Your New Year SugaResolution

New Year’s Eve is just around the corner. If you’ve experienced the joys of life without sugar (whether it’s weight loss or the fact that vegetables taste so much more delicious!) then maybe your New Year’s resolution will be to convince your husband/sister/mother/brother to give it up as well!

A new article published in the UK aims to inspire readers to make a commitment in 2016 to cut sugar from their diets. What an ace idea!

The article quotes Professor Ian MacDonald from the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) as saying:

“The clear and consistent link between a high-sugar diet and conditions like obesity and type 2 diabetes is the wake-up call we need to rethink our diet…cut down on sugars, increase fibre and we’ll all have a better chance of living longer, healthier lives.”

Here are a few points from the article:

• Folks in the UK consume over two million tonnes of sugar every year.
• Sugar has become increasingly present in our diets as we hunt for ‘low-fat’ foods. Ironically eating ‘low-fat’ often doesn’t actually make you lose weight. It often has the opposite effect.  When manufacturers remove fat, they add another very dangerous ingredient to make it taste better – sugar.
• A medium carton of tomato soup contains up to 30g of sugar. Ready-made pasta sauce also has on average 30g of sugar, and low-fat ones can be considerably higher.
• A single can of fizzy drink contains about nine teaspoons of sugar.
• In July, health experts said no more than 5% of daily calorie intake should come from sugar, but at the moment most people are consuming at least twice this limit. The British Medical Association said a 20% levy on sugary drinks would be a step towards the long-term goal of tackling obesity; but it was rejected by the government.
• Too much sugar consumption also leads to increased risk of diabetes, heart disease and liver disease.
• You can find out how much total sugars there are by looking at the ‘carbohydrates (of which sugars)’ bit on the label. As a general rule, more than 15g of total sugars per 100g means it has high sugar content; 5g of total sugars means it has low sugar content.

Follow the link to read the full article.