WTH – Where does all the sugar come from?

Right, then…

Following last week’s thread on fitness, diet, exercise & weight, I downloaded the myfitnesspal app.

Very impressed, really easy to use, especially when cooking!

More to the point, on day 1 it exposed the lie of a “balanced diet”, which I had always lived by. Fat was the biggest single component of my diet, despite going reasonably out of the way to avoid seemingly obvious fatty foods.

OK, so fat is fixed. Plateau weight starting to decrease with exercise and revised intake…

Next up. SUGAR. Where the hell does it come from? I blow through my sugar “target” every day! From what I can see, this is entirely down to muesli (20g) and milk (16g)

Are the targets too low? Or or are there easy ways to reduce. Looking at porridge as the cure at the mo

Generally its the milk it does have high amounts of sugar in it . Again the museli has dried fruits etc which are high i stopped eating cereal for breakfast i have egg and bacon now and then just lower fat intake through the day end with high protein dinner.

If i have porridge i now use alpro soya light milk it has 0.2 sugars per 200mm and only 44 calories and once in porridge you cannot taste it i then sweeten with a tiny bit of stevia perfect 🙂

IMO There is a difference between ‘natural sugars (ie fruit) and ‘processed’ sugars, just avoid the ‘processed’ ones.

Have cut back on processed sugars, although I see that Jordan’s oat granolas have raw cane sugar as the second / third main ingredient!

br – imho unless it’s been chemically changed to prevent digestion/metabolising – sugar is sugar no mater how unrefined it is.
ie a gram of honey sugar still has calories .

Ride more.

Where does all the sugar come from?

Fruit [in my case]

Breakfast this morning

Some would say fructose – fruit sugar is worse than dextrose – table sugar.

Certainly its easy to take in a lot of calories in sugar unless you are carefull – a lot of it is hidden as well. Some would say the effect eating sugar has on your metabolism make it worse than other forms of calories.

However I would not accept that bacon and eggs is a healthier breakfast than wholefood muesli. Again others will differ.;

Where did you get your sugar count and limits from? Check the NHS site for the accepted / conventional wisdom on this altho more folk are looking at sugar as the enemy than used to

Jordan’s stuff is some of the sweetest out there. and the most expensive! Tasty though.

Why would you say a breakfast of egg and bacon was bad ? Low in saturated fat high in healthy fats high protein and low gi ?

As opposed to a cereal filled with sugars and most of the healthy benefits removed ? With milk that has had most of the goodness removed with pasturisation ?

A cereal breakfast is just prepartion for insulin levels to shoot up and fall leaving you felling hungry and tired.

sugar in breakfast cereals is nuts…

bran flakes have more sugar in than cornflakes (nearly 2.5 times as much)

😕

jota – Are Morrisons Cornflakes really only 2g sugar per 100g?

tony24 – Member

Why would you say a breakfast of egg and bacon was bad ? Low in saturated fat high in healthy fats high protein and low gi ?

Bacon and egg is high in fat, high in saturated fats, high in animal fats, low in fibre, high salt. Implicated in Cardiovascular disease

Wholefood muesli is a good mix of oats and grains and dried fruit and nuts – with no added sugar. Milk does not loose most of its nutrients thru pasteurisation

On diet you will get many opinions and most of them wrong.

As I say check the NHS site for conventional / consensus view on diet. look at the role of sugars but take a pinch of salt with you

TandemJeremy – Member
Where did you get your sugar count and limits from? Check the NHS site for the accepted / conventional wisdom on this…

Don’t think the NHS site has any hard figures on daily intake (unless you have a link) just the “eatwell plate” and vague waffle about “balanced healthy diet” 😕

nearly all “convenetional wisdom” quotes 40g sugar/day as a guideline and IMO even that is far too much…..

jota – Are Morrisons Cornflakes really only 2g sugar per 100g?

No that should be for 50g
they’re actually 3.7g/100g

However I would not accept that bacon and eggs is a healthier breakfast than wholefood muesli.

Depends on how you define healthy. Things can be healthy in different ways and not so good in others for different reasons. Depends what oyu need.

Bacon and egg is high in fat

Really? Lean grilled bacon is high in fat? Eggs are high in fat? According to wiki only 5g fat in a large egg, and just over 1g of saturated fat. I trim almost all the fat off my bacon.

I don’t want a big row though please.

A lot of recent studies are indicating proccessed meat significantly increases colorectal cancer risk.
There may be insulin response benefits to this type of diet, but its probably healthier (most of the time) to replace the bacon with either fish or chicken.
Or even better – vegetables, its unlikely that bacon (or other meat) and eggs are needed in the same meal. Tomato & onion omelette’s good.
Although I had a lovely bacon butty this morning.

I’ve been knocking back a bottle of Yazoo as a post ride recovery jobbie recently. Noticed yesterday that there are 48.9g of sugar in a 475ml bottle! So tasty though.

