Straight on sugar

Why do we have this love-hate relationship with sugar? Do we need to delete it from our diet completely? Read on and make your choice

Sugar is a hot topic for anyone today. We hear sugar is evil, so try to give it up completely. But within a few days or weeks, we find a reason to eat a little bit. That opens the flood gates and we’re back to square one. This cycle repeats itself over the years and we end up confused, deprived and, unfortunately - fat.

The first step in breaking this cycle is knowing what contains sugar and what doesn’t. Most of us, though we mean well and plan on keeping sugar to a minimum, aren’t quite sure what we should and shouldn’t eat to get closer to our goals. So we end up eating a few too many sweet things, assuming they don’t contain sugar, probably because it is natural or because it says sugar-free on the box.

Here are five simple points that will make you smarter about sugar

1: Whatever it is, if it tastes sweet, it contains sugar or sweeteners. This applies to everything that is edible – cookies, cakes, ice cream, juice or even just fruit. The sugar contained may be natural or processed, but it is still sugar. Also, where do you think processed sugar comes from? From natural sources.

2. If a food tastes very sweet, it contains a lot of sugar and vice versa. So, if you have a super-sweet apple on one hand and a tart apple on the other, they are both different foods and act differently in the body. The sweet one loads you up with sugar, while the tart one doesn’t.

3. As far as sugar is concerned, it doesn’t matter where it comes from. White sugar from sugar cane is the powdered sugar we’re all familiar with. But jaggery, honey or other sweeteners used instead of white sugar do not magically make the food healthy. It is just sweetened differently, but still sweetened.

4. A banana, weighing 100 grams, contains about 15 grams of sugar and 85 grams of other things (mostly water, some fibre and tiny amounts of other nutrients). This ratio of sugar to other things limits the total consumption of sugar (i.e. you can only eat so many bananas a day). But once you start blending the banana into a shake or making dried or dehydrated fruit, creating recipes like banana bread, or extracting sugar from the fruit, you’re changing the ratio to more sugar and less of other things. This is why dried fruit, fruit juices, jams, pastes and concentrates taste much sweeter even though they are made with just fruit. You get the same deal with the all-natural, no-sugar-added organic dried fruit balls or bars.

5. The sugar-free foods you see – sugar-free biscuits, juices, shakes, ice creams – are all sweetened with artificial sweeteners which don’t help the cause. They confuse the body into releasing insulin without the presence of sugar, and can have long-term effects that are unfavourable to say the least.

But do you need to give up sugar completely? Obviously not!

Sugar is not bad. As itself, as a thing, as a taste, as a nutrient that provides energy, sugar is not bad. It provides super-quick energy and is pleasant to taste. That said, it is not ‘necessary’ for the optimal functioning of the human body and over-consuming sugar hurts us in more ways than one. Too much sugar is bad, just as too much of anything is bad. Protein, spinach, salt, oil or anything else when over-consumed will hurt us in some way. But not many things are over-consumed like sugar is today, and very few things can hit us as hard as too much sugar can.

So quit trying to love, hate or ignore sugar. Instead think about fixing your relationship with it. Once you have a healthy relationship worked out, you can decide when to consume it and when not to. The ball will be in your court.