Cheree Sheldon, Nutritionist for the October Sugar Detox 28 Day Weight Loss Challenge has provided some tips about where to find sugars hiding in your foods so you know what to look out for at the supermarket and make better decisions to reach your weight loss goals.
Food manufacturers will hide sugar anywhere!! Seriously! As an industry, they only care about a product selling, and how do they get it to sell? They make it taste nice.. Unfortunately for us as consumers this often means a whole gammet of hidden treasures, flavour enhancers, artificial flavours, and a multitude of sugars amongst their tricks.
You can also receive our Free Sugar Detox Recipe sampler here
Learning to read food labels is pretty much your only way of gaining control over which processed foods you should eat. If you believe the claims they put on the front, without sussing out the back, then you may fall for the marketing tricks.
Let me give you just one example; food manufacturers have led you to believe that all fat is bad (this is a whole other subject that we won’t touch on today!), and often put on the front of packaging in massive writing “FAT FREE” or “LOW FAT”.
Some of the products that these claims are on however have NEVER had fat in them, such as marshmallows. The humble marshmallow when made traditionally should be sugar, gelatin, and vanilla. No fat in sight. But a LOT of sugar! So, by reading the claim on the packaging that they are fat free, may lead some people to believe that they are either a healthy treat, or that they are not “unhealthy”… BUT at a whopping 76% sugar, they provide nearly 5 teaspoons of sugar in one serve (which is 84% of your daily recommendation!!)
You can also receive our Free Sugar Detox Recipe sampler here
Look out for hidden sugars in every bit of processed food that you may consume! Including the savoury ones! Typical products that have hidden sugars are tomato sauce, BBQ sauce, muesli bars, biscuits, breakfast cereals, some chips, yoghurt, even olives!!
Read the ingredients list, any ingredient that ends in OSE is a sugar. Sugars you may find lurking in foods are corn syrup, fructose syrup, glucose, maltose, and fruit juice concentrates.
Another dirty trick food manufactures have is adding in sugar into many low fat foods to make them taste nice.
A food in its real state is always best than one that has been altered!
How can you reduce your sugar intake?
- Stop adding the little sugar crystals to your foods and drinks. If you need to sweeten your tea or coffee than use stevia or xylitol as they will not affect your blood sugars.
- Give up soft drinks but please do not replace them with artificially sweetened versions. Instead choose sparkling mineral water and flavour with lemon or lime wedges.
- Choose wholegrain breakfast cereals that do not have added sugars. Make your own muesli, choose oats, quinoa flakes, or eggs rather than bowls full of colour and sugar!
- Instead of a pastry or cake for snack time, select something fresh and savoury like hummus with carrot sticks. If you must have something sweet, make your own healthier versions, freeze in small portions and take them with you.
- Use the recipes from the 28 Day Sugar Detox Weight Loss Challenge to make healthier versions of processed and often sugar laden meals like breakfasts, lunch box snacks, afternoon tea and desserts.
- Read the labels on everything! Even yoghurt can have copious amounts of sugar added to it.
Cheree Sheldon, Nutritionist
