At my last Weight Watchers meeting, we had a conversation about sugar. It makes sense because who doesn’t like sugar? I for one do enjoy a good ice cream cone, a candy bar, and I’m a huge cookie fan.  The thing is it’s not so simple when it comes to sugar because it’s in all kinds of foods. There are natural sugars and added sugars.

I read this article in The New York Times, Is Sugar Really Bad for You? It Depends Dr. Malhotra, a famous cardiologist, who also serves as an adviser to the United Kingdom’s national obesity forum said, about half of the sugar Americans consume is “hidden” in foods such as salad dressings, bread, low-fat yogurt, and ketchup. So off I went into my kitchen to see for myself:

He was right, this salad dressing does have added sugar. I guess that’s why it’s 2sp per serving. This is an important piece of information I learned after reading the article as well when reading labels: one teaspoon of sugar is 4.2 grams. The food industry is only required to list sugar in grams, not teaspoons.  It’s tricky because measuring sugar in this way (grams) makes it easier to underestimate just how much sugar is in a serving. According to the American Heart Association (AHA) healthy diet recommendations for women, are  6 teaspoons per day and men are 9 teaspoons per day. If you want to lose weight, The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends 25 grams (or less) sugar per day.

So, I like to eat a lot of fruit how much sugar is in that? There are 16 grams of sugar in a cup of pineapple; 7 grams of sugar in a cup of strawberries; 15 grams of sugar in 1 cup of blueberries: 14 grams of sugar in a medium banana! Avocados at 1 gram per cup and raspberries 5 grams per cup are lower sugar option. The important thing about fruit is the fiber, the fiber makes the difference! Fiber works to slow down the release of sugar into the bloodstream giving us time to process it. So if you want to lose weight eat some fruit, I guess that’s why we count fruit as 0sp.

That’s what I’m thinking about I hope you had a good day on the journey and that you are taking care of yourself. More tomorrow…