Obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, even depression: excessive sugar consumption is associated with many health problems. Do you want to break the habit of sugar consumption? Oviva has useful tips for a low-sugar diet – and an app that will help you achieve your goals more easily.
Why is reducing sugar important?
We eat too much sugar: The diet of most Germans falls short of the official recommendations for sugar consumption. A maximum of 50 grams of sugar per day is the recommended limit – in fact, almost twice that amount is consumed per inhabitant in Germany every day .
Too much sugar in the diet is often responsible for health problems such as:
- Overweight and obesity
- Type 2 diabetes
- High blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases
- Liver diseases
- Kidney disease
Our metabolism is actually more geared towards processing so-called complex carbohydrates, such as those found in whole grains and vegetables. The body cannot permanently cope with the high blood sugar levels caused by excessive sugar consumption without suffering damage.
What types of sugar are there?
What we usually mean when we talk about sugar is so-called household sugar, chemically sucrose, also known as refined sugar or industrial sugar.
There is also lactose, fructose, glucose, and malt sugar, to name just a few of the most important. Fructose and table sugar are particularly important for our diet. Fructose is mainly found in fruit and honey – and in the glucose-fructose syrups made from corn, which are often used in the food industry. Table sugar is also an industrial product; it is made from sugar cane or sugar beet.
The food industry often declares the sugar it contains under very different names. Added sugar is also hidden behind the following terms:
- Glucose syrup
- Glucose-fructose syrup
- Sweet whey powder
- Concentrated fruit juice
- Invert sugar syrup
- Maltodextrin
- Barley malt extract
- Apple syrup
- Agave syrup
5 tips to reduce sugar
Sweet temptations lurk around every corner. With these tips, you can more easily reduce your sugar consumption.
1. Replace cola and lemonade with flavored water
For example, suppose you drink heavily diluted juice spritzers or similar alternatives instead of a can of regular cola a day. In that case, you will save almost a whole kilo of sugar a month without even noticing!
2. Do not use instant teas or instant coffee products
Powders or granules used to make tea, cappuccino, or other hot drinks often contain a lot of sugar – around two teaspoons per cup. If you drink three cups a day, that adds up to around 26 grams of sugar per day.
3. Drink coffee and tea without sugar
The best thing to do is to avoid sugar in your coffee and tea. Three cups a day, one teaspoon of sugar per cup, that’s about 400 grams a month.
4. Eat natural yogurt instead of fruit yogurt
If you eat a 150-gram cup of fruit yogurt every day, you consume around 400 grams of sugar per month. You can save this by eating natural yogurt instead. Too boring? Add chopped fruit, nuts, coconut flakes, or cocoa nibs.
5. Fruit: Fresh or frozen instead of canned
Canned fruit is usually preserved with a lot of added sugar. You can, therefore, save a lot of sugar by using fresh or frozen fruit.