added sugars. Sugar alcohols like sorbitol, mannitol, xylitol, lactitol, and
maltitol are also being added to more foods.
Sugar alcohols are lower calorie sweeteners than sugars but not nearly as low
as artificial sweeteners like Sucralose (Splenda), and Aspartame, also known
as Equal or NutraSweet. According to the Canadian Sugar Institute web site,
16 calories are present in 5 millilitres or one teaspoon of white, table sugar
(sucrose). There are 10 teaspoons of sugar in a 12-ounce can of cola or 160
calories. These calories are in addition to any that might be in the other cola
ingredients. No wonder calorie-counting people are lured by the single calorie
promise of a diet cola. Two cans of sugar-sweetened cola a day are over 300
calories.
But, in reality, artificial sweeteners aren't doing us any favours. Despite the fact that they sweeten foods as well as sugar can but with fewer calories, they are fuelling an ever-increasing addiction to sweet. Foods that are artificially sweetened taste almost the same and are as sweet as their sugar-laden counterparts. It's too easy for even the calorie and health conscious to reach for the sugar-sweetened version if the artificially sweetened version is not available. When was the last time you turned down a sugar-sweetened soda because the 'diet' brand wasn't available?
We need to readjust our sweet scales and get to a lower setting. We don't need as much sweet as we're presently being exposed to in order to satisfy our sweet needs. Many will tell you that the human body hasn't evolved to handle this much sweet. So stop eating so many sweet products and try the following:
Prepare more foods from fresh, whole ingredients. Not only do they taste better, but you can control the amount of sugar you add to your finished food. Better yet, add no sugar at all.
After a few weeks, fruit's natural sugars will taste sweeter, a small taste of a candy bar will satisfy you, and cola will taste syrupy. You will feel lighter, healthier, and more balanced as you start to experience the other flavours that life has to offer.
Copyright 2003, Kelly Reith BA RHN
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