Trying to Eat Less Sugar? Tips to Help You Reduce Your Sugar Intake

Sugar hides in hundreds of everyday foods.

The World Health Organization announced Wednesday that it now recommends that no more than 5% of your daily calories come from sugar (about 100 calories for the average person).

An uncontrollable sweet tooth does more than just make you fat. Recent studies show that excess sugar intake raises risk of death from heart diseaseby 20% or more, regardless of other health problems. It’s also been shown to mess up metabolism, impair brain function, and raise the risk of diabetes and maybe even cancer.

Trying to eat less sugar is difficult – and not just because we like it so much.  Sure, it’s hard to give up something that tastes so good… but what really makes eating less sugar so tough is the fact that it’s nearly impossible to avoid it.

There is so much sugar added to so many foods that the average American adult eats about 22 teaspoons of sugar – that’s 350 calories’ worth – every single day.  To put another way, that means we’re each eating about 3 pounds of sugar a week, or 150 pounds a year, or nearly 18% of our total calories from sugar alone.  Where is all this sugar coming from?

What are Added Sugars?

Some sugars naturally occur in foods – like lactose (natural milk sugar) or the natural fructose that adds sweetness to fruits.  Those aren’t added sugars – they’re just a component of these foods in their natural state.

But added sugars are just what they sound like – they’re sugars that are added to foods during processing, or during preparation, or at the table.

When spread jam on your toast, or sprinkle sugar in your coffee, or when a recipe calls for a sugary ingredient, you’re adding sugar to your food, of course. But it’s the processed foods we eat that dump lots of added sugar into our bodies.   As foods are processed – becoming further and further removed from their natural state – a lot of sugar is often added along the way.  A small fresh apple has some natural sugar in it – maybe 15 grams or so – but process it into sweetened applesauce and you’ve now got another 15 grams of added sugar per serving.  Natural whole wheat has virtually no sugar in it -  but process it into sugary cereal flakes and you could be eating a few tablespoons of added sugar in every bowlful.

Sugar In Foods – The Sugar You See

Some added sugars are pretty obvious – like the jams and jellies, table sugar, honey or syrup we put on our foods.  Then there’s the 53 gallons of sugary soft drinks that the average American consumes every year – which accounts for about a third of our total added sugar intake.   We also get plenty of sugar from treats like cakes and cookies, candies and frozen desserts.  These are the sugars we can see – but nearly a quarter of the sugar we eat is hidden away in processed foods.

Sugar In Foods – The Sugar You Don’t See

Unless you are a fanatic about reading ingredients labels, there’s a good chance that you’re eating sugar you didn’t even know about – and in places where you wouldn’t expect to find it.  I’ll bet you didn’t think a serving of pasta sauce could harbor nearly 5 teaspoons of sugar, or that 80% of the calories in ketchup come from sugar.  Once you start looking at ingredients lists, you’ll find sugar in everything from soups to salad dressings.

 5 Tips for Cutting Your Sugar Intake

• Read Nutrition Labels.  This is really the first step in reducing your sugar intake for a couple of reasons.  First, sugar comes in many forms, so you’ll want to read your ingredients list carefully for words other than just “sugar” – sucrose, glucose, dextrose, latose, maltose, brown rice syrup, fruit juice concentrate, maltodextrin, corn syrup, molasses are just some of the many, many forms of sugar added to foods.  On the flip side, be aware that those sugars that naturally occur in foods – the lactose in milk and the fructose in fruit, for example – will show up on the nutrition facts panel as “sugar” even though no sugar is added.  The nutrition facts panel on a package of frozen, unsweetened strawberries might list 10 grams of sugar per serving, but that’s just the natural fructose in the fruit.  Check the ingredients list to be sure – which, in this case, should just say, “strawberries”.

Look for words including brown sugar, corn syrup, maltose, fructose, dextrose, molasses, agave, brown rice syrup, cane sugar, cane syrup, and evaporated cane juice. By law, ingredients must be included in descending order by weight, so the higher up on the list you see one of these additives, the more sugar per bite. And you may find multiple types. These 12 products don’t seem overly sweet, but they typically contain some form of added sugar in the ingredients: ketchup, salad dressing, soup, crackers, flavored yogurt, spaghetti sauce, bread, frozen dinners, granola, protein bars and shakes, and sushi.

