Sugar Addicts’ Diet

• You’ve experienced what feels like a sugar ‘hangover’. YES/NO

Nicki says, ‘I’ve had some memorable alcohol hangovers in my time but my worst hangovers have definitely been after sugar binges. I felt nauseous, headachy and struggled to get out of bed.’

• You often feel sugar is ruling you. YES/NO

Nicki says, ‘Anyone who doesn’t have a thing about sugar probably thinks it’s strange to say this, but it really can feel as though sugar is controlling your life, from your hunger levels and taste buds through to your emotions. My idea of freedom is being able to say “no” to sugar without a second thought.’

• You often binge on sweet foods or white-flour foods such as biscuits or cakes. YES/NO

Nicki says, ‘I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve binged on biscuits, freshly toasted white bread, pick ’n’ mix or cakes. When you love sugar, it becomes an intrinsic part of your life.’

If you’ve said ‘yes’ to two or more of these, you have a problem with sugar. Don’t worry – we’re going to try and help you. Even if this isn’t you, this book will still be of interest, not least in helping you to understand the behaviour of others around you – perhaps friends or relatives who struggle with weight issues or ill health and don’t even realize that sugar could be to blame.

SUGAR IS EVERYWHERE

Picture it – you wake up in the morning and have a bowl of cereal and a cup of tea. You’ll already have eaten more than 8 grams of sugar if you’ve had a bowl of cornflakes – make that 44 grams if it’s a bowl of Frosties. And that’s before you’ve sprinkled sugar on top of your cereal and put two spoons of it in your tea.

As a nation we’re eating more sugar than ever before. The average Briton eats 16 times more sugar today than 100 years ago. In 1900, people ate an average of 4 pounds (around 1.5 kilos) of sugar a year – the equivalent of around a bag and a half of sugar. Today, according to the UK’s National Diet and Nutrition Survey, that figure is 65 pounds or just over 24 kilos – the equivalent of 24 bags of sugar every year. That’s around 65 grams – 13 teaspoons – a day. In the US, added sugar can comprise as much as a quarter of a person’s daily food intake.

You might think, ‘But I don’t even buy that many bags of sugar in a year.’ True, you probably don’t. That’s because the figure comes not just from the sugar we actively put in our food, by sprinkling it on cereal or spooning it into tea and coffee. It also includes the ‘hidden’ sugar that’s so often put into our food at the manufacturing stage, and which we may not even understand we’re consuming. Food manufacturers are being increasingly pressurized by parents, campaign groups, politicians and health experts to reduce levels of sugar, fat and salt in certain foods and to call a halt to advertising foods to children (an issue we look into in Chapter 5). The Food and Drink Federation, which represents food manufacturers, announced that super-size chocolate snacks are due to be axed to help in the battle against obesity, which is a step in the right direction. But in the meantime, the onus is on us to be vigilant and look out for sugar for ourselves.

How Much Sugar Should We Eat?

The UK government and the World Health Organization recommend that starchy carbohydrates such as bread, rice and pasta should constitute 55–75 per cent of our daily food intake. Free sugars or ‘non-milk extrinsic sugars’ – sugar added by us or, more significantly, by the manufacturer – should comprise 10 per cent or less. In other words, no more than one-tenth of our daily calories should come from added sugar.

If the average woman’s recommended daily calorie intake is 1,940 (less if you are overweight and want to shift some pounds), that means no more than 194 calories should come from added sugar. But, as we have seen, the average Briton is already on 65 grams, or a huge 260 calories, of these added sugars per day, 30 per cent more than the recommended maximum. A can of cola contains just over 10 teaspoons of sugar (200 calories) so you can see how easy it is to go over the advised amount. Have a think about how many cans of soft drink, biscuits, cakes, sweets and bowls of cereal you eat in any one day and you’ll probably find this is way more than one-tenth of the food you eat, and far in excess of 10 teaspoons of sugar.

Nicki’s Tip

Want to work out how much sugar there is in a food? Take a look at the label. Where it says ‘carbohydrates’, it generally says ‘of which sugars – Xg’. A teaspoon of sugar is around 5g so divide X by 5 to find out how many teaspoons of sugar it contains. So if it says ‘of which sugars – 15g’, divide 15 by 5 and you’ll know it contains 3 teaspoons.

THE SUGAR CONTENT OF FOODS Food Rounded Teaspoons of Extrinsic (Added) Sugar 1 digestive biscuit ½ 1 chocolate digestive 1 1 slice (45g) of jam-filled sponge cake 4 Mars Bar 7 1 milk chocolate bar (50g) 5½ 1 scoop of ice cream 1½ 1 bowl of cornflakes ½ 1 teaspoon of jam ¾ Half a tin (200ml) of cream of tomato soup 1 Half a tin of baked beans 2½ 1 glass of Lucozade 6 1 glass of Ribena 4 1 tablespoon of tomato ketchup 1 1 tablespoon of sweet pickle 1 1 tablespoon of salad cream ½ 1 can (300ml) of cola 7

Where Sugar is ‘Hiding’

Even people whose diet consists mainly of savoury rather than sweet foods are probably eating more sugar than they realize, especially if they are fans of processed foods such as ready meals. The last thing you expect to find in a savoury ready meal is sugar, right? Wrong! They can contain up to 20 per cent sugar. And what about the sugar found in a dollop of tomato ketchup? Remember: even so-called ‘low-fat’ foods can be high in sugar.

The problem is that sugar is often added to foods where you’d never expect to find it. Would you, in a million years, ever imagine that there’s sugar in some sandwich meats or certain varieties of cottage cheese? For further jaw-dropping revelations about where you’re likely to find sugar when you least expect it, see Chapter 7.

If you really want to avoid sugar, you have to learn how to decipher labels and get to the root of what you’re being fed. Sometimes it can feel like you’re reading another language! In later chapters, we’ll show you how to be a label ‘detective’ and work out for yourself if a food contains sugar, even if it looks like it shouldn’t.

DOES OUR LOVE OF SUGAR REALLY MATTER?

Does it really matter that we’re eating so much sugar? It tastes great and it makes us feel happy and content. Many of us would say there’s no high that compares to the buzz of eating sugar. But the satisfaction comes at a price.

If you have a major love affair with sugar, chances are you’re also having major problems with your weight. Later (see Chapter 3), we’ll be explaining that sugar is a carbohydrate and that some carbohydrates in the diet are good. Chosen properly, they can actually help you maintain a steady weight and improve your health. We will also see that some sugars are preferable to others. But at the moment, all you need to know is that, by and large, sugar added to the diet is bad and is one of the main reasons we’re now fatter than ever before.

As you’ll see in Chapter 4, there is also a huge range of health problems that are either brought on or exacerbated by eating too much sugar. For every medical study that suggests sugar is good for you (and these are generally funded by the immensely powerful sugar industry), there are dozens more that warn of the negative impact of high-sugar diets that are now so familiar to us.

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