Cutting Back on Sugar

Consuming too much sugar can be devastating for your health. Added sugar, which is found in foods like sweets, pop and processed food, has been shown to increase the risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and tooth decay (World Health Organization (WHO), 2015). Despite this knowledge of the known negative effects of sugar on our health, many people struggle to decrease sugar consumption.

Tips

Don’t Go Cold Turkey

Cutting sugar out of your diet completely is not logical or sustainable. The goal should be to cut back slowly. For example, if you are drinking 20 oz. of soda per day, your initial goal could be to cut down to 12 oz. and then continue to lower your consumption from there.

Eat Whole Foods

Whole foods have not been processed or refined, and they are also free of additives and artificial substances. Whole foods consist of things like vegetables, meat, fruit, eggs, whole grain and nuts. Whole foods don’t need a label and they are nutritious and easily processed by our body. On the other hand, high processed foods contain excess amounts of sugar, salt and fat. These foods are engineered to taste good and therefore it is harder to eat these foods in moderation. Examples of high processed foods include: chips, soda, cereals, and fast food. Roughly 90% of the added sugars in the American diet comes from ultra-processed foods (Healthline, 2022).

Read Labels

Decreasing sugar consumption is not just about saying no to eating dessert or sugary drinks. Sugar can be hidden in foods and therefore it is important to read the nutrition labels on your food. You will see added sugars listed under total carbohydrates on food packaging. You can also check the ingredient list for sugar. The higher on the ingredient list sugar appears, the more sugar the item contains. There are also more than 50 names for added sugar on food labels, which make it more difficult to spot. Some of the most common are high fructose corn syrup, cane juice, cane sugar, rice syrup, dextrose, maltose and molasses (Healthline, 2022).

Get Enough Sleep

Good sleep habits are important for your overall health. Poor sleep has been linked to trouble concentrating, depression and obesity. Lack of sleep has also been shown to predispose people to make poor eating choices. One study concluded that people who did not get a full night’s sleep, consumed more calories (and those calories consisted of more fast food, salt, soda and fewer fruits and vegetables) compared to those that had a full night’s sleep (Healthline, 2022).

Everything in Moderation

It is not realistic to think that you are never going to have sugar again in your diet. It is also important to note that naturally occurring sugars, like those found in fruit, are not nearly as harmful as artificial sugars. Our brain and our bodies need sugar to function. However, that overindulgence in high sugar foods is typically those that are considered empty calories, which means that there is no nutritional benefit to eating them. While a lot of sugar’s harmful effects can take a long time to materialize, indulgence in a sweet treat can bring on a sugar hangover. This usually occurs a couple of hours after eating something sweet and can include various symptoms, including fatigue, headache, thirst and fogginess (McCormack, 2022). Avoid a sugar hangover by eating sweet treats in moderation.

Conclusion

Americans consumed roughly 11 million tons of sugar in 2020, this is up from the estimated 10 million tons in 2010 (McCormack, 2022). If this increased sugar trend continues, we can only assume that the long-term effects of high sugar intake will also rise, such as increased diagnoses of diabetes and heart disease. Therefore, it imperative for one’s health to start cutting back on your sugar intake, not only for your short-term health goals but long term as well.