I have always been lucky when it comes to sugar – I don’t have a sweet tooth and can bypass puddings and chocolate any day of the week. I would love to tell you that is because as a doctor, I know how bad it is for me and so am abstinent, the truth though is I don’t crave sweet foods. But even I may need to rethink my diet if I am to achieve the new WHO recommendations that only 5% of my daily calorie intake should be from “added sugars”.
When we think of dietary sugar we think of naturally occurring sugars such as fructose from fruit and honey and lactose from milk, and added sugars. Added sugars are the sugars that we consiously add to drinks and food, so the sugar we put in a cup of tea or on our breakfast cereal and the sugar that is added to the preprepared foods that we buy.
The new guidelines reccommend that as a woman I have no more than five to six teaspoons a day (25g) and a man has no more than seven to eight (35g). You may think that is easy but when you start looking at food labels you may be shocked at the amount of sugar added to our food. When you look at the label, check out the “carbs as sugars” – less than 5g per 100g is low in sugar but more than 15g per 100g is high. You might be surprised by how much sugar you are eating in a day.
