FOOD’N’MOVES: THE TRUTH ABOUT SUGAR

Trends are also about food. 
One of them is about sugar: many people buy sugar cane or coconut sugar assuming it’s lighter and healthier. Is it the truth? Absolutely not: saccharose remains saccharose, no matter how you get it.

Whole sugar cane can be used to prepare desserts, in order to create darker, more intense colors or a crunchy glaze, but from an energizing point of view is equal to refined white sugar (approximately 20 kcal per spoon).

WHO recommends not to go beyond 10% of loose sugar on the total amount of the daily calories, suggesting 5% as a limit (this estimate does not consider sugar that is naturally present in fruits and milk). Considering that a small spoon should keep like 4-5 g of sugar, a 2000 kcal diet should not go beyond 5 small spoons in a day!

Packaged foods overcome this limit easily, for example a can of cola contains almost 35 g of sugar. Of course, this can change according to individual metabolism.

At this stage, many of you may decide to substitute it with honey, but it’s sugar too, actually (with a small amount of vitamins and mineral salts). Under the age of one, it could be even dangerous, for its eventual contamination with botulin spores! In the end, what should we do? Should we avoid eating cookies and cakes for the rest of our lives? No, we should not. Of course we can keep doing that, as long as sweets are few and related to a healthy diet. Balance is the key of it all!