In today’s lesson you’ll begin to understand where your beliefs about food and eating come from.

Kicking binge eating into touch means that you’ll need to begin to understand why you behave the way you do around food.

Yep, you’re just gonna have to dig deep into your past experiences and look at the way you talk to yourself about food and start putting that jigsaw together.

It’s no good burying your head in the sand and reaching for the next bag of crisps in the numb way you do right now.

That’s just gotta stop if you want to off-load binge eating and tell it to take a hike.

Instead you’ve got to get clarity and understanding about what influences you absorbed as you grew up and how you talk to yourself now.

We’re talking here about influences from home, school, your culture, religion, and all those pesky emotional meanings that you confer upon food.

So, have you ever been faced with a plate full of food and not been able to stop eating even though you felt full?

That’s your food script rearing it’s ugly head!

Perhaps your inner parent is berating you, “You shouldn’t waste food”. But do you know that really you should be able to leave food if you’re full. It is allowed.

So if we want to get to grips with this food problem, this bloody binge eating that’s blighting our lives, then we’ve got to get digging down into what has formed us.

We’ve got to understand our food script, what it is and where it came from.

Once we do get some clarity here then we can begin to recognize our responses to food and slowly change them to healthier attitudes and behaviours.

We all have a food script that we’ve taken on board, usually unconsciously, from being very young children.

We get this information from our parents, from friends, from magazines, television, advertising, public health messages and so on.

The experience of one of my clients, Amy (name changed) illustrates this well.

Amy had a real problem with leaving food which meant that even when she was uncomfortably full she felt compelled to clean her plate and would even finish the children’s leftovers.

As we discussed her food script she began to remember the messages she’d picked up about food as a child. From the media she remembered regularly seeing images of starving children in Africa, on the News and even on children’s TV.

At the table with the family pressure was put on her to eat what was on the plate and she remembered being told, “Eat it all up. Your father has worked hard to put food on the table” and “Eat it all up. There are children in the world who are starving”. Sound familiar?

Coaching Assignment:

So now here’s the work that you have to do.

This assignment may seem simple enough but it can evoke a powerful and transformative understanding of why you treat food, and yourself, in the way that you do.

There are two parts to this assignment:

Part 1

What do you say to yourself about food? Do you give yourself permission to eat certain foods? Do you berate yourself? Just what is going on inside your head?

Think back carefully to the last few times you had an issue with food.

Your inner parent might have been saying:

“You shouldn’t waste food”
“Have a sweetie it will make you feel better”
“Go away and eat some chocolate on the Motorway”
“You’re a greedy pig”

Your inner adult might have been saying:

“You would have to eat 20 Magnums to gain 1lb”
“One slice of chocolate cake has 300 calories”
“Lentils are a good source of protein”

Your inner child might have been saying:

“Yum, yum. I want it now”
“I hate vegetables”
“I feel fat so I mustn’t eat”
“I deserve a treat”

Think carefully and write down your answers if it helps.

Part 2

Think back over your childhood. Do you have any food related memories? Think carefully and write down the answers that come to mind if it helps.

Here are some useful questions to help prompt your memories:

Were you forced to eat everything on your plate as a child?
Were you ever made aware of food shortages e.g. the starving children of Africa?
Were you ever told that certain foods are good for you?
Were you ever rewarded with food treats?
Did you parents eat between meals?
Were you given special foods when you were ill?
Did you ever sneak food as a child?
What about your mother – did she enjoy cooking? Who did she cook for? How did she feed herself? (Last in line?) What does that tell you about how she felt about herself?
Family mealtimes – did you eat together? How was the atmosphere?

Explore your memories and images that these questions bring to your awareness. What have you come to understand about yourself and your relationship with food through this exercise?

Perhaps you can talk to your siblings to discover more of your family’s food script.

If you found this lesson valuable then others might too. Please feel free to share it on Facebook or Twitter etc.

This it the first post in our mini-course, ‘Nine Strategies to Stop Binge Eating’.

There’s a complimentary coaching assignment at the bottom of each post to help mobilize you into action

In this first lesson we’ll be looking at what you need to eat to begin to stop binge eating.

Strategy 1: Control your Binge Eating with Optimum Nutrition

It’s a paradox but you need to eat your way out of a weight or eating problem. This bit is crucial! I won’t work with clients who don’t make a real effort to rehabilitate their nutrition as it is so difficult to get results otherwise.

