Should we avoid fruit juices and dried fruit? That and other sugar questions answered
cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com
If you (like me) kicked off 2020 by trying to kick the sugar habit, you are probably still adjusting to this new way of eating.
Added sugar lurks in so many surprising places – many foods we think of as healthful are really loaded with sugar. And food companies try to trick us by disguising added sugar with names that may sound more wholesome like “barley syrup” or “agave” or even “fruit juice”.
READ: Make 2020 the year of less sugar – you'll even age at a slower rate
This week, I’ve been swamped with questions from readers who have taken our 7-Day Sugar Challenge, which offers several strategies for cutting added sugar. Here are answers to some of the questions you’ve been asking.
I have never understood why “added sugar” is more unfriendly to health than “natural sugar”, which can be found in abundance in so many fruits, starting with natural orange juice. Can you explain?
The natural sugar in whole fruit (fructose) is accompanied by fibre and nutrients, and makes a slow journey through your body. But when sugar is added to beverages or packaged foods, it’s more quickly absorbed and burdens the liver. Here are three good reasons to choose whole fruits versus foods with added sugar or fruit juice.
Fibre: Whole fruits contain fibre, which slows the absorption of fructose. Sugars enter the bloodstream more slowly, so the liver has more time to metabolise them.
Satiety: Processed food is digested quickly as soon as it enters our intestines. Fibre-rich foods like whole fruits break down slowly and travel farther through the digestive track, which triggers the release of satiety hormones that make us feel full.
Gut health: The slow journey of the fibre, fructose and nutrients in whole fruit essentially allows the body to feed the healthy bacteria in our intestine, supporting the health of our microbiome.
A glass of orange juice
Why aren’t bananas and grapes recommended for people cutting sugar?
While most fruits make a slow journey through the digestive tract, bananas and grapes are particularly high in fructose given the amount of fibre they contain, so they give us a faster sugar spike. Dr Robert Lustig of the University of California, San Francisco, calls grapes “little bags of sugar”. Enjoy bananas and grapes sparingly and opt for a variety of fruits.
Can I eat dried fruit on a low-sugar diet?
Dried fruit is packed with nutrients, but the drying process removes the water and concentrates a lot of fruit sugar in a very small bite. The risk is that it takes more dried fruit to fill you up than whole fruits. Raisins and dates are about 60 per cent to 65 per cent sugar, dried figs and apricots are about 50 per cent sugar, and prunes are about 38 per cent sugar.
The good news is that dried fruit still has the fibre, and it can be a great snack as long as you are aware of how much you are eating.
A mix of dried fruits
Another way to weigh the pros and cons of dried fruit is to look at glycaemic load, a measure of how fast your body converts a serving of food into sugar. Ideally, you should eat foods with a glycaemic load of 10 or less. Anything above 20 is considered very high.
Prunes have a glycaemic load of 10, whereas raisins have a glycaemic load of 28. Compare that to whole fruits. Strawberries, apricots, grapefruit, lemon, limes, cantaloupe,
nectarines, oranges, pears, blueberries, peaches, plums, apples and pineapple have glycaemic loads of 6 or less.
I use milk in my coffee. Is that added sugar?
A quarter-cup of milk contains about 3g of a natural sugar called lactose. The sugar in milk is not considered an “added sugar” and it doesn’t overwhelm the liver the way added sugar does. Adding milk or cream to your coffee and enjoying the naturally sweet taste of milk is a great way to kick the added sugar habit in the morning.
Drinkers of soy and nut milks need to check the label. Many of those products have added sugar. If you love a few teaspoons of sugar in your morning coffee, try adding more milk and cut the sugar in half to start. Over time you can cut it in half again and wean yourself off the sugar.
Person pouring milk into coffee
Can a few more details be provided about a no-sugar, no-grain breakfast? Doesn’t bacon have sugar? What if I don’t want eggs all the time?
With so much added sugar lurking in granola, cereals, pastries, breads and yoghurts, you might as well just call it dessert. But readers have had a tough time figuring out alternatives to popular grain-based breakfast foods. Here are some ideas.
High-protein breakfast: Eggs are a high-protein option, and while they are also high in cholesterol, many people can probably eat them in moderation without worrying about heart risks. But many people don’t want to eat eggs every day.
Bacon is also high in protein but, like other processed meats, also shouldn’t be consumed daily. (Most plain bacon does not have added sugar, though if it’s maple-cured or brown-sugar-cured, it probably does.) Consider eating smoked salmon, tuna or chicken salad for breakfast. Make a vegan breakfast bowl of sweet potatoes, beans and avocado.
Eggs and bacon frying in a pan
Sweet alternatives: Try plain, unsweetened yoghurt with berries and nuts. Or just eat and savour a whole orange or make a fruit salad.
