It is not for nothing if we always start the food diversification with vegetable purees, rather than with fruit compotes. This is because we know that if we start immediately with sweet foods, the baby may take (a little too) taste! Because yes, from birth, we have a innate attraction to sugar. The explanation? This is because when we eat a sweet food, glucose triggers a well-being reaction via our brain, also called “reward circuit”. In short, eating sweet is good for us and the more sweet we eat the more we want more. Addictive therefore. And this, the industrialists understood it well. As a result, to make us appreciate their dishes better, they add some (casually). Prepared meals, sauces, soups, canned vegetables … Sugar is also a good preservative. If you take a good look at their nutrition labels, you will see that they contain glucose.
The problem, you know, is that you have to avoid eating too much sugar: it’s bad for your health. Excess sugar increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, but also cardiovascular pathologies and even certain cancers. In addition, sugar promotes excess weight and tends to increase BMI. And for good reason : sugars are stored as … fats !
WHO recommends not consuming more than 50 g of sugars per day the equivalent of 10 sugar cubes.
To limit the amount of sugar, it is best to cook “home”. Thus, one can control the amount of the ingredients used. The problem is the sugars hidden in industrial and processed products. You should know that sugars take various names on nutritional labels: dextrose, glucose syrup, maltodextrin, starch …, starch and generally any ingredient ending in “ose” or “ide”.
To help you, we have used a sugar square equivalence, knowing that one square is equivalent to 5 grams of sugar.
The main sugars present in our food
- the glucose is present in most sweet tasting plant products (fruits, honey, some vegetables).
- the fructose is very widespread in nature, in fruit in particular and in many vegetables. It is present in the inulin of the roots or tubers of certain plants (artichoke, onion, chicory, Jerusalem artichoke).
- the sucrose (“table sugar” in common parlance) is made up of a unit of glucose linked to a unit of fructose.
Lactose and galactose are sugars naturally present in dairy products.
Read also :
- Test: are you addicted to sugar?
- 9 signs you’re eating too much sugar
- 7 ways to spot processed foods
- Diet: diet coke, normal or zero coke?
