By: Jean Zbinden
BetterLife Through Body and Mind
www.betterlife.myshaklee.com

I have been thinking a lot about sugar lately.  Not so much because of my love/hate relationship with it but because I have a high school wrestler.  During wrestling season we try to keep the sweets and the junk out of the house; it is just easier for him.  But wrestling has just ended so I went out and purchased some of those things he has been “depriving” himself of.  For the first time in a while coke, cookies and ice cream were in the cart mixed up with fruit and veggies.This got me thinking; how much sugar am I buying for my son?  So, I did a little research on sugar and how much Americans eat.  I figured if I was going to buy it, I should at least be informed, right?  If you really do not want to know how much sugar is in our food, I would not read any further.  It is quite shocking.

The American Heart Association has determined Americans consume 22.2 teaspoons of sugar a day. I will give you a moment to read that again…… The biggest culprit is the 14 – 18 year old kids who consume 34 teaspoons a day; most of this in soft drinks.  This is “added sugar” (table sugar, high fructose corn syrup, maltose, sugar cane syrup, molasses, fruit juice concentrate and other sweeteners).  Now I don’t know about you, but I started to envision myself shoveling in 22 teaspoons of sugar.  Kind of makes you sick doesn’t it?  Now, according to the AHA, women should have less than 6 teaspoons a day, men less than 9 and children 4-8 years old- 3tsp.  If you were to put those 22 or 34 teaspoons of sugar in a jar…. It is a eye opening visual.

How do you figure out how much you are consuming?  This is the formula:  take the total # of sugar grams from the label and divide by 4.  This will give you the teaspoons of sugar in any given product.  If a product says 12grams per serving, there are 3 teaspoons of added sugar in it.

With that knowledge in hand, I went to the kitchen to determine how much sugar was in the foods we were currently eating.  Here is the good along with the bad:

• Dannon All Natural Yogurt:  8.25 tsp for 1 cup (hmmmmmm, not so good)
• Hershey’s Chocolate Milk: 3.75 tsp for 12oz
• Bear Naked Granola: 1.25 tsp for ¼ cup
• Keebler Grasshopper Cookies:  3 tsp for 4 cookies
• Special K: 1tsp for ½ cup
• Cheereos: 0.25 for 1 cup (Okay, I was excited about this one!)
• Cocoa Pebbles:  2.5tsp for ½ cup
• 1 slice of Sara Lee 100% whole wheat bread:  0.5
• Tribe Hummus: 0
• And, the one I really did not want to know, Breyers Mint Choc Chip Ice Cream: 4.25 tsp for ½ cup. Noooooooooooooo.

What are the lessons learned?  Basically, just to be informed.  I know now if I eat that 1 cup of Dannon yogurt, I am consuming over 8 teaspoons of sugar.  Perhaps I need to look for a better option.  I don’t know about you but a ½ cup of ice cream is not my normal serving size.  But if I decide to have ice cream, maybe it will be.

Knowledge is power and in this case, power over sugar.