There are few things you can worry about as much as your health. Fortunately, Gezondnu’s medical team is there. In Consultation Hours, readers ask their questions about various health topics. This week Sarah’s question: ‘I would like to cut down on sugar, what is the best way to go about this?’
You have the good intention to eat less sugar. That means: work to be done! But before you take care of your kitchen cupboards and sprint to the supermarket with a customized shopping list, it is useful to know what exactly you need to know about your sugar intake. What is the best way to approach ‘cutting down on sugar’?
Cut back on sugar: how do you do that?
We asked Eveline van de Waterlaatdietary psychologist and author of the book Lose weight now and never gain weight again: “To get an idea of how much sugar you (unconsciously) consume, I often recommend calculating how many lumps of sugar they contain for a number of foods that you regularly eat. Because 12 grams of sugar may not mean much to you, but you can easily imagine three lumps of sugar.”
This is how you check the amount of sugar
“Check the amount of sugar in the nutritional table on the label. A sugar cube weighs approximately 4 grams and consists entirely of sugar. You therefore divide the total weight of sugar by 4. This way you know whether a particular product contains as much sugar as 2, 3 or perhaps 50 sugar cubes. An example is 0% fat fruit yoghurt. As soon as you see a claim such as 0% fat on a food packaging, you should pay attention. Indeed, there is no fat in this yogurt. But a lot of sugar: no less than 12.8 grams per 100 grams. A small container of fruit yoghurt weighing 150 grams therefore gives you 19.2 grams of sugar. That’s almost 5 cubes of sugar! Does a food contain a lot of sugar? Then take a look at the label of similar foods in the same category. You will often discover big differences, even between products that look the same at first glance. A good example of this is breakfast cereals, where the variety can be enormous. This way you don’t have to make any drastic changes, but you can easily cut down on sugar.”
Pay attention to the order
“The ingredients list can also give you insight into the amount of sugar in a food. The ingredients on a label are listed in descending order. This means that the ingredient listed first is the most common in the product. If sugar is freely at the front, then you know that it is better to leave this product alone.”
Different names for sugar
“Did you know that there are more than fifty different names for sugar? Some examples are sucrose, glucose, fructose, agave syrup, lactose, candy and honey. Simply looking for sugar on the ingredients list is not sufficient if you want to pay attention to the amount of sugar you consume. A useful mnemonic when reading labels is as follows: ingredients ending in -ose, syrup or molasses are often sugars.”
More consultation questions? In the October issue of Gezondnu you can read more pressing reader questions and answers from experts.
Section: Consultation hours
In Consultation Hours we submit reader questions about health to one of our experts. Do you also have a pressing health question for a GP, midwife, dietitian, psychologist or other health expert? Then email it to redactie@gezondnu.nl and who knows, you might see the answer appear in our monthly magazine or on Gezondnu.
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2023-09-27 16:00:14
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