Once you start dieting, comfort eating, or bingeing your physiology is sent way out of control and it can make it nearly impossible for you to resist urges and cravings, particularly for sugar or starchy carbohydrates. Further, this kind of eating actually makes you crave sugar and starchy carbohydrates!

Put simply here’s why:

Foods that are high in sugar (e.g. chocolate, biscuits, sweets) or refined carbohydrates (e.g. white rice, pasta and bread) are digested very quickly. A lot of glucose is produced, our blood sugar levels rise rapidly and the pancreas releases insulin to remove glucose from the blood.

But…a rapid rise in blood sugar can cause the pancreas to release too much insulin. Blood sugar levels then fall rapidly until the level is too low.

Low blood sugar levels can lead to a wide range of symptoms. Since we do not enjoy these symptoms (fatigue, poor concentration, mood swings, depression, confusion, forgetfulness, irritability, insomnia, headaches, shakiness), we often reach for something to give us a lift and increase blood sugar levels again quickly e.g. more chocolate, biscuits, cakes, and fizzy drinks.

How and what you need to eat to stop binge eating

The solution is really very simple: eat three nutritionally balanced meals and two protein and carbohydrate rich snacks each day. Always eat breakfast. Avoid refined carbohydrates.

Keeping a blog allows you to see just how people find you online. That is, what search terms people type into the search engines to arrive at your blog, such as ‘find inner pace and stop binge eating’.

Today, someone used this phrase to find this site and reading it touched me and reminded me of why I work as a coach helping to free women from emotional eating.

Their search, ‘find inner peace and stop binge eating’ is a simple phrase but one in which lies a ton of heartache and anguish. It denotes a life only half lived and one that is wrapped up in turmoil and perhaps self-loathing. It is certainly one that is nutritionally unbalanced.

So what are the causes of binge eating and how do we stop it? Well, the phrase itself allows us some insight into part of the problem. Binge eating can be a response to a lack of ‘inner peace’ where we use food to assuage our feelings, to take the edge off of our emotions, to numb us into unfeeling.

Solutions: 3 Ways to Find Inner Peace and Stop Binge Eating

I don’t believe that there is any one solution to stopping binge eating. Rather, there are numerous areas in our lives that we need to deal with along with changing our behaviours, habits, and nutritional status.

Below you can find three ways you can begin to find inner peace and stop binge eating:

1. Find a passion in life
Finding something to be passionate about can reach us at a deep level. Once this source of unfulfilment has been filled then we will stop turning to food to fill the chasm within us.

2. Learn how to deal with your stress
Stress is a major factor in binge eating. Not only does stress upset our blood sugar and help to cause cravings but we also seek to soothe the tension with food. Learning strategies to deal with stress can be very effective in reducing binge eating.

3. Begin to understand your feelings
Often we mask our feelings, such as anger, resentment, guilt, and shame, with food so it is important to begin to explore those feelings and learn where in our past their source lays.

Once we do this it can lead to an understanding of how we experience them emotionally and physically. Only then can we begin to break the food and feeling nexus find inner peace and stop binge eating.

Along with dealing with the emotional side that causes binge eating it is also important to deal with the nutritional imbalances that also cause cravings and binge eating.

So you think that you comfort eat and it’s a bit of a problem – stops you losing the weight that you just can’t shift. But when does this ‘comfort eating’ become a problem and what is it really all about?

Well comfort eating or emotional eating, and this is my personal view, encompasses a whole range of problems that people have with food and can be a fairly innocuous nibble of a biscuit when you’re feeling a bit tired to constantly nibbling away when you’re feeling anxious and even wholehearted binges when your self-esteem has been knocked down another peg, possibly even followed by purging.

We all comfort eat to some extent, we are all emotional eaters. Anyone who says that they don’t eat for emotional reasons is self-deluded. It’s just that for some of us, emotional eating can make us overweight and, in its most sinister form, very ill.

We’re programmed from birth to experience food as comforting but in some of us this need for food becomes a way of assuaging feelings of emotional discomfort and can become a real issue. The problem is that turning to food can never really give you relief from your problems, it only masks them, and unfortunately it can in turn lead to an increased dependence on using food for comfort! Eating food for comfort becomes a vicious circle both emotionally and physically.

