The interest in healthy eating and changing lifestyles is very topical at the moment, so do you know how much sugar you consume every day.
The average daily consumption of sugar in the UK is 93g (over 3.25 oz) and thats every day and whats worse is that this is average consumption so some people must greatly exceeds this. (In the US its 125g+ daily)
93g daily is 650g weekly and 34Kg pa...and thats 360 calories per day just from sugar and that is not such a sweet thought...🤢
I use unrefined sugar and my cake here however wholesome has sugar in it...😊
None at all on a regular basis. Until I was in my 30s I genuinely believed that sugar was 'just empty calories', because that's what the experts told us. I was pretty fat, despite working out 3 times a week.
On the other hand I do occasionally feel like a doughnut or a cake; maybe once a month I'll indulge, and then I don't feel the urge to eat one for another month
It does bother me that the powers-that-be, despite finally telling people that sugar is bad for you, refuse to point out that the action of amylases on starch is extremely rapid. The metabolic effects of starch and sugar are almost identical, especially with things like white bread (which has a measured GI similar to pure glucose). I found that you don't lose those sugar cravings unless you lose the refined starch from your diet; just stopping the sugar is not enough.
The more I learn about biochemistry and human metabolism, the angrier I get at the lies and cant being propagated by the media, government, and the pharma industry.
Hi TheAwfulToad, I'm interested in how much sugar we now consume compared to a few decades ago, so was just showing sugar and its calories.
As for refined starches you are right they are not aimed at nutrition I was by an estuary and there was a sign saying 'please don't feed white bread to the birds' yet we eat it...
As for the powers to be I think they're as bad as the rest of society and the thought of a Boris Johnson diet...no thanks LOL
You're a cynic and I like that so why not write a post on refined starches, I'd be interested in that... 😊
LOL ... is that like the cabbage diet? "Oh no mum not Boris Johnson for dinner again. Can't we have something different?"
When I have time I might do a couple of articles to revive the LCHF forum, which seems to be on life support. I assume it's acceptable to link (from here) but not to cross-post?
Dunno if I'm really a cynic though. I do think most people drift through life just believing whatever they're told, or at least taking accepted custom at face value. I've spent most of my adult life abroad, and living in different cultures - seeing things done differently - forces you to ask questions and look at the reasons we do things. I suspect Hidden had a similar experience. It's frightening how much of what we accept as normal, right or true turns out to be either a lot more complicated than we think, or outright wrong.
I also think that, despite supposedly living in the new Age of Reason, most of society (including politicians) is woefully ignorant about the workings of science. I get the impression that science is no longer taught in schools, and has not been for many years; I mean the philosophy and method of science, not scientific facts like photosynthesis or Newton's laws of motion. That means 95% of our leaders know nothing about one of the most critical tools of modern life, which is a scary thought.
couldn't agree with you more, your right about me, i started on my road of discovery when i just turned 17 years old...all in all i think been to may be 30 countries.
just come back from school to find out where my 8 years old son and my 12 years old daughter come in there end of term tests... both of them are number one in the school again. theres over a thousand children in the school and in my opinion one of best schools in the provance .so we of to the beach for the day..😎
ive taken on board in what you have said in your posts and there be no more white bread in my house again 😢
I was quite surprised to see white bread for sale in Thailand - it looks like some of the supermarket chains are actually operated by European conglomerates?
thanks about the kids...they are amazing and very much loved at home and in there school. the 12 years old has come top out of 44 schools in the provance for 3 years now.
there is a very big market for bread in all the cities in thailand where farangs live or holiday. the quality and variety tops any suppermarket that seen in the UK.
this also aplies to cakes and imported quality meats. and most foods and drinks you can find in europe.
it does take a bit of time to find out where things are..i lived here for over 10 years.
i often see guys outside suppermarkets eating bread and cheese like they havent eaten food for a week...☺
Probably quite a bit. But a load less than I used to. I don’t snack on sugary snacks but will have dried fruit, fresh fruit, honey and Homemade biscuits and cakes but that is not as often as I would have bought kitkats etc before. I’m really aware of what I buy in shops now... I recently bought a jar of cockles, a brand I don’t usually buy and was disgusted at the taste as they’d added sugar to the vinegar, it was gross!!.
I’m teaching my kids to choose food and drink wisely and not be militant about it, informative choices are far better than scaring the life out of them and forming possible food anxieties. They love homemade and I hope that sticks with them through their adult lives too.
Hi Frostie, I think you're going about things just right and are aware about sugar in your food.
I find some chocolate makes my teeth tingle 🤢 so I only eat dark choc and I don't use a lot of sugar or buy processed foods with sugar in. And I use unrefined sugars for baking.
