Oh Sugar.

Let's talk about sugar. Let me start by saying that I love sugary things. I love pastries. I love cookies. I love cake. I love chocolate. I have a sweet tooth. I wish I didn't. Some say "sitting is the new smoking" others say "sugar is the new smoking". Let's be honest. All three are bad for you. Smoking is clearly the worst of the three, but I've never smoked a cigarette in my life and sitting too much isn't a problem for me, so sugar is my vice.

I try to approach my sugar intake with the 80/20 principle, everything in moderation. It's okay to eat sugar. That said, I try to be aware of my sugar intake and conscious of the sugar intake of the Mini Fashionista. Kids eat WAY too much sugar, and it's not just the cookies, cakes and soda that are the culprits, it's the hidden sugar too.

5+ years ago I started paying less attention to the calories and fat on a nutrition label and more attention to the sugar content. If you read labels, you will find that there is sugar in pretty much everything that comes in a package. Why?  Because sugar is not only used as a sweetener but also as a preservative.

The American Heart Association recommends a daily sugar intake of 16-17g for a child, 25 g for a female and 37.5g for a male. That's equal to 4 teaspoons for a child, 6 teaspoons for a female and 9 teaspoons for a male. To give you a point of reference, one tablespoon of ketchup has approximately 1 teaspoon of added sugar. So what is added sugar? Brown sugar, corn sweetener, corn syrup, dextrose, fructose, fruit juice concentrate, glucose, high-fructose corn syrup, honey, invert sugar, lactose, maltose, molasses, raw sugar, sucrose, syrup and table sugar. When reading ingredients any of these are added sugar.

When reading labels, it's hard to know how much sugar is natural sugar versus added sugar. The good news is that product labels are changing, and soon (the new deadline is 2020) all labels will differentiate between the two. I've already been seeing it differentiated on a lot of the labels at Trader Joe's. This granola (a new favorite) is a great example.

Total sugars are 23g and 7g of of added sugar.

My good friend and dietitian KK advised me years ago that 7g of sugar per serving was her "max" for a cereal. I've used that as my threshold when buying cereal for the Mini Fashionista ever since. That said, she rarely eats cereal, but I use the 7g rule for pretty much anything that comes in a package (crackers, pretzels, etc.). For the most part we try to avoid packaged items all together.

So if you're a sugar lover like me, what can you do to reduce your overall sugar consumption? Here are some easy tips and tricks that I have implemented in our lives.

1.  Don't buy packaged foods-Eating whole foods such as nuts, fruits and vegetables as your snacks will drastically reduce your daily sugar consumption. So skip the center aisles of the grocery store and shop the perimeter!

2. Read labels- It's pretty basic. Look at the ingredients and the sugar content to determine if what you are buying has added sugar. Look at where it is on the ingredients list, and if it's in the first few items, skip it!

3. Shop for brands with a low sugar content- Like I said, I try to use 7g added sugar for most packaged items, but with the current label guidelines it's hard to differentiate added vs natural sugar, especially in items with fruit, like jam. The Mini Fashionista loves jam. She eats jam on baguette and on pancakes and waffles and rice cakes and anything where you might spread something sugary. It's very difficult to find jam that doesn't have added sugar, but they do exist. St. Dalfour jam is sweetened with fruit juice, and while it's still sugar, in my mind it's better than added white sugar.

When this jam is paired with Costco peanut butter on Dave's Killer Bread Plain Awesome bagel (12 g protein and 5g sugar), a PB&J isn't SO unhealthy. Costco Peanut butter is made from 100% peanuts and has no sugar while others brands such as Jif have 3-4g of sugar per 2 tbs. 

4. Swap soda or juice for sparkling water- La Croix is all the rage, so be trendy and skip the soda and juice and go for plain or sparkling water.

5. Buy Unsweetened/Unflavored- Dried fruit, candied nuts, sweetened almond milk...they all have added sugar. So opt for the unsweetened versions.

6. Keep it real- While you may be tempted to reach for artificial sweeteners in place like Splenda, Equal, etc....I recommend avoiding those too. Artificial=chemicals. So any sweet treat labeled "sugar free", I'd probably pass on.

7. Start small- If you put 2 tsps of sugar in your coffee each morning, slowly reduce it. If you love chocolate, buy individually wrapped chocolates so you can make a bigger deal of eating just one. If I have a whole bar of chocolate I'm much more likely to keep breaking off small pieces than I am to go back for a second or third wrapped chocolate.

Remember, it's not about being perfect. Every effort will benefit your body. By lowering your sugar intake you will have a lower chance of weight gain, a decreased risk of disease such as diabetes and metabolic syndrome x and most importantly I guarantee you will FEEL better!

**Disclaimer** I am not a dietitian, although I do have a MS in Exercise Physiology, and this isn't meant to be a scientific post. I could write pages about sugar and how it's processed in your body at the cellular level, but I'm pretty sure none of you are interested in that. :)