Emotional eating takes on different forms for different people but perhaps you recognise some of the ways that people think about their emotional eating problem:

• “I feel out of control with food”
• “I’m addicted to chocolate/biscuits”
• “Even when I’ve had enough I can’t stop eating”
• “I eat huge amounts of food in a short space of time”
• “I eat whether I’m sad/lonely/angry even when I’m not hungry”
• “I constantly pick and nibble at food”
• “I go backwards and forwards to the cupboards/fridge nibbling food”
• “I’m always on a diet”
• “I get cravings for food”
• “If I eat one I have to eat them all”

Some of the forms of comfort eating in its more extreme form are:

Compulsive eating

Nibbling, picking, going backwards and forwards to the fridge but never feeling satisfied; even having just one chocolate bar too many but feeling guilty and worried about food. Compulsive eaters may say “I am not sure I have an eating disorder, perhaps I am just greedy” but they need just as much help as everyone else who struggles with control of food.

Binge Eating

This involves repeated episodes of uncontrolled overeating large amounts of food, often in secret, which are not accompanied by purging but which lead to a great deal of shame and guilt. People may binge on any kind of food or specific foods like chocolate, biscuits or cereal. Binge eating feels for many people as if they have been “taken over” by someone else.

Bulimia Nervosa

Bulimia Nervosa is condition in people of normal or excess weight where there is recurrent binge or overeating followed by harmful and dangerous weight control practices to prevent weight gain. These practices include using laxatives or diuretics, vomiting, detoxing, slimming pills and excessive exercise. There is also an over-preoccupation with and concern about body weight and shape.

The good news is that even these more extreme forms of comfort eating can be treated successfully with the right knowledge and support.

Got Cravings? Eat Food To Boost Your Mood

If you suffer from cravings, overeating, comfort eating or emotional eating then it’s likely that you’re sometimes a little moody and you need to concentrate on eating food to boost your mood.

For one reason or another your serotonin levels aren’t what they should be which causes your mood to swing about and make you feel pretty miserable and this is where eating food to boost your mood can really help.

The recipe below is not only delicious, nutritious, and easy to prepare but it will help you to balance your blood sugar, lose weight, and improve your mood!

Eating Food to Boost Your Mood Gives You Tons of Energy Too

Eating food to boost your mood is a clever way of raising your serotonin levels and if your meals are as healthy as this one you’ll not only reduce cravings but have tons more energy too.

Not bad going – but this should be the case with anything you eat really.

Recipe

1 medium sweet potato
1/4 red cabbage
1 medium tomato
1/2 red pepper
1/2 yellow pepper
2 good tbs cottage cheese

For the dressing:

1 1/2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
3/4 tsp dried oregano
Freshly ground black pepper

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 175-210 degrees C
2. Prick skin of potato and place in the oven
3. Bake for 50 minutes or until soft

For the salad:

1. Chop peppers, tomato, and red cabbage and place into a bowl
2. Drizzle with the dressing (the remainder can be saved in the fridge)

Once the potato is soft it can be sliced and topped with the cottage cheese. Serve with the salad and enjoy!

Losing weight, and maintaining that weight loss, means that you’ll need to change your habits permanently so that you don’t pile on the pounds once you’ve slimmed down!

One of the major mistakes that most dieters make is that they don’t break down old habits and replace them with new ones. Unfortunately, this means that they’ll either break their diet or just put the weight back on once they’ve reached their target.

Here are five weight loss coaching tips that you can easily incorporate into your new lifestyle to achieve weight loss success and maintain it:

1. Eat regularly throughout the day

Eating at regular intervals throughout the day will ensure your blood-sugar levels stay stable. This will help you avoid sugar cravings and their associated energy dips. Choose high-protein snacks, such as soya nuts, seeds, yoghurt or a rice cake with a little peanut butter.

2. Say no to processed food

Diet ready meals can seem like an easy option but don’t be fooled. Even those that are labelled low in fat and calories can contain high levels of sugar in the form of refined carbs, which the body will then store as fat.

3. Drink two litres of water a day

Your body needs water to function well – and that includes your metabolism. Good hydration will help you keep your digestive system working well and ensure your muscles work at an optimum level. Drink before you get thirsty – by then you’re already de-hydrated.

4. Exercise three times a week

This could be walking, going to the gym, taking an exercise class, riding your bike or gardening. Work out at your own level and push yourself a little at a time. The more you do the more energy you will have and the more you will WANT to exercise.

5. Lean red meat

Red meat has had a bad press, but lean red beef is an excellent source of iron, as well as a good source of protein and conjugated linoleic acid, which stimulates the conversion of stored fat into energy.

There’s another product on the market that claims to be a suitable part of your breakfast, and that is Kraft’s Belvita Breakfast Biscuits.

Advertised on TV using a couple of well-liked celebs these ‘biscuits for breakfast’ are seductive. I mean, who doesn’t sometimes fancy something sweet for breakfast and if the famous, slim and attractive woman on the telly eats them then they must be ok. Right?