Thanks the cake is a GF Dundee cake I made at Christmas. 😊
Thanks!. It’s amazing how little we need to buy in the supermarkets when we cut all the rubbish stuff out. My neighbour fills his cupboards and freezer with so much stuff he thinks he needs and lives alone. He could feed a family of six for weeks!.
Wow, Hidden , I really like the look of your cake - it looks very tasty indeed!
I've just been calculating my calories for the day from my Fitbit data, and I double checked to see if I could see my 'sugar intake' but unfortunately I couldn't. So I don't really know - but what I do know is that my sugar intake is much less than it used to be - as I no longer use refined sugar in baking, and I don't add it to teas or coffees. In the past (through much of my 20's and 30's) I would have 2 teaspoons of sugar in teas and coffees, and would have had numerous sugary snacks, but during my 40's and now in my 50's, I don't use any refined sugar - and my habits have changed significantly. Thankfully my taste buds have changed, so that I now don't crave sugary foods at all.
At my heaviest, back in 2006, I was 18 stone 8 pounds, and now I'm 13 stone 11 pounds, so I've also lost a significant amount of weight, and maintained that loss for the past 4 years. I am pretty sure that sugary foods contributed massively to my previous overweight lifestyle, and I feel much healthier now, plus my skin is clear as well, which is nice.
Thanks Zest, that’s fantastic that you lost so much weight which must have taken time and shows what we can achieve when we are reslolute.
What’s great is if we eat healthy food we can have healthy treats like home made fruit cake, 70% chocolate included so it’s win win.
You look really healthy as I’ve seen your photo and don’t show your age.
I’m the same and find many things are sickly sweet that I used to think were a treat.
Jerry 😊
I think this is a very good question.
Sugar is evil of all. Sadly, the supermarket industry as a whole is guilty of not providing sugar-free/reduced sugar alternatives, such as in dark chocolates and other items which are perceived to be "good/healthy for you". Their own supermarket dark chocolates probably got twice as much sugar than better quality dark chocolates made abroad and consumed by people who happen to taste the difference (and dislike the cheap sugary dark chocolates). Supermarkets need to clean up their act by providing sugar-free/reduced sugar alternatives by respecting our values in maintaining long-term health and eating less sugar. High-quality foods do not necessarily contain loads of sugar as these already have got lots of flavours. Sugar is often added to conceal the lack of flavour in the food itself and get people hooked on the sugar high and covertly force people to buy their poor quality, bland foods with no flavour. They might say, "well, we charge far less for it." That is not the point. They are wrecking our health with supposedly healthy foods loaded with the hidden refined sugar. I often wonder how dark chocolates (100g) could be as cheap as a little over £1.30. Maybe, it does not even have the alleged cacao content.
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It’s sad that they add sugar, salt and MSG just because they’re taste enhancers...😊
I go through phases in my relationship with sugar.
I remember a couple of years ago an occasion when I was bottling up the last of our tomato harvest from one of the polytunnels as passata. The last batch I cooked down into a nice rich sauce to put on pasta to give my kids for supper. It smelled fantastic. About half a dozen varieties of heirloom tomatoes, organically grown, picked only a couple of hours before. Fresh basil... mmm...
Suddenly it occurred to me what the sugar content must be of the concentrated tomatoes after slowly cooking down. The awful truth dawned inme that I would not be able to eat any of the sauce, even without pasta.
It was about that time it occurred to me that I might be getting a little obsessive in my sugar avoidance.
I use sugar in my cooking when the dish warrants it. I made a rice pudding the other day for my girlfriend and kids. It had about 50g of sugar in it. Betwen three of them that was no big deal. I had a taste of it. It was nice. It wouldn't have been without the sugar. It wasn't big deal.
Totally agree that there's no need to get obsessive about it. As Frostie2560 said, the more important thing is to understand what different foods do to your body, and then make the choice. In my experience the occasional blow-out makes absolutely no difference to my health, the point being I don't have any real desire to have a blow-out on a regular basis. And yeah, some things just don't taste right without the sugar. I can't imagine sugar-free rice pudding - and what would be the point anyway?
The tomato sauce sounds absolutely awesome! If you think that's "unhealthy" you should check out the ingredients list on a bottle of commercial ketchup in the Philippines: the first two items are water and sugar. Tomato paste, IIRC, is item 4 (I think the third is starch). The bottle has a notice on it prohibiting sale anywhere else in the world: most countries have laws against selling something as 'tomato ketchup' if it's not made primarily with tomatoes.
Hi Rignold, Your tomato puree sounds lush to me and your small holding sounds great too. I agree that we can obsess about sugar and then miss out unnecessarily when the secret is awareness of what we are really eating.
I posted this as there's lots going on about sugar and I wanted to join up facts like calories and consumption to help others who want to change their ways see where these unwanted calories are coming from as there are also lots of problems with diabetes due to obesity.
