Sugar Shock: Are You Addicted?

Dinner Diva
Sugar Shock: Are You Addicted?

By Leanne Ely, CNC

Okay, so you don’t drink sodas, eat candies, cookies or anything remotely resembling a sugar drenched dessert. What if you found out you were eating a ton of sugar but didn’t even know it?

Some of the most common foods you’d think would be absent of sugar (but aren’t) would be: bread, salad dressing, marinades, sauces, fruit juice, vegetable juice, canned veggies and fruits, pre-made soups, frozen dinners, frozen juices, granola, granola and protein bars, to name just a few. If you’re you’re wondering how you got to the point of a sugar addiction when you’re someone that eats pretty healthily and doesn’t consume a lot of candy or desserts, the answer is probably listed in one of the above or maybe something else in your pantry that has sugar hidden and tucked away.

So, if sugar has such a dominant presence in our daily foods, how can we avoid it? There should always be an option that is sugar-free, right? (And I’m not talking about the label “sugar-free” because that means there’s sugar substitutes, and that’s a whole other article).

It all boils down to reading the ingredients. Clearly if you see “sugar” among them, you don’t want to put it in your grocery cart. But it’s not that simple. Sugar comes in several forms and these are its aliases you need to look out for: fructose, dextrose, glucose, sucrose, lactose, maltose, honey, molasses, corn syrup, and sucrose syrup. A biggie is looking for -ose at the end of the words (I bet you get that from the aforementioned list). Sugar can take on a lot of different forms. Unfortunately, you’ll find it lurking in a lot of different foods you would have never expected to be a “safe house” for sugar.

How do you avoid it? By being aware of what you’re buying. In order to remember all the different forms of sugar I would write them all down on a small list and stick it in your wallet. That way the next time you go grocery shopping you can check the ingredients to see if what you intend to purchase is guilty of using sugar, and that’ll enable you to search out a much healthier alternative and consequently help you break any little sugar addiction you may’ve accidentally gotten yourself into!

Sugar addict? Wanna find out?