Ok, the TV ad got my attention. A biscuit ‘designed for breakfast’ that releases its carbs over 4 hours. Sounds good. I’m all for slow release carbs – they help keep your energy levels up and reduce cravings – but could this benefit really be found in a biscuit?

So I bought a packet to check out their credentials and give them a try.

Clever Packaging and Marketing

The first thing I noticed was that they were on offer in small packs in the supermarket – a clever incentive to get you to try them.

The second thing I noticed was the packaging. I bought the ‘fruit and fibre’ biscuits which are decorated with an illustration of wheat swaying in the wind and coloured yellow as though basking in the sunshine (don’t you just feel a warm and healthy glow already?). In the bottom left is a photograph of more wholegrains and ears of grain along with fresh figs – just to let you know, if you hadn’t already realised that this product is full of good healthy stuff!

To give the impression of scientific authority a graph sits to the top left, presumably to signify how the carbs are released slowly in the body.

Below this comes a call-to-action, ‘Why not take a little time to enjoy a balanced, yet absolutely delicious Belvita Breakfast’.

According to the box, a balanced breakfast is:

• 4 Belvita Breakfast biscuits
• a low fat yoghurt
• a piece of fruit
• a cup of tea or coffee

So, is this really a balanced breakfast?

Let’s check it out and take a look at the nutritional information on the packaging.

The main claim made by the manufacturer is that the wholegrain in the biscuit allows a slow release of carbs over 4 hours. However the carbohydrate content of these biscuits is 64 grams per 100 grams of which 25 grams is sugar (compare that to porridge which has 1.1 grams of sugar per 100 grams of product and Weetabix which has 4.4 grams of sugar per 100 grams of product). The problem here is that sugar is a super fast release carbohydrate and sugar, unfortunately, apart from causing blood sugar spikes is actually toxic which is why the body tries so hard to mop up it up by sending out its insulin soldiers asap.

Out of interest I compared this nutritional information with a cupcake, namely the Fabulous Bakin’ Boys Chocolate and Orange King Cupcake.

Guess what. The Belvita Breakfast Biscuits had pretty much the same amount of sugar in them as the cupcakes: 52.3 grams per 100 grams 29.5 grams of which are sugars! Unsurprisingly a quick look at the list of ingredients shows that sugar is the second on the list and that other forms of sugar, such as dextrose also make an appearance.

So, you might just as well eat cake for breakfast!

Kraft may advise you to combine these biscuits with other ‘healthy’ food stuffs but there too lays a problem. Low fat yoghurts are not low sugar and some fruit, such as the grapes pictured as part of their ideal breakfast combo, can also be laden with sugar albeit natural sugar. If you take sugar in your tea or coffee too then you are seriously overdosing on the sticky stuff first thing in the morning and will very probably feel fatigued and hungry by mid-morning and begin craving more sugar and stimulants to keep you going.

Yes, wholegrains do release their carbohydrates more slowly but here they are combined with so much sugar that you’ll have a sugar high and your body will have to send out its insulin troops quick fast to mop up the overdose which it will then store as fat. Oh, and there are only 8g of wholegrain per 50g of biscuit!

Obesity and Type 2 diabetes are on the rise in the UK and the US in large part, I believe, because of the sugar laden products that are manufactured and masquerade as food.

Perhaps it’s time that these kinds of products carried a health warning just as cigarette packets do. After all, it’s not that long ago that cigarettes were peddled as good for your health and we all know how true that was!

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I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating here, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, especially if you have a tendency to disordered eating (and given that you’re reading this post then perhaps that might be true of you).

For many women who struggle with disordered eating breakfast is either non-existent or inadequate.

One thing that I have noticed in my work is that women who feel sluggish in the morning often struggle to get through to lunchtime without snacking on high sugar foods.

Another thing that I have noticed about these women is that they very often eat sugary cereals for their breakfast, and sometimes these cereals are, for example, Coco Pops.

So what’s the connection?

To find out if there is a correlation between what these women eat and how they feel and behave let’s take a look at what Kelloggs tell us about their product:

‘Made with chocolate and added calcium, a 30g serving of Kellogg’s Coco Pops provides at least 25% of an adult’s recommended daily allowance (RDA) of vitamins thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, vitamin B6, folic acid, vitamin B12 and 17% of an adult’s RDA of iron and calcium.’

