There is an interesting article on the BBC website today about Tesco's plans to reduce the amount of sugar they put in their soft drinks. (See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32849878).
As previously stated, I am newly arrived at the no added sugar bandwagon; in fact, I am not yet fully aboard. I am not yet confident that I will be able to maintain a no added sugar regime without a significant number of indulgences. Surprisingly enough, I haven't tried this before. I wasn't actually aware of the celebrity-endorsed, no added sugar media groundswell until 2 weeks ago when I decided to change the balance of sweet to savoury I was eating during my average working day. The motivation for this decision may be the subject of a later post but was sadly not the result being on trend.
Having made it, it took no time at all to stumble across the online canon devoted to why we should avoid consuming sugar. Unfortunately not all of the 'what to avoid' advice is consistent so to some extent I am now improvising my own no added sugar regime. I have noticed several positives (sleeping better; whites of eyes brighter) and only a few negatives (a bit hungrier). Yay me. But how far should I be inflicting this sugar free experiment on the rest of my family?
We all know that sugar is bad for us but we eat it anyway. Even brown rice types like me, who probably wouldn't eat a bag Haribos even for cash, (it's the smell), happily churn out trays of flapjacks and muffins for our kids to snack on and bake endless fairy cakes for school fundraising activities. And don't even get me started on chocolate. I am not sure I actually know any adult females who are completely immune to the siren call of chocolate, ever. But until now I have persuaded myself that, provided the kids only have sugary treats a couple of times a week, the amount they have is not too bad for them. All things in moderation, yes?
Of course, this reasoning falls apart when the kids in question start secondary school. Trust me, all of the carefully structured mealtime conversations about 'good foods' and 'bad foods' fly out of the window when they slip the yoke of parental dietary control and taste the freedom of choosing if and what to eat between meals. The average teenager revels in unfettered access to sugar. Biscuits, sweets, chocolate, fizzy drinks; the cheaper the better. Pound shops are the retail outlets of choice for a Year 8 with a some change in their pocket.
For two of our older three children this has thankfully only been a phase. The jury is still out on Harry, not yet 13. His teenage sweet tooth has been more pronounced than either of his sisters were. Is it a boy thing? Every sleepover Harry has been to in the past year has involved smuggled energy drinks, packets of biscuits and bags of Doritos. As the mum of one of his friends puts it, sugar is their drug of choice.
I asked our girls this evening how old they were when they stopped eating too much sugar. They couldn't remember but both said they had stopped when they realised the sugar was making them feel awful. They also said that a lot of their friends (now aged 16 and 18) still eat loads of sugary food every day. As for Harry, he has made a noticeable effort in the past couple of weeks to eat more healthily. I wouldn't say that his sweet tooth is going but he is making an increasing number of healthy choices. Me talking about sugar a lot may have had something to do with this.
Sorry everyone. But I have been dismayed by how much of the food in our cupboard I am having to avoid or replace because of added sugar. Most breads. Mayonnaise. Most crisps. Stock cubes. Stock cubes? Reducing our children's sugar intake is going to take a lot more than buying a tub of stevia.
No comments:
Post a Comment