If you have little ghosts or grand-ghouls who went trick-or-treating over the weekend, I hope you all had a happy, and safe, Halloween.
There’s nothing quite like the smile on little faces when they return from a costumed excursion loaded to the gills with candy. Even if you don’t have children of your own, you can appreciate the joy of neighborhood kids as they leave your doorstep more sugar-rich than they arrived.
As fun as it is to celebrate the holiday in this way, it’s also a good opportunity to remind ourselves of how detrimental too much sugar can be on our health. After all, Halloween is just the kick-off to a holiday season that brings plenty of sweets to the table from now until the new year has passed. Kate sent me a picture of Rowan’s and Eve’s “take” on Sunday night. It looked like they backed a truck up to Willy Wonka’s loading dock!
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Americans eat and drink too many added sugars. We consume naturally occurring sugars when we eat and drink certain foods, like fruits or milk, but added sugars are those that are added to food and beverages when they are processed or prepared.
Added sugars come in different forms, but some examples the CDC lists are brown sugar, cane juice, corn syrup, dextrose, fructose, fruit nectars, glucose, high-fructose corn syrup, honey, lactose, malt syrup, maltose, maple syrup, molasses, raw sugar and sucrose. It’s helpful in maintaining a healthy diet to look at the food and drinks you purchase and try to consume as few added sugars as possible.
When we eat added sugars, we’re getting empty calories, which means calories are contributed to our diet without any essential nutrients to give those calories nutritional value. Consuming too many added sugars makes eating healthy a difficult task, because even if we eat plenty of nutritious foods, we’re still getting too many empty calories.
An excess of sugar in our diet can lead to weight gain, obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
The most recent Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend those age 2 and older keep added sugars to less than 10 percent of their total daily calories. So, in a 2,000-calorie diet, that’s less than 200 calories (about 12 teaspoons) of added sugar. Children younger than 2 years should not be fed any added sugars.
As of 2017-2018, the average daily intake of added sugars for Americans 2 to 19 years old was 17 teaspoons, and it was the same for adults 20 and older.
So, how do we keep added sugars low in our diet?
We start by treating sweets like a treat, not a dietary staple. Let the kids enjoy their Halloween candy, but get back to fresh fruit and 100 percent juices as soon as possible. Cakes, pastries, ice cream and doughnuts are just a few examples of other foods that we want to eat sparingly.
Big culprits that often go unnoticed are sugary drinks. In fact, the CDC lists sugary drinks as the leading source of added sugars in American diets. Soda (not sugar free), fruit drinks, sports drinks, energy drinks, sweetened waters, and sweetened coffee and tea beverages all qualify as sugary drinks.
When choosing your beverage, opt for water as often as possible. Add some fresh fruit to give your water some natural flavor, and if you crave fizz, mix sparkling water with a splash of 100 percent juice.
When it comes to coffee, black is the best way to go, but at least avoid using sugar, flavored syrups or whipped cream.
The girls have enough candy now it seems to carry them through the decade … I hope they share.