Sounds good doesn’t it? But let’s look at the list of ingredients (I don’t know about you but I was always told to avoid food with sugar in the top three on the ingredients list):

Rice, Sugar, Chocolate (4%)(Sugar, Cocoa Mass), Fat Reduced Cocoa Powder, Calcium Carbonate, Salt, Barley Malt Flavouring, Flavouring, Niacin, Iron, Vitamin B6, Riboflavin (B2), Thiamin (B1), Folic Acid, Vitamin B12.

To break this down we have white rice, a fast release carbohydrate, sugar, a super fast release carbohydrate, and then, erm, some more sugar, cocoa products and then vitamins.

Now let’s take a look at what they tell us about the GDA (Guideline Daily Amounts) of this product remembering that the information below is relevant to a 30g serving and that if we want to eat a low sugar food, one of the keys to successful weight loss, we need to look for foods with a maximum of 10g of sugar per 100g of product:

Calories: 116 (6%) per 30g serving
Sugar: 11g (12%) per 30g serving
Fat: 0.8g (1%) per 30g serving
Saturates 0.3g (2%) per 30g serving
Salt 0.2g (4%) per 30g serving

So the sugar content of this product per 100g is about 37g which makes a 100g serving about 40% of your GDA. Let’s be honest, who actually only eats 30g of Coco Pops (I don’t know about you but a 30g serving is tiny and would not sustain me in any way, shape, or form!)? It’s more likely that you’ll fill your bowl full. Why not test it out – pour out what you’d normally eat and then weigh it – how much sugar are you eating for breakfast?

Personal View: I’m not a fan of substituting good breakfasts and snacks with cereals. I avoid eating cereals myself as I find that they just don’t keep me going and feel starving and a bit ‘wobbly’ by 9 o’clock. Eating a nutritionally dense breakfast and a healthy snack mid-morning is much better for you and much more likely to help your body become the fat burning machine that you want it to become. Sounds strange but you have to eat your way out of a weight or eating problem!

So let’s look at the evidence. From examining the information published by Kelloggs we can see that Coco Pops are high in sugar and other fast release carbohydrates. This means that on the one hand they will not keep your hunger satisfied and on the other they release too much glucose into your blood stream which means that your blood sugar will rise rapidly and then plummet leaving you feeling tired and in need of more fast carbohydrates to keep you going. This might just lead to overeating or even binge eating.

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Blood Sugar, Energy and the Glycaemic Index
It was once thought that eating an equal amount of any kind of carbohydrate would have the same effect on blood glucose levels. It is now known that different carbohydrate-containing foods do in fact have different effects on blood glucose levels.

The Glycaemic Index (GI) is a ranking of foods based on their overall effect on blood glucose/sugar levels. Glucose, the quickest carbohydrate to be absorbed, is used as the standard reference (GI 100), and other foods are measured against this. Foods which are absorbed slowly have a low GI rating, whilst foods that are more quickly absorbed have a higher rating. The nearer a food’s rating to 100, the higher its glycaemic index.

Low GI foods may have a role in helping to prevent or reduce the risk of Type 2 diabetes by reducing the peaks in blood glucose that follow a meal. There may also be benefits for weight loss; low GI foods can help control appetite by helping people feel fuller for longer. Research ahs also shown that people who eat a low GI diet have a lower incidence of heart disease and improved levels of HSL cholesterol.

Determining the GI of a meal is not just about reading the GI number for carbohydrates from a chart. The addition of fat and protein also slows down the absorption of carbohydrate. This means that chocolate has a medium GI becuse of its fat content and crisps and chips will actually have a lower GI than potatoes cooked without fat. Milk and other dairy products also have a low GI because of their high protein and fat content. So, if people only ate low GI foods, their diet could be unbalanced and high in fat. This is why it is important not just to focus on GI, but also to think about the overall balance of the diet.

Examples of GI Ratings:
To help sustain even blood sugar levels and keep energy levels high throughout the day, choose plenty of low GI carbohydrate foods with some protein and fat in every meal.

Low GI Foods for Long-Term Energy
• All pulses e.g. lentils, chickpeas, soya beans, baked beans, kidney beans, butterbeans, borlotti beans etc, barley

• Apples, dried apricots, peaches, plums, cherries, grapefruit, pears

• Avocados, courgettes, spinach, peppers, onions, mushrooms, leafy greens, leeks, broad beans, green beans, sprouts, mange-tout, cauliflower, broccoli

• Natural yoghurt, milk, nuts

Medium GI Foods for Mid-term Energy
• Sweet potatoes, boiled potatoes, yams, raw carrots, sweetcorn, peas

• All types of wholewheat pasta, oats, porridge, oatmeal biscuits, noodles

• Whole-grain rye bread, pitta, buckwheat, bulgar wheat, brown rice.

