Page 212 - How to Be a Conscious Eater - Making Food Choices That Are Good for You

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LIMITING ADDED SUGAR

he final entry in our log of sugar-related “good intention,
wrong abstention” is taking sugar avoidance to such
Textremes that you miss out on some of life’s greatest
pleasures.
The biggest problem with added sugars in the American diet
is the ubiquity in the food supply. An estimated three-fourths
of all packaged foods have had sugar added by manufacturers.
In turn, our palates have grown so primed for sweetness that
we require greater and greater amounts of sweet to truly taste
it. If you’ve ever experimented with a no-added-sugar rule for
yourself, you’ll notice after just a week how incredible a ripe,
fresh tomato tastes, or that biting into a grape provides an
explosion of satisfying sweetness. Eating a peach can be pure
bliss, and never before had you thought of carrots as candy.
Reacquainting your taste buds with the natural sweetness
from whole foods, especially fruits and vegetables, is one of
many great reasons to seriously drop your added-sugar intake.
But in doing so, I urge
you to not go off the deep
end. It doesn’t have to be
all or nothing to reap the
majority of the benefits.
For a more sustainable
approach, channel your
energy toward catching
the irksome ways added
sugar has crept into foods
we wouldn’t expect—from

Stuff that Comes from Factories 201

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