Five Tips For Cutting Down On Sugar

We've compiled a few tips on how to start cutting down on this white temptress: sugar. Plus - don't forget to check out our sugar-free bingo recipe of the week.

Sugar is not the root of all evil (as some over-zealous health conscious folks would have you believe). But, misusing and over-using sugar can definitely lead to serious health problems. And it's a fact that most of us are eating way too much sugar in our daily diets. In fact, according to health organizations, we should only be eating 10 teaspoons of sugar per day, but most of us consume an average of 34 teaspoons per day.

Five ways to kick the sugar habit:

1. Cut down slowly.
Instead of having two chocolate bars a day, cut down to one. If you usually have two teaspoons of sugar in your tea or coffee, cut down to just one.

2. Check the ingredients.
Sugar is incredibly addictive, and what's worse is that it's often found in all sorts of foods that you wouldn't think to check - breads, crackers, salad dressing, lunch meats and more. So be sure to check that ingredients label, or stick to all-natural foods. By the way, sugar goes by many aliases, so check for all of them, including: brown sugar, corn syrup, dextrin, dextrose, fructose, fruit juice concentrate, high-fructose corn syrup, galactose, glucose, honey, hydrogenated starch, invert sugar maltose, lactose, mannitol, maple syrup, molasses, polyols, raw sugar, sorghum, sucrose, sorbitol, turbinado sugar, and xylitol.

3. Only let yourself eat sugar when it counts.
Ie., dessert! Don't waste it on dressings, spreads, breakfast cereal and soda drinks. This will reduce your unnecessary sugar intake and will reduce your sweet tooth too.

4. Train your tastebuds.
As mentioned before, sugar is highly addictive, so the more you eat the more you need it to satisfy your cravings. But the opposite is also true - if you train your taste buds to eat sugar-free snacks (such as dried fruit or an apple), you'll become accustomed to less sugar, which means you'll want it less too.

5. Don't keep sugary treats in your kitchen.
A pint of ice cream in the freezer is temptation at its most powerful (for me, at least). It's recommended that you don't keep treats like cookies or ice cream or the like at home. These things should always be a treat worth traveling for... better yet, get out of the house and go for a walk to the local ice cream parlour. You'll feel like you earned it and that ice cream will taste better for it!