Choose the right daily dose of sugar

The Food and Drug Administration has recommended daily intake of 50 g of sugar is acceptable for males with normal BMI and 25 g of sugar for females. This calculation is for 2000 calorie consumers in a day.

Sugars are broadly two types one is natural and the other is added sugar. The natural sugar is the one which is present in all the fruits, vegetables, etc., added sugar is the one which we use as a taste booster.

There is further classification in added sugar which is White sugar, Brown sugar, Jaggery, and Honey.

Yes, Honey is an added sugar and not natural.

Among these added sugars, we use only White Sugar as our daily dose of sugar. And jaggery will be used here and there for sweets.

An average Indian drinks two-three cups of tea/coffee/milk per day which needs added sugar of 1-1.5 teaspoon per cup typically.

Do you notice that we are hopelessly addicted to the white glossy sugar which we use for coffee/tea/milk/sweets etc.,?

You might ask "Yes, what is the problem with that?"

I will first tell you what are these types and the processes by which these different types of sugar are made and then you itself can tell what is the problem with white sugar.

White sugar, Brown sugar, Jaggery all come from the same source which is Sugar cane.

Jaggery is produced from simple processes like extraction of juice, filtration, boiling, and packing. White sugar production is further extended to clarification, evaporation, centrifugation, drying, and storage.

Brown sugar that I have mentioned here is just the powdered form of jaggery, there is also another kind of brown sugar available, which is the same crystal-like in appearance but brown in color (with molasses).

White sugar is a simple one sucrose compound, whereas Jaggery is a complex structure with more than one sucrose in chains. So white sugar is easily digestible when compared with other sugar forms.

That's good, right? Fast digestion and all?

No that's the problem here.

When ingested, white sugar tends to instantly spike the Glucose (sugar value). The body, on getting this instant spike will metabolize to convert the sugar into energy, and the body will look for sources to burn the gained energy. When there is no way to burn the gained energy, this sugar will be further processed and be stored as fat. This fat accumulation will lead to gain in weight, high blood pressure, diabetes, etc.,

In the case of jaggery, the body takes some time to break the complex molecule and release of sucrose in the bloodstream for metabolism. It will also slow down the energy release, regulating the consumption of energy.

Apart from this, white sugar is just empty calorie without any minerals, vitamins, etc., whereas Jaggery and Honey are rich in nutrition. Jaggery is rich in magnesium, copper, and iron. Honey is rich in Vitamin C, vitamin B, and potassium.

This another form of brown sugar that is no different than white sugar. It is just brown in color because of the molasses from the last step of sugar refinery. So, if at all there is any nutrition from this sugar, it is because of the added molasses only. Thus, from this, we can know that molasses is good and holds nutritional value.

Molasses, a bank of nutrition which we comfortably skip in our daily routine and eat just the white, tasty, rubbish calories. It's funny, right?

Let me show you the nutritional facts of molasses.

I have given the nutritional value of Jaggery which is full of molasses because no filtration is done.

So what do you think?

You think you are making a big mistake of eating empty calories which could be a potential factor for health issues that can last up to our lifetime.

Scary right?

So shall we do to avoid it?

Just stop consuming added white sugar and start replacing it with Jaggery/Powdered Jaggery/Honey.

But Sugar is Sugar, so keep it minimum according to the needs.

Now coming to the mindful buy of packaged foods.

To mindfully watch the added sugars, we need to learn on reading nutritional facts in packaged food packs.

Let us take an example of the old and new label for some packaged food.

If you can notice, the recent revision of labels contains the percentage of added sugars present in the package. So this package of 32 g contains 6% of added sugars.

But according to WHO, a person who intakes a 2000 calorie diet should not take anymore than 5 % of added sugar in a day. It was 10 % threshold earlier, now the threshold value is lowered because of our changed lifestyle and increased added sugar in our diet.

So be mindful when you take any form of added sugar next time.

I have completely shifted over to Jaggery powder for beverages. But, the taste is not as good as the normal white sugar.

Trust me, you cannot go back to white sugar once you become used to alternatives.

Choose wisely and eat guilt-free.

Comment o how much sugar you take per day approximately?

Anbudan

Divya Bharathi.

PS: In white sugar, there are many chemicals added in each step of its refining to serve specific purposes few are: 1. Phosphoric acid 2. Caustic soda 3. Lime 4. Sulfur etc., these are added to increase the shelf life of the sugar. Notice that Jaggery does not have much shelf life as White sugar and it becomes watery after some time.