Sweet coffee in the morning, a bun in the afternoon, a piece of chocolate in the evening, dessert after a hard day — a familiar picture for almost everyone. And then there are alarming headlines about "sugar as a new enemy of health." But you shouldn't demonize sweets: it's more important to understand how much sugar we actually get and where it comes from. One piece of cake at a celebration and the habit of drinking a couple of sugary drinks every day are two completely different stories, and the rules for them are different.
It is important to distinguish three different things here: natural sugars in fruits and dairy products, added sugar, which the manufacturer or we ourselves put in food, and sweets with baked goods and drinks, where added sugar is usually the most.
Giving up sweets and cakes does not mean that you need to give up apples or yogurt at the same time. An apple carries with it not only sugar, but also fiber, water, vitamins - a whole structure that slows down absorption. But a chocolate bar with a small nutritional value can give a noticeable dose of added sugar.
Without intimidation: sugar is primarily calories without additional benefits. If there are a lot of sweets in the diet, it is easy to overdo the total calorie content, and an excess of calories sooner or later turns into weight gain. Regular high intake of added sugar is also associated with less favorable metabolic health in general.
An important caveat: type 2 diabetes is not directly caused by sugar - it has many risk factors, from heredity to the level of physical activity, and sugar is only one of the elements of the picture. Sugary drinks are a separate story: drinking 500 ml of soda is much easier than eating an equivalent amount of a whole fruit, and there is almost no feeling of fullness from liquids.
The WHO recommendations give a guideline: added (free) sugars should be kept below 10% of the daily calorie content, and ideally closer to 5%.
With the usual 2000 kcal per day, this is about 50 g, and ideally - about 25 g, that is, about six teaspoons. We are talking about added sugar, and not about all carbohydrates in general.
The problem is that sources of sugar imperceptibly add up during the day: a spoon in coffee in the morning, sweet yogurt for a snack, chocolate at lunch, soda and dessert in the evening are separately trifles, but together they easily exceed the daily norm.
This is one of the most practical tips in the topic. A full meal usually contains protein, fats, and fiber, and they slow down digestion and how quickly carbohydrates enter the bloodstream. Therefore, dessert after breakfast or lunch usually causes a smoother reaction than sweetness on an empty stomach. Plus, after a hearty meal, a smaller portion of dessert is usually enough for a person – a large sweet bun instead of breakfast and a normal breakfast with a small dessert after it give completely different results. However, this is not a magic formula: the order of products does not "cancel" sugar and does not give the right to eat sweets without restrictions.
It is more accurate to talk not about the "neutralization" of sugar by protein, but about the combination of sweets with a complete meal. Yogurt with berries, cottage cheese with fruit, oatmeal with berries, natural yogurt with a small portion of chocolate, an ordinary lunch with dessert for sweets – in all these cases, protein and fiber make the meal more satisfying, and as a result, you want less extra. But protein does not "erase" the effect of sugar – it is more of a way to eat sweets more sensibly, rather than an indulgence.
Not necessarily, and especially not sharply. Coffee with two or three tablespoons of sugar and coffee with milk and less sugar are two different drinks to taste, but the transition between them can be gradual. If you are used to two spoons, it is not necessary to drink coffee tomorrow without sugar at all - you can start with one and a half, then one, and the taste will gradually get used to the less sweet version. Separately, it is worth remembering about syrups in coffee shops: caramel or vanilla syrup in a large glass of latte sometimes adds more sugar than the dessert itself to this coffee.
Soda, energy drinks, sweet iced tea, some coffee drinks, fruit drinks – they have one thing in common: liquid calories are insidious because they give a lot of energy, but almost do not satiate. A glass of juice is drunk in a minute, and the feeling of hunger returns quickly after it. A practical guideline: water, unsweetened tea or coffee as the basis of everyday drinking, and a sweet drink is more of a periodic pleasure than a daily habit.
Dividing sweets into "healthy" and "unhealthy" is not the most working idea. Much more important is the size of the portion and how often it appears in the diet. A small piece of cake, a few slices of chocolate, a modest portion of ice cream, homemade pie, yogurt with fruit or berries with sour cream - any of these options easily fits into the diet, if it does not turn into a daily habit in large quantities.
And, perhaps, the main thing: if chocolate happened in the evening, you should not reason in the spirit of "I fell off, so all is lost." A few slices eaten consciously are just a dessert, and not a reason to finish the entire bar.
Sugar in fruit and added sugar in sweets are not the same thing. Apples, oranges, berries, bananas carry sugar along with fiber and the structure of the whole product, which slows down its absorption. But juice, even freshly squeezed, is already devoid of this structure and is much closer to a sweet drink than to a whole fruit in terms of effect on the body.
Healthy eating is not a life without pies, chocolate and ice cream. It is much more important that a person eats most of the time, and not just one festive dessert. If, after this article, you want to please yourself with homemade pastries for tea or, conversely, find a reason to cook at home more often, it is easy to find suitable products and services for this among the ads.
Sources: WHO, EFSA, skillbox.ru
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