Not so sweet

If you’re going to do one awesome thing for your health in 2025, why not seriously reduce your sugar intake?

Many doctors now believe that sugar is the single worst ingredient in the modern diet, contributing to all sorts of diseases. Here are just some reasons why you should try to avoid it…

Added sugar contains no essential nutrients and is bad for your teeth: There are no proteins, essential fats, vitamins or minerals in sugar… just pure energy. And because it provides easily digestible energy for the bad bacteria in the mouth it’s harmful for teeth.

Fructose can overload your liver: Before sugar enters the bloodstream from the digestive tract, it is broken down into glucose and fructose. A little bit of fructose is fine but too much can overload the liver.

Resistance to insulin: Insulin allows glucose to enter cells from the bloodstream and tells the cells to start burning glucose instead of fat. Having too much glucose in the blood is highly toxic and one of the reasons for complications of diabetes, like blindness. One feature of the metabolic dysfunction that is caused by the Western diet, is that insulin stops working as it should. The cells become ‘resistant’ to it. Insulin resistance is believed to be a leading driver of many diseases especially type II diabetes.

Type II diabetes: When our cells become resistant to the effects of insulin, the beta cells in our pancreas make more of it. Eventually, as insulin resistance becomes progressively worse, the pancreas can’t keep up with the demand of producing enough insulin to keep blood sugar levels down. At this point, blood sugar levels skyrocket and a diagnosis of type II diabetes is made.

Increased risk of cancer: There is considerable evidence that sugar, due to its harmful effects on metabolism, can contribute to cancer. Insulin is one of the key hormones in regulating this sort of growth. For this reason, many scientists believe that having constantly elevated insulin levels (a consequence of sugar consumption) can contribute to cancer.

Raises cholesterol that contributes to heart disease: For many decades, people have blamed saturated fat for the number one killer, heart disease. However, there is growing evidence that sugar rather than fat, may be one of the leading drivers of heart disease.

Unique fat-promoting effects: High fructose intake may leave you feeling hungrier leading to increased calorie intake. The link with obesity in children is especially strong, where daily intake of sugar-sweetened drinks is associated with a 60 per cent increased risk of obesity.

Sugar is highly addictive: Like abusive drugs, sugar and many junk foods cause a release of dopamine in the reward centre of the brain. This in turn increases the need for more sugar.

MAKE THE CHANGE

It’s easier said than done so here are some top tips to help you avoid sugar:

1. Watch what you consume. Make sure you keep a close watch on your food and drink and, crucially, know how much added sugar they contain.

2. Always be realistic. Kicking an addictive substance like added sugar is not going to happen overnight. There will be times when your body needs fuel and you have a limited choice of food and drink to choose from.

3. Check the label. There are lots of different ways added sugar can be listed on ingredients labels. These include sucrose, glucose, fructose, maltose, fruit juice, molasses, hydrolysed starch, invert sugar, corn syrup, honey.

4. Nutrition labels tell you how much sugar a food contains:

High in sugar – 22.5g or more of total sugar per 100g

Low in sugar – 5g or less of total sugar per 100g

5. Some packaging uses a colour-coded system. That makes it easy to choose foods that are lower in sugar, salt and fat. Look for more greens and ambers and fewer reds in your shopping basket.

6. Eat less ready meals. Ready-made soups, stir-in sauces and meals can be higher in sugar than you think. Condiments and sauces such as ketchup can have as much as 23g of sugar in 100g – roughly half a teaspoon per serving.

7. Beware snacks. Swap crisps and chocolate for fruit (fresh, tinned or frozen), unsalted nuts, unsalted rice cakes, oatcakes, or homemade plain popcorn. And buy smaller packs. Beware cereal bars which can be very high in added sugar.

8 Beware sweet drinks. Nearly a quarter of the added sugar in our diets comes from fizzy drinks, sweetened juices, squashes, and cordials. Try swapping for water which you could flavour with a slice of lemon or lime.