Thursday, April 17, 2014
Sunday, April 13, 2014
Sugar, to be or not to be?
So... I did some digging around after seeing a blog post about a woman and her family foregoing all added sugars (minus the natural sugar found in fruits and veggies) and talking about how wonderful it made them feel.
Now me...I LOVE sugar. Chocolate, cupcakes, sugar in my coffee, starbucks, all that. Yum, yum, but I've been trying to eat better, not to lose weight or anything but just to be a healthier individual.
Now the blog post was by: http://rawforbeauty.com/blog/our-year-of-no-sugar-one-familys-grand-adventure.html
And what they did was cut any added sugar from their diet. They are a family of two kids, one husband and one wife. They gave themselves a once a month dessert to binge on. After a few months of this no sugar though they found they enjoyed their dessert less and less til finally their bodies couldn't handle it at all, but they felt great all the time. More energized, more ready to take on the flu season and it got me thinking 'how much sugar do I eat?' 'How much sugar are you allowed to eat?' So I started digging around.
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I looked around on a couple of different sites. Sites like: http://authoritynutrition.com/how-much-sugar-per-day/
They said it was a hard answer but they made the estimate that a male can consume about 37.5 grams (or 9 tsps) a day. While a female can consume about 25 grams (or 6 tsps) a day.
http://health.yahoo.net/experts/joybauernutrition/sugar-how-much-should-we-eat/ said no more than 8 tsps for both sexes a day for a 2000 calorie diet.
Most gave men 9 tsps and women 6 tsps of sugar per day. Or otherwise men = 37.5 (or) 40 grams (if we're rounding up) and women 25 grams.
Well then I did some digging in my own home.
As you can see by that picture of my pantry, the bottom shelf is pretty crowded.
Well the bottom shelf is all the food in the pantry that contains sugar. I suppose the 'Trix' was a no brainer but I found sugar in tortillas, wheat flower, canned veggies, and even a bag of pinto beans!
The middle shelf is food that contains no sugar. Mostly the shelf is covered with potatoes and teas.
The third shelf is just our vitamins and medicines. Then I went into the fridge, there's sugar in milk! There's sugar in lunch meats! There's sugar in frozen veggies, and lots and lots of sugar in all the condiments and dressings people keep as well. Then I decided to do a little math.
This is dinner. Pretty nice right? We've got the veggies, the chicken, and the beans and rice. All that should be on a dinner plate in the U.S.A.
Well on this plate is about 5.6 grams of sugar. Not bad right? Though I will say, it doesn't look like there should be any sugar in this meal, but there it is. Using the serving sizes (because you know, no one EVER goes over those) I measure that this plate contains that many grams of sugar.
Then I started thinking, what about the whole day?
Let's say you're an average but healthy American.
You start your day with, lets say something like a Denny's Grand slam (two pancakes, two eggs, two slices of bacon or sausage) and you top it off with a big glass of milk. Does a body good right?
Well, using only the serving amount on everything you have the pancakes (bisquick 1 gram per 1/3 cup mix) and you have two pancakes so lets just say 2 grams. You have syrup, now I use Mrs. Butterworths because it's delicious! That right there is 37 grams per 1/4 cup. You might say 'But hey! I don't use Mrs. Butterworths, I'm all natural, I like pure maple syrup!' and I'd say: 'Well you're in luck then because my husband loves it too, so I have it on hand. Sugar is about 53 grams.....yikes!'
Now no added sugar in the eggs of course, and as luck would have it if you chose bacon, no sugar in that either. But how about sausage? I went with a regular sausage, nothing Italian or German, but your average breakfast sausage. That's about 2 grams, per, so 4. Oh and don't forget the big glass of milk to wash it down. If you go with a glass full that's about 3 cups. ... 33 grams. Of course it differs with brand, but for us, regular 2 % cheapy milk was 11 grams a cup. So what's your breakfast at?
Well if you went with Butterworth and Sausage you've got. 2+37+4+33 = 76 .... craaaap!
However it doesn't stop there. You also have lunch. Let's say you just get a regular homemade sandwich, and maybe a small bag of sun chips (because they're oh so good and healthy!) and you splurge and get a 20 oz. coke. You normally don't but just for this one day you do.
