WHO recommends reducing free sugars to less than 10% of total energy intake for both adults and children.
For what?
Doctors are convinced that this will help reduce the risk of developing dental caries and cardiovascular diseases, as well as avoid unhealthy weight gain and obesity.
How?
Everything is not at all easy - there are “hidden” sugars in many food products, so even if we drink tea without everything, and ignore confectionery, this does not mean at all that we do not use white sugar at all.
We asked Alexandra Gudimova, an expert in the field of proper nutrition, the founder of the Bionova brand, to help her figure out and tune in to a new “ diet ” .
Studying the composition of foods you are accustomed to
Are ready-made products that you usually buy so useful? Are there analogues with a more correct composition?
Refined sugar is used in large quantities in finished products - sauces, bakery products, yogurts and curds, semi-finished meats, canned products, candied fruits, juices, alcohol and the like. Therefore, it is very difficult to calculate how much sugar we actually consume daily. After weighing all the pros and cons, think about what familiar, but, as it turned out, not the best composition of the products should still be abandoned.
Counting the number of snacks
And how often and in what quantities do you eat unhealthy foods with high calorie content and low biological value - sweet snacks, soda, chocolate bars, chips and more? For example, do you notice how your attention is scattered while watching movies and TV shows, and control over the amount of food you eat is lost?
Eliminate such products from your shopping list. After all, if they do not catch your eye, over time, the desire to eat something like that will disappear.
You can replace them with natural fruit snacks (for example, dried or freeze-dried berries and fruits), a fruit and nut bar with a natural composition, granola, or a handful of nuts without a sweet glaze.
Choosing what to replace
It would be cruel to give up the usual pleasures without choosing any replacement. And how long can you last? Sugars and sweeteners play a special role in the human diet, and their choice in the right amount is important for health. Healthy alternatives to refined white sugar can now be found on the shelves of any supermarket, not only in its pure form, but also in the composition of familiar food products.
It is certainly quite difficult to completely abandon refined sugar. But in many cases, it can be replaced with more useful analogues (unrefined sugars, fermented syrups) or sweeteners, including when cooking at home.
In this case, it is worth considering that sugar gives the dish not only sweetness, but also volume, not all alternatives can replace both points.
So, unrefined coconut sugar is perfect for baking. Similarly to refined sugar, it is also based on sucrose, but 75-76% instead of 99%, which are contained in white sugar. Gentle heat treatment allows you to save most of the nutrients. In baking, coconut sugar will retain volume and give a light chocolate-caramel aftertaste. It does not taste like coconut, so it can also be added to coffee, cocoa and tea.
For the preparation of "non-bulky" dishes, for example, cheesecakes, pancakes, cream, you can use stevia powder.
For sweetening hot drinks - agave syrup, saccharin and cyclamates, stevia or sucralose tablets. And for soft drinks, the same stevia or sucralose is suitable only in liquid form of release - they dissolve well in cold water.
As an alternative to jam, chocolate syrup and other usual toppings that we use for casseroles, cereals, cottage cheese, look at natural syrups: agave, chicory, date, oatmeal, rice. Among the benefits is the availability of nutrients.
For example, oat syrup contains oat oil and oat protein, which makes it suitable as a base for making homemade oat milk. Rice syrup is hypoallergenic and gluten free. Chicory syrup contains a minimum of sugars and more than 60% consists of chicory soluble dietary fiber - inulin (fructooligosaccharides). It is important that such syrups are made without added sugar, by fermentation, and the composition should be as simple as possible (for example, only oats and water).
By the way, the popular Jerusalem artichoke syrup should not be attributed to healthy syrups, since most often the ingredients are subjected to chemical and heat treatments during the production process.
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