Top 10 Ways to Cut Back On Sugar

by Jonny Bowden, M.A., C.N.

1.Don't add it to foods. This is the
easiest and most basic way to
immediately reduce the amount of
sugar you're eating. Biggest targets:
cereal, coffee and tea.


2.Don't be fooled by 'healthy sugar'
disguises. Brown sugar, turbinado
sugar, raw sugar ... it's all pretty much
the same thing as far as your body is
concerned.


3.Make a real effort to reduce or
eliminate processed carbohydrates.
Most processed carbs -- breads,
bagels, most pastas and snacks -- are
loaded with flour and other ingredients
that convert to sugar in the body
almost as fast as pure glucose. That
sugar gets stored as triglycerides
which is a fancy way of saying fat.


4.Watch out for 'fat-free' snacks.
One of the biggest myths is that if a
food is fat-free it doesn't make you fat.
Fat-free doesn't mean calorie-free, and
most fat-free snacks are loaded with
sugar.


5.Shop for color. The more your
grocery basket looks like a cornucopia
of color, the better. It usually means
you're getting more fresh vegetables
and low-glycemic fruits such as berries
and cherries.

6.Become a food detective. This tip is
from the wonderful author and
nutritionist Anne Louise Gittleman,
who adds that 'To reduce sugar, you
have to know where it is first.' Start
reading labels.

7.Beware of artificial sweeteners.
Unfortunately, they can increase
cravings for sugar and carbohydrates.
According to Gittleman, they also
deplete the body's stores of chromium,
a nutrient crucial for blood-sugar
metabolism.


8.Do the math. Look at the label where
it says 'total sugars' and divide the
number of grams by four. That's the
number of teaspoons of sugar you are
ingesting. This exercise alone should
scare the pants off you.


9.Limit fruit. (Notice I didn't say
'eliminate.') Fruit has sugar, but it also
has fiber and good nutrients. Just don't
overdo it. For weight-loss purposes,
two servings a day maximum.


10.Eliminate fruit juice. It's a pure sugar
hit with none of the fiber and less of the
nutrients that are found in the fruit itself.
  


Sugar: Sweet Poison

BY ALLAN SPREEN, MD


The title tells the story: The worst danger in
our diet is NOT fat. It's sugar, no matter what
they tell you on television.


The major types of foods are proteins, fats,
and carbohydrates, but our focus is a subset
of the carbohydrates, the refined simple
carbohydrates (as opposed to the complex).


There would be little problem eating sugar
cane or sugar beets, as a non-concentrated
juice straight from the plant. All the nutrients
required for the utilization of the juice are
self-contained. If you chew the stalk, you
even get natural fiber. This seems to be a law
of nature: A real food contains within itself the
nutrients required for its use by the body.


The point here is that refined sugar (the white
stuff man has messed with) no longer qualifies
as 'food.' Vitamins, minerals, enzymes and
fiber for properly using food as fuel do not
accompany totally pure, concentrated sugar.

The body must handle refined 'food' by
drawing from body stores already in
existence (assuming you have some).


Long term diets of these 'naked' calories
continually stress the body by sapping it of
these internal stores of nutrients. Eventually,
deficiency states, whether subtle or obvious,
arise.


Sorry, sugar-lovers, there's more. This sweet
calorie is not just naked, it's also
concentrated. Besides the nutrients being
removed, the water and soluble fiber are
missing. This is also true when fruit is
converted to fruit juice, and gets even worse
once refined to pure fructose, or fruit sugar.

William Dufty, in his book, Sugar Blues,
found that 5 ounces of refined sugar requires
2 1/2 pounds of sugar beets! That much
sugar is nothing for most people to eat in 10
minutes. Try it with the beets. Nature builds in
its own controls, while we're given an
industrial-strength concentrate that has little to
do with the original sweet stuff.


Once sugar enters the system, blood sugar
rises. Then our pancreas squirts a little insulin
into the bloodstream, sending the sugar to
muscle and brain cells. However, if you don't
happen to be moving or thinking enough,
sugar is converted and stored as FAT! You
can cut your fat grams to ZERO, but if you
eat too much refined carbohydrate, YOU
GET FAT. (The low-fat advertisers didn't tell
you that? Hmmm.)


If our sugar is unnaturally concentrated, the
pancreas can get weird. Fast-shifting blood
sugar can make you feel bad, craving another
sugar 'fix' and starting a 'roller-coaster' effect
that traps carbohydrate addicts. This 'reactive
hypoglycemia' is not a disease, it's a symptom
... it just leads to disease, and it's a real time
bomb.


The problem is that natural, unrefined sugar is
now almost impossible to get. To really avoid
the stresses and degenerative diseases I
believe are caused by sugar, abstinence is the
best way -- but just like with sex, it's tough to
pull off.


The best switch, assuming you can't quit
sweets, is to convert to unrefined simple
carbohydrates- the fruits. Try to eat whole
fresh fruit. Beware of fruit juice, since you can
drink more fruit than you can eat.



If you just can't give up the sweet taste
completely and you need something to add to
foods, there are options. Visit a health food
store and beware of artificial. The herb stevia
is good if you can find it.


A few days off sugar, especially for someone
who eats tons of it, can make you feel much
better. Also, the harder it is to quit, the better
you may ultimately feel, if you can pull it off.
Hang on, if that happens, because you are in
withdrawal, and you are almost guaranteed
some degree of improvement.


back