Greens and vegetables: Try a breakfast salad with avocado and hard-boiled eggs. Use a big kale leaf to make a breakfast burrito or egg salad wrap. Experiment with cauliflower to make hash browns. Bake a sweet potato and add salsa, yoghurt or nuts.
Soups: Try miso soup, butternut squash soup or another variety of hot soup. You’d be surprised how great soup tastes.
What about steel-cut oats? Or regular oats? Do they have added sugar?
If you want to eat oats, check to make sure your brand really has no added sugar (that means it should have no sugar on the ingredient list, and zero grams of sugar on the label.) The Harvard Nutrition Source has a lot of good advice about the health benefits of oats, which are associated with heart health.
Steel-cut oats are the least processed, meaning they have more fibre and are the best choice. Rolled oats have been partially cooked, making them increase blood sugar faster. Instant oats should be avoided, because they will be rapidly converted to sugar.
A bowl of uncooked oats
I eat 100-per-cent wholewheat bread that I make myself. While it has some sugar in it in the form of molasses, it does not have the added sugars and other ingredients of mass-produced breads.
A tablespoon of molasses has 15g of sugar so you are, in fact, eating added sugar – just not added sugar processed by the food industry! It’s great that you bake your own bread. (Bread making is time consuming, so if we all only ate bread we baked, we would probably eat less of it.) I’d suggest trying a recipe with less added sugar. Most of the time you can cut the sugar by a third to a half without affecting the flavour or texture.
If I can’t have orange juice, what am I supposed to drink in the morning?
Even though orange juice is a natural food, the juicing process eliminates much of the fibre and concentrates the sugar, making it a poor choice. Make juice a once-a-week treat. Instead, try ice water with an orange wedge.
Food labels on can
Why is it that the information on the nutrition label doesn’t seem to follow any one rule indicating added sugar?
Starting in 2020, most large food makers in the US are required to list “added sugar” on the nutrition facts label, but some smaller companies have until 2021 to comply with the rule. As a result, you may see a mix of old and new food labels for another year. The new label will help consumers distinguish between sugars that occur naturally in foods and those that are added.
As an example, take a look at the label on whole milk, which shows 11g of sugar in a one-cup serving. That sounds like a lot, but the new label will make it clear that all that sugar occurs naturally as lactose and that the same cup of milk has zero grams of added sugar. A chocolate milk label will show 26g of total sugar, which includes 11g of lactose, and the extra information that a serving has 15g of added sugar.
By Tara Parker-Pope © The New York Times
cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com
If you (like me) kicked off 2020 by trying to kick the sugar habit, you are probably still adjusting to this new way of eating.
Added sugar lurks in so many surprising places – many foods we think of as healthful are really loaded with sugar. And food companies try to trick us by disguising added sugar with names that may sound more wholesome like “barley syrup” or “agave” or even “fruit juice”.
READ: Make 2020 the year of less sugar – you'll even age at a slower rate
This week, I’ve been swamped with questions from readers who have taken our 7-Day Sugar Challenge, which offers several strategies for cutting added sugar. Here are answers to some of the questions you’ve been asking.
I have never understood why “added sugar” is more unfriendly to health than “natural sugar”, which can be found in abundance in so many fruits, starting with natural orange juice. Can you explain?
The natural sugar in whole fruit (fructose) is accompanied by fibre and nutrients, and makes a slow journey through your body. But when sugar is added to beverages or packaged foods, it’s more quickly absorbed and burdens the liver. Here are three good reasons to choose whole fruits versus foods with added sugar or fruit juice.
Fibre: Whole fruits contain fibre, which slows the absorption of fructose. Sugars enter the bloodstream more slowly, so the liver has more time to metabolise them.
Satiety: Processed food is digested quickly as soon as it enters our intestines. Fibre-rich foods like whole fruits break down slowly and travel farther through the digestive track, which triggers the release of satiety hormones that make us feel full.
Gut health: The slow journey of the fibre, fructose and nutrients in whole fruit essentially allows the body to feed the healthy bacteria in our intestine, supporting the health of our microbiome.
A glass of orange juice
Why aren’t bananas and grapes recommended for people cutting sugar?
While most fruits make a slow journey through the digestive tract, bananas and grapes are particularly high in fructose given the amount of fibre they contain, so they give us a faster sugar spike. Dr Robert Lustig of the University of California, San Francisco, calls grapes “little bags of sugar”. Enjoy bananas and grapes sparingly and opt for a variety of fruits.
Can I eat dried fruit on a low-sugar diet?
Dried fruit is packed with nutrients, but the drying process removes the water and concentrates a lot of fruit sugar in a very small bite. The risk is that it takes more dried fruit to fill you up than whole fruits. Raisins and dates are about 60 per cent to 65 per cent sugar, dried figs and apricots are about 50 per cent sugar, and prunes are about 38 per cent sugar.
