today I’m going to be sharing three tips

on how you can reduce your sugar intake

across the day now I think it’s really

important to make clear what we mean by

reducing your sugar intake because I

don’t think that you need to cut out

sugar completely but there is a big

difference between the sugar that added

to products in excess and the sugar

that’s naturally found in foods like

fruits or dairy now the thing that we

want to try and reduce our intake of is

those added sugars and when we consume

too many of those types of sugars it can

contribute to things like weight gain

diseases like type 2 diabetes or the

symptoms associated with inflammatory

disease like arthritis so my first tips

is starting to reduce your sugar intake

across the day is to take a look at the

fluids that you’re consuming so a lot of

you might start your day with a cup of

tea or a cup of coffee but if you’re

having things like a caramel latte or a

mother or adding a couple of teaspoons

to your tea or coffee you’re already

starting off your day with a couple of

teaspoons of added sugar so some better

choices that you could be making are

things like a cappuccino or a latte or a

black tea with a dash of milk instead of

sugar but often more people will find it

really difficult to go from having sugar

in their drink to no sugar at all so

I’ll always encourage my clients to

reduce their sugar intake in a stepwise

approach so maybe starting off by going

from two teaspoons to one teaspoon and

then half a teaspoon and then trialing a

few days with no sugar at all the second

thing is to look at the other sorts of

drinks that you’re having throughout the

day so things like soft drink or cordial

or juice and you might be surprised to

know that a 600 mil bottle of coca-cola

actually has about 12 teaspoons of added

sugar so there are some diet

alternatives that you can be having so

things like Diet Coke or Pepsi Max but

often these are made with more chemical

based artificial sweeteners and while

it’s fine to be having them in small

amounts every so often and there are

some people who can be quite sensitive

to these types of sweeteners and it can

actually cause some digestive upset so

stevia is probably the best out of all

of your low-calorie sweeteners because

it is made from a plant so it is more

natural but often things like soft

drinks and cordials won’t use stevia

because it is a bit more expensive

to incorporate into a product so if you

are going for those diet options having

them once in a while is okay but

otherwise it’s good to have a look at

things like mineral waters infused with

a dash of flavor and Mount Franklin has

some good ones out at the moment or even

getting some infusion bags that you can

pop into a bottle of cold water and it

will flavor your water bottle with

things like mango or peach or strawberry

so that can add something a bit more

interesting into your day my second tip

is to have a look at the type of your

get that you’re eating so this is often

a staple food for breakfast or as a

snack but different types of irrigant

can actually have a really high amount

of and

so naturally yoga is going to contain a

little bit of sugar because the milk

will contain some lactose but as I

mentioned earlier this is different to

the added sugar that we’re trying to

avoid so generally what I do when I look

at a year again is I look at the

nutrition label and I look at the per

100 gram column and the natural lactose

should only contribute to about 3 to 5

grams of sugar per 100 grams so if the

sugar content is higher than 5 grams of

sugar per 100 grams it means that the

product has quite a bit of added sugar

or fruit puree and often it’s hard to

differentiate between how much of that

added sugar is fruit and how much of

that added sugar is sugar

so the best option is to always stick to

a natural yogurt and that doesn’t have

any added sugar and then add some fruit

to flavor it yourself

otherwise if you prefer a flavoured

option the Chobani fit or the euro per

year gets too high protein but low sugar

alternatives

that are really tasty and can form part

of your breakfast or snack staple foods

so my third tip is to start reading the

ingredient label because often companies

or just label sugar as sugar but they

can use a lot of alternative names so

this might be something like sucrose

glucose dextrose honey maple syrup date

syrup and all of these are still sugar

and gram for gram they’re going to

provide the same amount of sugar but

it’s really important to be able to

differentiate whether the sugar content

is added or naturally contained within

the product and so it’s those added

sugars that we are trying to reduce our

intake of and being able to read that

ingredients list will help you achieve

that goal so there are my three tips to

start reducing your sugar intake and if

you would like to get a bit more

creative in the kitchen with some low

sugar baking recipes be sure to check

out the BJC website for plenty of recipe

ideas and look forward to seeing you in

the next year