Kiss that Sweet Tooth Goodbye!

How many times has a piece of chocolate cake ruined your diet?  Or a sudden craving for cookie dough ice cream?  Chocolate?  Candy?  Pastries?  Soda?  Most people realize that these things are not good for us, but still we eat them.  When was the last time you went to the movies and didn't get a popcorn and soda, or a big bag of Twizzlers? How often have you taken "just a little" of a birthday cake, only to go back for "just a little more?"  

The problem with sugary foods is not necessarily the calories in them.  Which is not to say they are low in calories, but rather that like any high calorie food, you can budget them into your diet if you are disciplined.  The real problem with sugary foods is that they are addicting.  I don't mean that metaphorically.  There is a real, true addictive quality to sugar that once there is some in your body, your brain craves more.  This is all due to your blood sugar levels and how your body creates and processes insulin.  While it is true that some people do this better than others, this is not and should not be a concern only for diabetics.  We would all do ourselves a lot of good to pay much closer attention to the sugar in our diets.  

Sugar is what gives us belly fat and belly fat is the worst kind of fat for your health.  It can increase your risk of developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancer.  It can also lead to high blood pressure and high cholesterol.  

Most of of are getting way more sugar than we even realize.  It's in everything we eat.  Even if you aren't eating lots of candy and ice cream every day I bet you are eating some of these things:  fruit juice, bread, ketchup, BBQ sauce, cereal, tomato sauce, low-fat foods of all kinds, and many, many others that we don't think of as necessarily sugary foods.  

So, what can we do about it?  For one thing, start reading the labels when you go shopping.  You'll be stunned by the amount of sugar that gets hidden in the foods you are eating.  You'll also be amazed by the number of different names sugar has.  Here are some of the most common:

• barley malt
• beet sugar
• brown sugar
• cane-juice crystals
• cane sugar
• caramel
• carob syrup
• corn syrup
• corn syrup solids
• date sugar
• dextran
• dextrose
• diatase
• diastatic malt
• ethyl maltol
• fructose
• fruit juice
• fruit juice concentrate
• glucose
• glucose solids
• high-fructose corn syrup
• honey
• invert sugar
• lactose
• malt syrup
• maltodextrin
• maltose
• mannitol
• molasses
• raw sugar
• refiner's syrup
• sorbitol
• sorghum syrup
• sucrose
• turbinado sugar
• xylitol      

Now, I'm not saying that you should never eat any food with any of these ingredients.  Some of these sugars (i.e. honey) are more natural than others (i.e. high fructose corn syrup) and might even contain some health benefits.  The idea is to start to really learn about how much sugar there is in your diet and what you can do to cut that amount down.  If any of these sugars are listed in the top 3 ingredients in a food, you might want to reconsider.  If they are lower down on the list but there are many different types, you may want to reconsider.  Be especially careful with low-fat and diet foods- they often add sugar in place of the fat in order to keep the flavor.

Reading the labels can seem time consuming at first and it might be frustrating when you realize how many of the foods you eat are high in sugar.  Be persistent.  Over time you'll find good replacements and know which brands are better than others without having to read the labels.  You don't even have to spend more money than you are now to get something a little better for you.  I don't think everyone should have to shop in the health-food section of your grocery store and pay 3 times the price for things.  What I'm talking about can be as simple as changing from your regular tomato sauce to the "no sugar added" variety.  With a little persistence, you'll kick the sugar habit in no time!