The good news is that dried fruit still has the fibre, and it can be a great snack as long as you are aware of how much you are eating.
A mix of dried fruits
Another way to weigh the pros and cons of dried fruit is to look at glycaemic load, a measure of how fast your body converts a serving of food into sugar. Ideally, you should eat foods with a glycaemic load of 10 or less. Anything above 20 is considered very high.
Prunes have a glycaemic load of 10, whereas raisins have a glycaemic load of 28. Compare that to whole fruits. Strawberries, apricots, grapefruit, lemon, limes, cantaloupe,
nectarines, oranges, pears, blueberries, peaches, plums, apples and pineapple have glycaemic loads of 6 or less.
I use milk in my coffee. Is that added sugar?
A quarter-cup of milk contains about 3g of a natural sugar called lactose. The sugar in milk is not considered an “added sugar” and it doesn’t overwhelm the liver the way added sugar does. Adding milk or cream to your coffee and enjoying the naturally sweet taste of milk is a great way to kick the added sugar habit in the morning.
Drinkers of soy and nut milks need to check the label. Many of those products have added sugar. If you love a few teaspoons of sugar in your morning coffee, try adding more milk and cut the sugar in half to start. Over time you can cut it in half again and wean yourself off the sugar.
Person pouring milk into coffee
Can a few more details be provided about a no-sugar, no-grain breakfast? Doesn’t bacon have sugar? What if I don’t want eggs all the time?
With so much added sugar lurking in granola, cereals, pastries, breads and yoghurts, you might as well just call it dessert. But readers have had a tough time figuring out alternatives to popular grain-based breakfast foods. Here are some ideas.
High-protein breakfast: Eggs are a high-protein option, and while they are also high in cholesterol, many people can probably eat them in moderation without worrying about heart risks. But many people don’t want to eat eggs every day.
Bacon is also high in protein but, like other processed meats, also shouldn’t be consumed daily. (Most plain bacon does not have added sugar, though if it’s maple-cured or brown-sugar-cured, it probably does.) Consider eating smoked salmon, tuna or chicken salad for breakfast. Make a vegan breakfast bowl of sweet potatoes, beans and avocado.
Eggs and bacon frying in a pan
Sweet alternatives: Try plain, unsweetened yoghurt with berries and nuts. Or just eat and savour a whole orange or make a fruit salad.
Greens and vegetables: Try a breakfast salad with avocado and hard-boiled eggs. Use a big kale leaf to make a breakfast burrito or egg salad wrap. Experiment with cauliflower to make hash browns. Bake a sweet potato and add salsa, yoghurt or nuts.
Soups: Try miso soup, butternut squash soup or another variety of hot soup. You’d be surprised how great soup tastes.
What about steel-cut oats? Or regular oats? Do they have added sugar?
If you want to eat oats, check to make sure your brand really has no added sugar (that means it should have no sugar on the ingredient list, and zero grams of sugar on the label.) The Harvard Nutrition Source has a lot of good advice about the health benefits of oats, which are associated with heart health.
Steel-cut oats are the least processed, meaning they have more fibre and are the best choice. Rolled oats have been partially cooked, making them increase blood sugar faster. Instant oats should be avoided, because they will be rapidly converted to sugar.
A bowl of uncooked oats
I eat 100-per-cent wholewheat bread that I make myself. While it has some sugar in it in the form of molasses, it does not have the added sugars and other ingredients of mass-produced breads.
A tablespoon of molasses has 15g of sugar so you are, in fact, eating added sugar – just not added sugar processed by the food industry! It’s great that you bake your own bread. (Bread making is time consuming, so if we all only ate bread we baked, we would probably eat less of it.) I’d suggest trying a recipe with less added sugar. Most of the time you can cut the sugar by a third to a half without affecting the flavour or texture.
If I can’t have orange juice, what am I supposed to drink in the morning?
Even though orange juice is a natural food, the juicing process eliminates much of the fibre and concentrates the sugar, making it a poor choice. Make juice a once-a-week treat. Instead, try ice water with an orange wedge.
Food labels on can
Why is it that the information on the nutrition label doesn’t seem to follow any one rule indicating added sugar?
Starting in 2020, most large food makers in the US are required to list “added sugar” on the nutrition facts label, but some smaller companies have until 2021 to comply with the rule. As a result, you may see a mix of old and new food labels for another year. The new label will help consumers distinguish between sugars that occur naturally in foods and those that are added.
As an example, take a look at the label on whole milk, which shows 11g of sugar in a one-cup serving. That sounds like a lot, but the new label will make it clear that all that sugar occurs naturally as lactose and that the same cup of milk has zero grams of added sugar. A chocolate milk label will show 26g of total sugar, which includes 11g of lactose, and the extra information that a serving has 15g of added sugar.
By Tara Parker-Pope © The New York Times