• Grapes, oranges, kiwi, mangoes, beetroot, fresh dates, figs

High GI Foods for Short-term Immediate Energy

• Glucose, sugar, honey, pineapple, bananas, raisins, watermelon

• Baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, partsnips, cooked carrots, squash, swede

• Rye and wheat crispbreads, cream crackers, wholemeal bread, rice cakes, couscous

• Cornflakes, Bran Flakes, instant oats, popcorn, muffins, crumpets

• Orange juice, dried fruit

Example of a Low GI Eating Plan

Breakfast
Use an oat-based breakfast cereal and eat some fruit

SnacksFresh fruit
Low-fat yoghurt
Popcorn
Nuts, rye bread and fruit loaf (watch amounts if trying to lose weight)

Lunch
Add baked beans to a jacket potato
Try a lentil based soup
Add variety with different breads, e.g. pitta bread and bread made with a substantial amount of mixe grains and pumpernickel
Grilled chicken, salad, rice and peas

Evening Meal
Try basmati rice, sweet potato, buckwheat, bulgur wheat, pearl barley and noodles with your meal
Include more vegetables
Include more beans and pulses (dahl)

A Word About Glycaemic Load (GL)
A GI value tells you only how rapidly a particular carbohydrate turns into sugar. It doesn’t tell you how much carbohydrate is in a serving of a particular food. The Glycaemic Load (GL) is a ranking system for carbohydrate content in food portions based on their Glycaemic Index (GI) and the portion size. You need to know both figures to understand the effect of a food on blood sugar.

For example, the carbohydrate in a carrot has a high GI. However, there is not much of it, so the glycaemic load is relatively low. Calculating GL makes it easier to relate carbohydrate intake to its health effects.

How is GL Calculated?
Glycaemic Load for a single serving of food can be calculated as the quantity (in grams) of its carbohydrate content, multiplied by its GI, and divided by 100. For example, a 100g slice serving of watermelon with a GI of 72 and a carbohydrate content of 5g (it contains a lot of water) makes the calculation of 5 divided by 0.72 = 3.6, so the GL is 3.6. A food with a GI of 100 and a carbohydrate content of 10g has a GL of 10 (10 divided by 1 = 10), while a food with 100g carbohydrate and a GI of just 10 also has a GL of 10 (100 divided by 0.1 = 10).

Low GI = 55 or less, Medium GI = 56-69, High GI = 70 or more
Low GL = 10 or less, Medium GL = 11-19, High GL = 20 or more

I’m confused! What is a Low Sugar Food?

You can be forgiven for not knowing what a low sugar food is because we are sold supposedly healthy foods by the food manufacturers and retailers of this world that are packed with sugar.

Go into any supermarket and you’ll see cereals and snack bars, for example, depicting cute squirrels and farmyard scenes that make you think that they are healthy but which are in fact packed with sugars.

You can also be forgiven for thinking that products stating that they are ‘lite’ and ‘fat free’ would be good for you. Well, unfortunately many are not and contain high levels of sugars and sweeteners – all of which help to strap you into the blood sugar roller coaster and cravings ride!

Foods with added refined sugar places glycaemic stress on the body.

We need to be aware of this marketing hype and start reading labels carefully so that we can navigate our way through the mis-information and buy the truly health-giving food.

Guidelines for Recognising Low Sugar Food

Low in fat sometimes means high in sugar, so it is important to read the entire label in order to identify whether the product is high in ‘added sugar’ or high in fat. A good rule of thumb for you might be:

• The more chemicals in the ingredient list, the more it is to be avoided.

• The higher the amount ‘of which sugars’ you find listed in the carbohydrate content, the higher the GI rating of the product.

• A low sugar food is: a food in which there is no more than 8 grams of sugar per portion
Aim for products which have less than 10 grams refined sugar per 100 grams of product.

So, for example:

Shredded Wheat has 66 grams of carbohydrate per 100 grams of which 0 is added sugar which makes it part of a healthy breakfast.

whilst

Cornflakes have 66 grams of carbohydrate per 100 grams of which 15 grams are added sugars making this a high sugar food (remember we want less than 10 grams of added sugar per 100g).

Once you’ve started to check out what you’re really buying you’ll be quite surprised at how much sugar is actually added to foods that we don’t associate with being high in sugar.