Alright well, let's use good whole wheat bread, of course it's going to vary depending on brand but this is what I got: 4 grams per slice so 8. Used Turkey which has sugar but doesn't measure it in grams so we'll cut you a break, then we have a lil Mayo, also has sugar but no amount, and some mustard which doesn't have any sugar. Of course we're not going to count any tomatoes and lettuce if you choose to put it on because that's natural. So not counting the unmeasured sugar you have 8 grams in your sandwich, and the average fun sized bag of sun chips you have 2 grams. Also we KNOW coke has a lot of sugar, all soft drinks do, so what does 20 oz. coke have? 65 grams. . .
Well let's say you take out the coke, you go UBER healthy and have a V8 juice instead. Well that's 7 grams per 8 oz. Yeesh so for your lunch you have 10 grams without the drink. 75 with the coke and 17 with the V8. Add the least amount with a drink to your breakfast and you've got: 93...
Now add that delicious and healthy meal above.....98.6 and that's if you followed all portion control and didn't have a single snack during the day.
What the crap right? How do you eat healthy? Oh and by the way, let's take out the breakfast and add your average Americans breakfast = a bowl of cereal or even less. Well if you don't partake of breakfast and just drink unsweetened black coffee you have 22.6 grams. Not bad, you meet the mark! Let's say you have a bowl of cereal. We'll use 'Trix' because A. it's what I have and B. It along with all other sugary cereal's kids love will have an adequate estimate of sugar in cereal. 10 grams, plus your 11 grams of milk so 22 grams. That puts you at 44.6 grams.
Oh and by the way, I'm a kidney stone survivor. If you've ever had one you'll understand what I mean by 'survivor.' My stone like so many others was caused by a lot of salt. Salt is another thing you see everywhere. We use it along with sugar to prolong shelf life and keep our food edible for long amounts of time. That estimate of sugar up above, with the pancakes, butterworth, the coke, and sausage, all of that equals to about 4245 ml grams of Sodium. After looking around the internet a bit on average they say you can at most intake about 2500, AT MOST.
Makes you feel good right?
At this point in time I would like to try and cut sugar out of my diet. Not for a year, that's insane, but I'd like to try just for a month. I have some prepping to do. I'm not going to throw out all my food, if there's one thing I hate, it's wasted food. One of my biggest pet peeves is throwing away leftovers or unused food. So I'm going to go through the food this month. Eat what we can and then for a month I'm going to try and cut all added sugars out of my diet. If I can do that and it's not killing me I plan on extending this. We'll see how it goes. I'll post as soon as these things are complete. Happy eating!!!
 |
| This is the mother that said no to sugar for a year |
Now the blog post was by: http://rawforbeauty.com/blog/our-year-of-no-sugar-one-familys-grand-adventure.html
And what they did was cut any added sugar from their diet. They are a family of two kids, one husband and one wife. They gave themselves a once a month dessert to binge on. After a few months of this no sugar though they found they enjoyed their dessert less and less til finally their bodies couldn't handle it at all, but they felt great all the time. More energized, more ready to take on the flu season and it got me thinking 'how much sugar do I eat?' 'How much sugar are you allowed to eat?' So I started digging around.
I looked around on a couple of different sites. Sites like: http://authoritynutrition.com/how-much-sugar-per-day/They said it was a hard answer but they made the estimate that a male can consume about 37.5 grams (or 9 tsps) a day. While a female can consume about 25 grams (or 6 tsps) a day.
http://health.yahoo.net/experts/joybauernutrition/sugar-how-much-should-we-eat/ said no more than 8 tsps for both sexes a day for a 2000 calorie diet.
Most gave men 9 tsps and women 6 tsps of sugar per day. Or otherwise men = 37.5 (or) 40 grams (if we're rounding up) and women 25 grams.Well then I did some digging in my own home.
As you can see by that picture of my pantry, the bottom shelf is pretty crowded.
Well the bottom shelf is all the food in the pantry that contains sugar. I suppose the 'Trix' was a no brainer but I found sugar in tortillas, wheat flower, canned veggies, and even a bag of pinto beans!
The middle shelf is food that contains no sugar. Mostly the shelf is covered with potatoes and teas.
The third shelf is just our vitamins and medicines. Then I went into the fridge, there's sugar in milk! There's sugar in lunch meats! There's sugar in frozen veggies, and lots and lots of sugar in all the condiments and dressings people keep as well. Then I decided to do a little math.
