Sugar-proofing your kitchen
Make your kitchen sugar-proof by reading this article. Is your child eating too much sugar? View a list of Peanut butter and juice are among the foods with hidden sugars.
Do you really know how much sugar your child is ingesting? You may be avoiding the obvious sugars but it’s the not-so-obvious sugars in your kitchen that add up and also affect your kids’ health at the end of the day:
Peanut butter
A serving of peanut butter contains nearly 1 Tsp of sugar. Most of us wouldn’t allow our kids to sprinkle a teaspoon of sugar on their toast yet that’s exactly what you’re doing if your peanut butter isn’t sugar-free.
Fruit juice
1/2 cup of fruit juice can contain as much as 3 teaspoons of sugar even if it’s 100% pure. There is nothing nutritional about fruit juice – eat real fruit instead. If your child won’t drink water, continue to dilute the fruit juice until you have 99% water and 1% juice.
White bread
A slice of white bread contains nearly 1/2 teaspoons of sugar. If your child is eating 4 slices per day with peanut butter on each slice that’s nearly 6 teaspoons of sugar. It’s always a good idea to limit bread intake but if your child does eat bread, stick to wholegrain or multi-grain gluten-free.
Honey
Whilst raw honey may have health properties, it still counts as sugar at the end of the day. If your child is having 5 tsp of honey during the day to sweeten up milk or tea, that’s pretty much the same as 5 tsp of sugar. Limit honey to 1 teaspoon per day.
Popular maize flour & soy based “smart foods”
Kids and adults may love the taste of these cleverly marketed cereals, but each serving contains 1 1/2 teaspoons of sugar, not to mention a tiny amount of protein in comparison to carbohydrate content. Sadly, there is no healthy box cereal. Eggs win hands down as a breakfast option but if you prefer to go for a cereal, try a home-made granola or rolled oats with some sugar-free nut butter and blueberries.