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Thursday, July 10, 2008
How much sugar is too much?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Every evening, after dinner, my children have just one question: Dessert?
Usually, the answer is no. It doesn’t seem to matter how often we tell them that dessert is a special treat and not an everyday happening.
They keep hoping. And after a week of vacation that included making homemade peach and chocolate ice cream, who can blame them?
We’ve set the ice cream aside for now and gone back to the usual routine of eating dessert every once in a while, and offering second helpings of vegetables or bread if they’re still hungry.
But they’re still getting plenty of sugar from other places, like the bug juice served with their camp lunches this week, the popsicles handed out on Fridays, and, at other camps, the cookies and other sweets distributed as snacks.
And it’s not just children who are loading up on the sweet stuff — and not just desserts that are loaded with sugar. A new study from Emory University finds that Americans are getting more than 10 percent of their daily calories from fructose, used in sweetened beverages and processed foods. Besides the most common sources of added sugars — soft drinks, candy, pastries and fruit drinks — it’s in a range of unexpected foods, from spaghetti sauces to whole wheat bread.
If you’re reading labels, you’ll see it listed as sucrose — another name for table sugar — and high-fructose corn syrup. Fructose consumption is up almost 50 percent, according to the study, which measured what American children and adults ate from 1988-1994, compared to the late ‘70s.
Study author Miriam Vos, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine, says there is growing evidence that eating too much fructose can affect health. The most recent government nutritional advice recommends significantly reducing the amount of foods and beverages with added sugars we consume. That’s because they can squeeze out more nutritious food from our diet, while piling on calories.
Do you look at labels for added sugars? How are you trying to reduce sugar in your family’s diet?
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