I take the mystery out if it and simply eat sugar cubes for breakfast, dinner, and tea, and maybe have a glucose gel as a snack….

DrP

A lot of recent studies are indicating proccessed meat significantly increases colorectal cancer risk.

I’ve been eating too much cured meat recently (mmm parma ham), and this has been on my mind. Time to simplify the diet.

oversimplification, but, hey ho:

simple sugars: sucrose (table sugar) is massively subsidised through the EU. It gets put in loads of foods as it is a crystalline low cost texture modifier. ‘natural’ fruit sugars (fructose) are packed into seed bearing pods (fruits) so as to get things to eat them (monkies, i.e. us) and crap the seeds out somewhere else. lactose is a simple energy source for baby moo cows. Maltose in grains is there as an energy source to drive germination. all these make you fat.

complex, long chain sugars: plants use as energy storage are ok as it takes a while to break down.

A lot of recent studies are indicating proccessed meat significantly increases colorectal cancer risk.

Yes – although ‘processed’ here means cured ie bacon, ham, salami etc. Because of the salts (sulphites I think) used in the curing process.

Depends what oyu need.
Good point.

I trim almost all the fat off my bacon
I do this too.

I have cut back on the quantity of bacon I eat, for the salt content, etc.

I agree ^^^ with replacing with chicken or fish.
My local-to-the-office Tesco is being vamped and as a consequence appear to be getting wild salmon back onto the fish counter.
So I’ll be having a large lump of that with a home made salad for lunch today.

Just this second someone at work has emptied several packets of cakes, sweets and chocolates over the desks. The vultures are devouring it by the second. This afternoon I can guarantee they will all be talking about diet, exercise, how to lose weight, and carb to protien ratios etc..

^^^ In our office.

Sometimes the Samosa Gods provide great quanities of Samosas.

Both meat and Veg.

Resitsance in futile.

😉

I used MyFitnessPal for a few days. I struggled to get close to eating the amount of sugar it had as a target or get anywhere near the calories.

The nearest I got to the calories was after a night out at a tapas place, followed by five pints of bitter. I’m not really sure how fat people get fat 😉

Gave up tracking it in the end, because it’s a faff if you actually cook food from ingredients that don’t come in packets.

go for a decent sugar free meusli, you may start to taste it.

TandemJeremy – Member

Some would say fructose – fruit sugar is worse than dextrose – table sugar.

Table sugar is 50% Fructose and 50% Glucose.

Fructose is much sweeter. Its also metabolised by the liver which is why its very bad for you.

I always get the “no added sugar/salt” muesli. Of course there is still some fruit in it – even more if I add a banana, and them maybe some nice bio yoghurt with fruity bits too.

stevewhyte – Member
Fructose is much sweeter. Its also metabolised by the liver which is why its very bad for you.

How so?

I’ve been advised to eat honey for its fructose to re-fuel the liver.

stevewhyte

Fructose is much sweeter. Its also metabolised by the liver which is why its very bad for you.

Ah- table sugar is sucrose not dextrose. Sucrose is fructose and glucose joined together in one molecule. ( not really 50% of each) My mistake.

Cycnic – al – this is a part of the theories around sugar metabolism that are controversial.

TandemJeremy – Member

Ah- table sugar is sucrose not dextrose.

And dextrose is just another name for Glucose too.

Keep trying TJ you will get it right soon.

If the sugar is added sugar then I can understand you trying to cut down but if you are worried about the fructose in the fruit you eat (or the dried fruit in your müesli) or the lactose in the cheese you eat then I suggest you should question the diet you’ve adopted rather than the proportion of cheese or fruit you’re eating.

A recent Europe 1 report on dieting habits of men and women concluded that French women prefer the calorie counting and smaller portions approach whilst men prefer fad or miracle fix diets that involve cutting out groups of foodstuffs.

Yes steve I know that – I just acknowledged I made a mistake calling table sugar dextrose

Did you really mean to say table sugar was a mix of glucose and fructose? or a molecule made by combining them 😉

On sugar metabolism and sugars place in diet and weight control this site is a decent source of info I bleive. Its written by a doctor I met
http://www.giveupsugar.com/

some links to the science here
http://www.giveupsugar.com/sugar

I am not completely convinced but its a view that is gaining acceptance

You are such a **** TJ, i can see why people can be ar**d with you.

Were you ignored as a child, you keep trying to show how clever you are. You know something, it doesnt work.

Steve – not see the wink smilie? Supposed to be mildly amusing. Missed nuance there old chap

On diet you will get many opinions and most of them wrong.

I concur 😀

Its written by a doctor I met

I met a doctor once, he was wrong. 🙁

TandemJeremy – Member
some links to the science here
http://www.giveupsugar.com/sugar

Conclusion, eat more protein, more fat particularly unsaturated and less refined carbohydrate.

sounds a bit iDiet-ish to me 😉