Well on this plate is about 5.6 grams of sugar. Not bad right? Though I will say, it doesn't look like there should be any sugar in this meal, but there it is. Using the serving sizes (because you know, no one EVER goes over those) I measure that this plate contains that many grams of sugar.
Then I started thinking, what about the whole day?
Let's say you're an average but healthy American.
You start your day with, lets say something like a Denny's Grand slam (two pancakes, two eggs, two slices of bacon or sausage) and you top it off with a big glass of milk. Does a body good right?
Well, using only the serving amount on everything you have the pancakes (bisquick 1 gram per 1/3 cup mix) and you have two pancakes so lets just say 2 grams. You have syrup, now I use Mrs. Butterworths because it's delicious! That right there is 37 grams per 1/4 cup. You might say 'But hey! I don't use Mrs. Butterworths, I'm all natural, I like pure maple syrup!' and I'd say: 'Well you're in luck then because my husband loves it too, so I have it on hand. Sugar is about 53 grams.....yikes!'
Now no added sugar in the eggs of course, and as luck would have it if you chose bacon, no sugar in that either. But how about sausage? I went with a regular sausage, nothing Italian or German, but your average breakfast sausage. That's about 2 grams, per, so 4. Oh and don't forget the big glass of milk to wash it down. If you go with a glass full that's about 3 cups. ... 33 grams. Of course it differs with brand, but for us, regular 2 % cheapy milk was 11 grams a cup. So what's your breakfast at?
Well if you went with Butterworth and Sausage you've got. 2+37+4+33 = 76 .... craaaap!
However it doesn't stop there. You also have lunch. Let's say you just get a regular homemade sandwich, and maybe a small bag of sun chips (because they're oh so good and healthy!) and you splurge and get a 20 oz. coke. You normally don't but just for this one day you do.
Alright well, let's use good whole wheat bread, of course it's going to vary depending on brand but this is what I got: 4 grams per slice so 8. Used Turkey which has sugar but doesn't measure it in grams so we'll cut you a break, then we have a lil Mayo, also has sugar but no amount, and some mustard which doesn't have any sugar. Of course we're not going to count any tomatoes and lettuce if you choose to put it on because that's natural. So not counting the unmeasured sugar you have 8 grams in your sandwich, and the average fun sized bag of sun chips you have 2 grams. Also we KNOW coke has a lot of sugar, all soft drinks do, so what does 20 oz. coke have? 65 grams. . .
Well let's say you take out the coke, you go UBER healthy and have a V8 juice instead. Well that's 7 grams per 8 oz. Yeesh so for your lunch you have 10 grams without the drink. 75 with the coke and 17 with the V8. Add the least amount with a drink to your breakfast and you've got: 93...
Now add that delicious and healthy meal above.....98.6 and that's if you followed all portion control and didn't have a single snack during the day.
What the crap right? How do you eat healthy? Oh and by the way, let's take out the breakfast and add your average Americans breakfast = a bowl of cereal or even less. Well if you don't partake of breakfast and just drink unsweetened black coffee you have 22.6 grams. Not bad, you meet the mark! Let's say you have a bowl of cereal. We'll use 'Trix' because A. it's what I have and B. It along with all other sugary cereal's kids love will have an adequate estimate of sugar in cereal. 10 grams, plus your 11 grams of milk so 22 grams. That puts you at 44.6 grams.
Oh and by the way, I'm a kidney stone survivor. If you've ever had one you'll understand what I mean by 'survivor.' My stone like so many others was caused by a lot of salt. Salt is another thing you see everywhere. We use it along with sugar to prolong shelf life and keep our food edible for long amounts of time. That estimate of sugar up above, with the pancakes, butterworth, the coke, and sausage, all of that equals to about 4245 ml grams of Sodium. After looking around the internet a bit on average they say you can at most intake about 2500, AT MOST.
Makes you feel good right?
At this point in time I would like to try and cut sugar out of my diet. Not for a year, that's insane, but I'd like to try just for a month. I have some prepping to do. I'm not going to throw out all my food, if there's one thing I hate, it's wasted food. One of my biggest pet peeves is throwing away leftovers or unused food. So I'm going to go through the food this month. Eat what we can and then for a month I'm going to try and cut all added sugars out of my diet. If I can do that and it's not killing me I plan on extending this. We'll see how it goes. I'll post as soon as these things are complete. Happy eating!!!