I was an undiagnosed coeliac for many years so my immune system has attacked my villi and my colon and my body does not like saturated fats, artificial sugars or alcohol, therefore I eat well and I don't have any issues with adding sugar when need be.
Naturally occurring "sugar content" from the cooked and reduced tomato isn't the same as factory-made refined white sugar. It's the invisible, hidden sugar/hidden flavour-enhancers manufacturers/supermarkets add (often without providing any sort of food labels) which Jerry talks about that I am concerned about. It's sneaky, cheating and dishonest.
I'd just have the sauce and to hell with the sugar if you made it from home-grown tomatoes. They taste of sunshine and happiness.
I saw a really nice spice blend I wanted in a fancy deli near me and despite it having about nine different spices the second highest percentage after paprika unashamedly said 'white sugar'! Why-o-why was that in there?
Rignolds post has made me think that we also don’t necessarily need our sugar hits from the usual or obvious foods. I make my own pasta sauce (not home grown tomatoes though unfortunately, but still good😍) I even get a sweet kick from my ratatouille, the veg are phenomenal when roasted and nothing apart from a little oil added.. love it!!.
I think we are conditioned to eat a certain way. My neighbour is a food hoarder and I recently realised he is of the age when he was a child during the rationing after the war. My partners Mum thinks that men haven’t eaten properly if they haven’t had meat in every meal!.. she was the 10th child of the family and money was very tight. My Mum was a single Mum of three and was knackered all the time bless her so used sugar as a pick me up or a treat as a quick fix( her home cooking was amazing though😍).... which is exactly what I used to do!. We can change it, a lot of people think someone’s going to fix it for them with pills or potions but I think we need to realise that it’s something we have to change ( I’m not talking about actual medical conditions, although some ie borderline diabetes,can be reversed with a good diet).
Yes, it's my opinion that the rationing in the war is in part responsible for the increase in portion sizes during the years after rationing had stopped, which just continued and became normalised.
Rationing continued for a few years after in a lot of places. My mum and her siblings all blamed my nan's lack of portion control, post war (an over-compensation obviously, which I'm sure I'd do myself had I watched my children go without for so long) for their subsequent waistlines.
This is something which went on unabated u till she died in the mid nineteen nineties once she'd got into the habit. That and the fact nobody complained-she was a very good cook!
Your partners mum sounds like a girl after my own heart.
I have backed off considerably since my attack of the killer tomatoes days, although I am still very mindful of the sugar content of fruit. I see loads of posts on weight loss groups encouraging people to eat fruit ad lib without any reference to the sugar content.
I make fruit leather for my children and ration it quite carefully (and make them brush teeth afterwards) because of the concentrated sugars.
Hi Jerry, I have a relatively high sugar intake for a generally paleo diet. (ketogenic this month). The sugars in my diet come from bananas, (one a day usually, made into pancakes , a hand-full of tomatoes at lunch and sometimes dinner and I might make some muffins with a bit of honey and more bananas at the weekend.
That's the stuff I know has a noteworthy amount of sugar, I don't really count the stuff in veg like broccoli or cabbage or olives because it's negligible pretty much.
I have it on purpose to counteract my tendency to become ocd about things. This began when I found myself mentally agreeing with some guy who, in his blog referred to apples as 'a dirty ball of sugar'.
I only agreed with it for a second before I thought oh come on, it's not exactly a bar of rock is it!?
We can all get a bit ocd sometimes but my kids keep me right. I have no time to be ocd or tidy for that matter.... I used to have an immaculate house. Life is too short to get stuck worrying.... an apple is not a death bomb compared to a pack of lucky charm breakfast ‘cereal’.
Haha, yes, I can't remember the name of this guy or his blog but I was like 'was he pelted with apples as a punishment and now it's a repressed memory?'
I avoid sugar for a good portion of the year ( for me it's impossible from October to February for a happy life ) but really, Apples - dirty ? And he was from America, home of the peanut butter cup!
...that sounds way too complicate for my liking. Yes, I'll definitely stick to the fruit and veg stall in the market and if an apple's not cutting it, I'll go mad and have a mango!
If I am out and I am given a vegan cake then I presume that has refined sugar in it. Mostly I avoid puddings but I don't want to insult someone who has made an effort.
If at home I use figs/cherries/dates/berries frozen/dried in whatever I prepare as a pudding.
In May I am going to a fundraising event for the Eden Cafe in Witney, a vegan/gf cafe run by some people from NZ. They are preparing a special meal for me. I have told them no pudding please, so my mains and starters will be extra large.
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Sugar and insulin resistance 
Back to "fat makes you fat" again
do you really know what you’re eating?
