If you stay away from desserts, fizzy soft drinks and chocolate, you’ll probably feel like you’re doing a lot to get rid of sugar from your diet and the weight gain goes with it.
And you’re right.
But, when you give up the types of foods listed above, you are not necessarily eliminating all the major sources of sugar in your diet.
Very often, after giving up the typical high-sugar foods, many of us still find it difficult to lose weight. Even worse, if you overcompensate with foods that seem healthier, but that actually have similar levels of sugar as the forfeited foods, there’s a good chance that you will gain weight.
Below are a few examples of foods that have high levels sugar, though you would never consider them to be sweet in the same ways as chocolates and soft drinks.
(For comparison, 4 grams of sugar is equal to a teaspoon.)
- Spaghetti Sauce – Check of the nutrition label on the average bottle of spaghetti sauce. You’ll be surprised that it probably has 8 to 10 grams in a ½ cup serving. About two teaspoons. But still not terribly bad. Except when you consider there are about 6 cups in a 700 ml bottle of sauce. That’s about 30 teaspoons of sugar.
- Fruit Juices – Yes, we’re talking real, 100% fruit juice, and even some that have ‘No Added Sugar’. It’s one of the first substitutions that people make in their diets when they get serious about weight loss and nutrition: drop the pop and start drinking ‘healthy’ fruit juice.
Coca-Cola is famously high in sugar, even among soft drinks. Using it as a standard for comparison, a 355 ml can of Coke has 39 grams of sugar, or almost 10 teaspoons.
Minute Made Frozen Lemonade – After it’s been mixed with water according to the instructions on the can, you get 35 grams of sugar in 355 ml.
President’s Choice Cranberry & Pomegranate 100% Juice Blend – 45 grams of sugar in a 355 ml serving. Yes, that’s one and a half teaspoons more than a Coke.
Tropicana Orange Juice – No Sugar Added – 33 grams of sugar in 355 ml
- Prepared Coleslaw – Many prepared foods, like vegetable and pasta salads, are extremely high in sugar. We’ve singled out coleslaw as an example to highlight that sugar can ruin your weight management plans from the most unexpected places.
No one in their wildest imagination would think something like coleslaw has anywhere near as much sugar as Coke.
So how much sugar do you get in 355 ml of Keybrand ‘Deli Classic’ Coleslaw?
48 grams. 12 teaspoons. Another Coke-beater.
And it gets worse. If you happen to like their ‘Dixie’ style coleslaw, you’ll get 54 grams of sugar in 355 ml.
Sugar zaps your weight loss and nutrition plans with empty calories. Canadians consume three times the recommended intake of sugar every day. Learn more about eliminating unwanted sugar from your diet by visiting your local Herbal One Weight Management & Nutrition Centre today.