sugar in products
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sugar in products
| Wed, 06-11-2008 - 11:24am |
I am learning alot thru reading the boards etc. I posted last week that I felt my husband's doctor just threw us out there with no info. SO I appreciate all the posts that people put out there!
We are following the rule someone gave us on here "If its white, dont bite." So no sugar, flour etc.
BUT....when looking at nutritional info, how much sugar is to much? When it lists the grams of sugar and I am comparison shopping, how much should I try to stay under?
Thanks!

You want to look at the CARB value, not just sugar. All carbs get converted to glucose in your body. As a rule of thumb, breakfast 30 grams of carbs total, lunch and dinner 40 (for an average female, men are higher). But, some folks do better breaking that up more - for instance, I do about 25 grams of carbs at breakfast then have about 10-15 grams of carbs mid morning (along with a protein and/or fiber such as celery stalks with cream cheese or peanut butter) then 25-30 grams of carbs for lunch and another small snack in the afternoon (non-fat yogurt or a small to medium piece of fruit for example). If I'm buying a product, I look not only at what that product says but what it will be going alongside most likely because it's the combined total of a given meal or snack, not any individual item precisely because, for instance, something that might be a little higher in carbs combined with a big bunch of fiber is not the same kind of effect generally speaking as just the carbs alone. Also, look at WHERE in the list things like sugar show up - and ALL the different kinds of sugar (there's sugar, brown sugar, fructose, glucose, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, etc) In a grain product (like bread or cereal), look for WHOLE wheat or WHOLE oat flour right at the top of the list and any sugars listed down in the 4th space or lower since ingredients are required to be listed according to how much of each there is (if sugar is first, there's more of that than anything else, if water is first, there's more of that and so on). Do try to avoid high fructose corn syrup as much as possible - that seems to be hardest on the system (since it doesn't actually occur in nature probably).
Sorry for the long narrative but it's not a simple RULE that applies globally but a whole lifestyle of choices and options.
--Deb
I personally would hesitate to say...
Because simple carbs, of which sugar is one, raises