Often clients are surprised when I tell them that reducing their sugar intake doesn’t have to involve huge sacrifices. Most of the time, making simple swaps is all that it takes to considerably lower your sugar intake. I’m a big believer that making small changes to your diet can make a big difference to how you look and feel. It’s the small, healthier choices we make on a day to day basis that add up over time to give us big results.
So, with that in mind I’ve put together 8 examples of simple food swaps you can make in the supermarket to lower your sugar intake. I’ve chosen 8 everyday foods that feature in many people’s trolleys. Quite often there is a huge variation in sugar content even amongst the exact same food. So, it really pays to look at labels when choosing which product to go for.
A really simple and useful way of gauging sugar content is to remember that:
1tsp of sugar = 4 grams
So, for example, if a granola bar contains 16 grams of sugar per serving that’s equivalent to approximately 4 teaspoons of sugar which is rather a lot.
If you want to compare one brand over another, it can useful to look at the sugar content per 100g (as I’ve illustrated below), particularly where the ‘per portion’ weight is different.
Note: It’s important to be aware that dairy, fruit and vegetables will contain a certain amount of naturally occurring sugars which we don’t need to overly concern ourselves about. It’s the additional sugar that has been ‘added’ by the food manufacturer that we are more concerned about. So, for example, the ‘Just Food Tomato Soup’ listed below contains naturally occurring sugars from the tomatoes but contains no added sugar.
8 Food Swaps To Lower Your Sugar Intake.
Elsa Jones is a qualified Nutritional Therapist and Author of the No. 1 Bestseller ‘Goodbye Sugar’.
