Diet Culprits

Those of us with low calorie requirements need to have less sugar in our foods. There are enough means of learning this strategy and most of us aware souls already know this. So we count calories, we reduce the use of refined sugars or cut them away from our diet altogether. We fight the temptation to eat desserts, chocolates, sodas, ice creams and of course, sugar in our beverages. But this security blanket is rudely pulled away when one realizes that even a simple doughnut with no additions carries the equivalent of two spoonfuls of added sugar with it. Think of a cake, a medium slice of Angel food cake gets into us about 6 teaspoons of sugar while a slice of a double crust fruit pie gets us the same sugar addition.




If you thought eating fruit was the safe way out, canned fruits in syrup, even if it is light syrup, pack in about two added spoons of sugar in half a cup of fruit while the heavier variety gets us four more spoons of sugar.


A cup of chocolate milk would add on another 3 spoons of sugar to your diet. A 250 grams serving of even low fat flavored yoghurt could add on almost 5 spoons of sugar to your intake, while fruit yoghurt, even if low fat, can add up to 7 spoons of sugar. The biggest culprit is chocolate shake, which tops the charts at 9 spoons of sugar, for every serving (that tall frosted glass). Besides these, there are the clearly sugary food stuffs like gelatins and desserts that the most conscientious already avoid, so they cannot be blamed for sneaking in sugar in your diet.


However, given this scenario, it helps to know that no one is STRICTLY required to completely eliminate sugar from their diet. What needs to be done is matching with the lifestyle; it is wise to reduce sugar on a daily basis. For instance, a person with a sedentary lifestyle who needs about 1600 calories a day would need to keep the sugar consumption to about 6 teaspoons a day. This would cover not only refined sugar but also other forms of sugar like molasses, brown sugar, raw sugar, corn syrup and honey.


Another culprit that sneaks up on us unawares is salt (sodium chloride), which is the root cause of a number of problems; the least of all is blood pressure fluctuations. According to nutritionists, a person needs no more than 2400 mg of sodium in a day, and we have to remember that a teaspoon of common salt contains about 2000 mgs of sodium. So ideally we should be eating only about one spoonful of salt across all our meals and snacks EVERYDAY. We can understand our intake if we know that half a cup of cooked cereal, rice or pasta contains only traces of sodium but a slice of bread contains almost 110-175 mgs of sodium. This will help us to restrict our intake to only the most essential items on the list. And salted pretzels add up sodium in mgs like nothing else, sometimes touching 880 mgs in one serving. So don’t assume that if you are giving up heavy snacking in favor of salted popcorns, it actually helps. The sodium is still lurking around the corner.


In addition to these obvious dangers, it is a god idea to go easy on preserved meat and many cheeses, most caned foods and Soya sauces. These have very high sodium content by themselves, most often for purposes of giving them a longer shelf life.


Taking care of basically the sugar and the sodium content in one’s food takes care of a lot of problems, but the story doesn’t end here. Hidden culprits like fats and oils can still creep up on an unsuspecting person who thinks he has his diet charted out to the best of his or her understanding. The only way out is to watch the label. Most food stuffs label out their contents, so one can be discerning. The easier way out is to stick to a basically simple diet with loads of fresh fruits and veggies and broiled or steamed meats, so there’s no fear of overindulging. If you are a pathological indulger, PRAY, for no amount of food planning can help you.

By Kanika Goswami