Sugar. Something not sweet for your health and wellness.
Sugar, so sweet and tempting. Almost like its your friend. It can make you feel good when you need a “pick me up.” Sugar is deceiving with feel good sweetness but the havoc that it wreaks on our body is relentless. Standard american diet foods are all stuffed with hidden sugar additives. Breads, yogurt, cereals. Even your standard ketchup. Even if you think that you eat pretty healthy, chances are you’re addicted to sugar and don’t even realize it.
Sugar has no nutritional value, is highly addictive, disrupts your metabolic functions, and weakens your immune system. Sugar is the most detrimental ingredient in the S.A.D (standard american diet). It is also the leading food additive. Why do you think that America is feeling the “epidemic of obesity?”
Your food labels however, don’t just always say SUGAR. There are about 51 different ways to say sugar on a food label.
Advertised as natural and healthy, there is nothing natural or healthy about todays sugar. Back in the very early times of sugar, it was quite rare and early sugar was much less refined. It had actual nutrients in it. Now, todays counterpart is full of chemicals from the process of bleaching and stripping the minerals and vitamins from the sugar cane or sugar beets.
Hence, the term processed comes to light. The same stripping and defiling of whole, plant based foods when they are PROCESSED. This is why anything processed should be avoided or limited in your lifestyle. (my only personal side rant, I digress.)
Sugar isn’t just nutritionally bad. Sugar actually has health damaging properties and creates a toxic and acidic environment in your body. Your body has to pull from its own store of nutrients in order to process this shi.. junk. It literally is eating up your own nutrients that are keeping you healthy which in turn depresses your immune system.
I could go on and on about how bad sugar is for you BUT that isn’t producing ANY wellness or any positive ways for you to incorporate interventions in your health that will sweeten your wellness.
SO here we go!
To reduce added sugars in your diet, you first have to find them. Sugar is snuck into everything and it has about fifty different names that it is listed under. Some names include:
- Barley malt
- Beet sugar
- Brown sugar
- Buttered syrup
- Cane juice crystals
- Cane sugar
- Caramel
- Carob syrup
- Castor sugar
- Confectioner’s sugar
- Corn syrup
- Corn syrup solids
- Crystalline fructose
- Demerara sugar
- Dextran
- Dextrose
- Diastatic malt
- Diatase
- Ethylmaltol
- Evaporated cane juice
- Fructose
- Fruit juice
- Fruit juice concentrate
- Galactose
- Glucose
- Glucose solids
- Golden sugar
- High-fructose corn syrup
- Icing sugar
- Invert sugar
- Lactose
- Malt syrup
- Maltose
The obvious: Remove sugar. If it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind and out of reach.
Cut back on the amount of sugar added to things you eat or drink regularly.
Instead of adding sugar to cereal or oatmeal, add fresh fruit. Bananas, strawberries, and dates are especially good!
When baking cookies, brownies or cakes, cut the sugar and switch to stevia or add extracts such as almond, vanilla, orange or lemon.
Enhance foods with spices. Some of my go to’s are ginger, allspice, cinnamon and nutmeg.
Substitute unsweetened applesauce for sugar in recipes. It is an easy switch because it is equal parts.
