Tracking Your Sugar Intake

​The magazine "Experience Life" has a great article stating that added sugars will get their rightful position on our food labels.  Yay! 

Now we can be more aware as to whether or not we are staying in the "healthy" guidelines.  Here's the article.  https://experiencelife.com/article/sweet-news-about-food-labels/  (it's a bit on the long side). 

In brief this is what the article talks about…
A lot of sugars are getting into our bodies, sometimes without us even knowing. 
We are eating more sugar than ever before.  Our everyday processed foods are loaded with the evil stuff.

Most of us don't even know how bad sugar really is to our mind and our bodies.  So why not give us guidelines to help us learn what a healthy intake is?

Good news---soon we will be able to learn from easy to read food labels, just how much sugar is in each product.  Sugar will not only be listed in grams, but as a daily percentage value on the nutrition labels.  The daily recommended amounts of added sugars will be limited to no more than 10 percent of daily calories. "This works out to approximately 6 teaspoons (24 grams) for women and 9 teaspoons (36 grams) for men. As for children, the American Heart Association (AHA) recommends no more than 3 to 6 teaspoons (12 to 24 grams) daily, depending on weight and height, and that kids under 2 consume no added sugars."  (Ugh!  have you seen what's in baby formulas?).

These new labels are going to be a great help for allowing us to know what our daily sugar intake is, and through abiding by the daily recommended amount, will help to dramatically improve our health.
                                 Added sugars will no longer be "hidden."
This labeling will hopefully lower the rates of type 2 diabetes, heart and fatty liver disease.
It's time to get real about sugar and this new food labeling will help us do just that!
How does this apply to you and me?
I always inform my clients how important it is to look at labels.
Why?  For two important reasons.

1. When things come with a label, you are eating something that is processed.  By reading the ingredient list you get a better idea of what is actually in the processed food that you are eating.  If the ingredients are "good," meaning that they don't seem as though they came straight from a chemistry class, then your body will more than likely be o.k. with it.
2. Labels are helpful to see how much sugar is in the actual product.  This can be tricky however, due to the fact that some foods are naturally high in sugar.  Reading the ingredient list can be helpful with this, BUT, this new food label will be an added bonus.  Most people are looking in the "fat" category, and yes it has been great that they are now "labeling" trans. Fats (with some loop holes), sugar in the long run is just as damaging.

So folks, what's the most damaging "anti-nutrient" out there?  It's hard to say, however looking at all the damaging effects that too much sugar can have on the body, I would say sugar tops the list.