• Nix sweetened beverages Nearly 40% of the added sugar in Americans’ diets comes from sugary beverages like soda, sweet tea, lemonade, and fruit punch. Just one 12-ounce can of regular soda contains about 140 calories, all from added sugar. The American Heart Association recommends limiting added sugars to less than 100 calories daily for women and 150 for men, which means that a single soda meets or exceeds the limit. Kick the habit, and replace sweet drinks with good, old-fashioned H2O spruced up with healthy, flavorful add-ins like lemon, lime, fresh mint, cucumber, or a little mashed fruit.
• Sweeten foods yourself.  Many foods that come pre-sweetened – like cereals, yogurt, salad dressings or ‘alternative’ milks (like rice, hemp or soy) have surprising amounts of sugar.  Some varieties of instant oatmeal have more than a tablespoon of added sugar (in a very tiny packet – and who eats just one?), some single-serve yogurts pack 30 grams (7 ½ teaspoons) of sugar, and vanilla-flavored rice, hemp or soy milks can have more than 3 teaspoons of added sugar in an 8-ounce (240mL) cup.  Even if you add your own sugar to these foods, you can certainly get by with less.  To cut sugar even further, try sweetening cereal with a sliced banana or a handful of berries. And here’s another trick – try dropping a whole date or a few raisins and a few drops of vanilla extract into your carton of unsweetened ‘milk alternative’.  It adds lots of flavor with just a trace of sugar.
• Enjoy naturally sweet flavors.  Your taste buds may be so over-saturated with sugar that you’ve lost your appreciation for foods that are naturally (but not overly) sweet.  Fruits are an obvious substitute for sugary desserts, but sweet spices – like cinnamon, nutmeg or clove – add sweet notes to fruits, cereals or yogurt in place of sugar. 
• Cut back on liquid sugar.  It’s an obvious suggestion, I know.  But when you consider that half the US population consumes a sugary drink on any given day, or that 25% of American adults take in 200 calories a day from sugary beverages, it’s a suggestion worth repeating. Curb your intake of soft drinks, sweetened coffee and tea drinks, and fruity drinks like lemonade.  Instead, try flavorful teas, or add some citrus peel or a slice of fruit to your water for a calorie-free beverage.   
• Picture how much sugar you’re eating.  Sometimes it helps if you visualize how much sugar you’re actually eating, so here’s a tip for you.  Every four grams of sugar that’s listed on the nutrition facts panel is equal to a teaspoon of sugar – or about one sugar cube.  A soda label that lists 36 grams of sugar in a serving may not sound that bad … but when you picture the nine sugar cubes it contains, you just might think twice about drinking it.
• Health.com: 24 Food Swaps That Slash Calories
  Buy plain foods and sweeten them yourself
  It’s becoming easier to find plain versions of many foods these days. I’m not talking about products made with calorie free-sweeteners (which I don’t recommend), but truly unsweetened goods, including Greek yogurt, oatmeal, and almond milk. Switching from sweetened vanilla almond milk, which contains evaporated cane juice, to unsweetened vanilla, which lists no added sweeteners, saves the equivalent of about three teaspoons of sugar per cup. If you need a little sweetness, add it yourself to control the amount and type you use. For example, some of my clients prefer swirling a teaspoon of organic honey or maple syrup into yogurt or oatmeal at breakfast, both of which provide some nutrients and antioxidants, rather than buying pre-sweetened versions made with more refined sweeteners.
  Trade sweetened foods for naturally sweet fruit
  One of my favorite tricks to share with my clients is how to replace foods laden with added sugar for fruit, which is naturally sweet and just as satisfying. For example, in place of strawberry jam on PB&Js, use warmed up frozen strawberries. Just one level tablespoon of jam packs 50 calories and is typically made with three sweeteners: high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, and sugar. A half cup of frozen strawberries (about eight times the volume), warmed up on the stovetop and seasoned with a little cinnamon or ginger, contains less than 25 calories with no added sugar, and has bonus vitamins, fiber, and antioxidants. Fruit—whether it’s fresh, baked, grilled, or pureed—makes a great replacement for sugar in lots of dishes, from cookies to coleslaw.
  Health.com: 18 Best Snacks for Weight Loss
  Limit sugary treats to once or twice a week 
  It’s not realistic for most people to go through life never having a sweet splurge. But setting some limits on how often you indulge in sugar-rich foods is certainly reasonable. Pick a day or two a week, maybe Wednesdays and Saturdays, to enjoy can’t-live-without goodies like candy, baked goods, or ice cream. Just knowing that you have a pre-planned treat to look forward to can help you avoid giving into temptation more often, and can result in seriously slashing your overall sugar intake.

Susan Bowerman is Director of Nutrition Training at Herbalife. Susan is a Registered Dietitian and a Board-Certified Specialist in Sports Dietetics.

TIME.COM