A good way to start the New Year is to completely cut out—or cut way back on SUGAR. We all know sugar isn’t good for us and can cause weight gain. But eating excess sugar can also lead to a lowered immune system, premature aging, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Sugar is inflammatory, and inflammation is now believed to be at the heart of every degenerative disease we know of.
We expect to find sugar in cookies, ice cream, and donuts—but it sneaks into far more foods than you would ever imagine…foods like yogurt, marinara, salad dressings, ketchup, barbeque sauce, deli meats, pretzels, crackers, cereal, and the list goes on.
If you want to avoid sugar, you have to read labels. Some packaged foods have three or more different sources of sugar sprinkled throughout the ingredient list! Believe me, it’s worth the time you’ll spend doing it and in no time you’ll become a savvy (and healthier) consumer!
It’s important to look at the label where it says total sugars and divide the number by four, because there are four grams of sugar per teaspoon. The number you come up with is the number of teaspoons of sugar you’re ingesting—and that’s just per serving! Check and see how many servings are in the container.
Here is a partial list of different names for sugar:
- Agave
- Barley malt
- Beet sugar
- Brown sugar
- Cane juice crystals
- Cane sugar
- Caramel
- Corn syrup
- Carob syrup
- Castor sugar
- Date sugar
- Demerara
- Dextran
- Dextrose
- Diastatic malt
- Diatase
- Ethyl maltol
- Fructose
- Fruit juice
- Fruit juice concentrate
- Galactose
- Glucose
- Grape sugar
- High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS)
- Honey
- Lactose
- Maltodextrin
- Maltose
- Malt syrup
- Maple syrup
- Molasses
- Panocha
- Raw sugar
- Rice syrup
- Sorbitol
- Sorghum syrup
- Sucrose
- Treacle
More on sugar next week!
