The following tips will help you limit your intake of added sugars:
Make Some Healthy Shifts
- Eat fruit for dessert instead of cookies or cakes
- Swap sugary cereals for unsweetened cereal with fruit
- Drink water or low-fat milk with meals instead of sodas
- If you choose to have a soda, select a smaller size
- Add 1 teaspoon of sugar to your tea or coffee instead of 2
- Make sweet desserts and snacks, such as cookies, cakes, pies, and ice cream, a once-in-a-while treat and choose a small portion when you enjoy them
- Choose packaged foods that have less or no added sugars such as plain yogurt, unsweetened applesauce, or frozen fruit with no added sugar or syrup
Check the Ingredients List Look for added sugars in the ingredients list. Ingredients used in the greatest amounts are listed first, followed by those used in smaller quantities. Food manufacturers often list added sugar using terms like brown sugar, corn sweetener, corn syrup, dextrose, fructose, glucose, high-fructose corn syrup, honey, invert sugar, lactose, malt syrup, maltose, molasses, raw sugar, sucrose, trehalose, and turbinado sugar.
Added sugars also hide in foods that you might not expect. They’re common in foods like pasta sauces, crackers, pizzas, and more.
Watch the Condiments
Condiments such as barbecue sauce, ketchup, and salad dressing can have added sugar. Two tablespoons of ketchup have about 2 teaspoons of sugar—almost one-third the daily recommendation for women! Read the ingredient list and choose brands that have no added sugar or sugar listed as the 5th ingredient or higher.
Read the Nutrition Facts Label
The current Nutrition Facts label does not distinguish between naturally occurring and added sugars. But that’s about to change. The U.S Food and Drug Administration finalized a new Nutrition Facts label that will make it easier for you to determine how much added sugar is in your food. You should start to see the new Nutrition Facts label in 2018.
Constance Brown-Riggs, MSEd, RD, CDE, CDN is a registered dietitian, certified diabetes educator, national speaker and author of The African American Guide to Living Well with Diabetes.. She is Dannon One Yogurt Every Day Nutrition Advisor.