I have mentioned my sugar addiction before. I’m focusing on sugar again. My husband and I watched a documentary out of Australia called “That Sugar Film”. It was like Super Size Me, except with sugar. Damon Gameau didn’t have to eat candy and drink soda, he ate yogurt and granola bars and other food we think of as healthy, to eat 40 tablespoons of sugar a day. It is easy to overload your body with sugar.
Six tablespoons is the recommended daily allowance of sugar for women. That’s 25 grams. One container of vanilla coconut yogurt has 19 grams of sugar. Yesterday I had 79 grams of sugar without any soda, juice, candy or processed foods. So today I’m only having 25 grams of sugar. Guess what? It is amazingly difficult to eat that little sugar. Here is what I ate.

Green Goddess Breakfast Salad from Lexi’s Clean Kitchen

Almonds and coconut chips for a snack (because the breakfast salad was huge)

Chicken stir fry with rice

No sweets, no soda, not even an apple and that was 25 grams of sugar! I even left the honey out of the salad dressing and my teriyaki sauce. The most sugar came from sweet potato.

I agree that the Western diet is full of sugar and it is ruining our health, but I’m not sure that I can maintain this low sugar diet. I had to be careful to measure the amount of carrots in my stir fry so that I didn’t go over my sugar quota. Carrots! It seems a bit much when carrots need to be restricted. Who came up with the daily allowance number? The American Heart Association. I went to their website and all their infographics on healthy eating include fruit. Not possible with only 25 grams of sugar. Did they mean six tablespoons of added sugar? That would be too much of the white stuff, but 25 grams total is a tiny amount. Yesterday I had a fruit salad with half an orange, small handful of grapes and half a banana, it was 22 grams of sugar (according to MyFitnessPal). Giving up soda is not going to lower your sugar intake anywhere near the recommended amount. That takes drastic measures.

I will continue to watch my sugar amounts, but I’m not giving up all fruit. That doesn’t seem right. Like most things in this life moderation is the key.