We’re a nation hooked on sugar because the food industry puts profits before our health
- OPINION
With the sweet stuff now seen as the chief culprit behind our obesity crisis, Mirror columnist Fiona Phillips investigated the true cost of Britain’s sugar addiction for a new documentary. Here she gives her shocking conclusion...
As a mum of two boys I’ve been worried about the vast quantities of sugar they consume for some time. They’re now 15 and 12 so I can’t control everything they eat and I find endless empty cookie packets and energy drinks in their rooms.
And I’m not alone. For years we thought saturated fat was the food baddie because it raised cholesterol, but in the last couple of years sugar has become public enemy number one.
And yet, in all honesty, until I made this new BBC1 documentary, The Truth AboutSugar , I had no idea just how much sugar was hidden in everyday foods – or how much damage this could do to our health.
Who’d have thought that a common supermarket ready meal could contain up to a whopping 12 teaspoons of sugar? Or that you’d find another four in some cans of baked beans? Now I’m aware of this, I’m furious with food manufacturers for putting so much sugar in everyday foods.
Companies are putting profits above consumer health by making food that tastes sweet so that we buy more. This is immoral and in the long run it will cost taxpayers billions of pounds for the NHS to treat those suffering from obesity and its related problems.
Sugar may be one of life’s great pleasures – and I enjoy the odd treat as much as the next person. But there’s no getting away from the fact that we’re eating too much and putting ourselves at risk of deadly diseases such as diabetes and heart disease in the process.
Our addiction to sugar means Britons consume an incredible one million tons per year – that’s 15 teaspoons a day each, three more than the current NHS guidelines. To make matters worse, the World Health Organisation looks set to halve this recommended amount to just six teaspoons – and for good reason.
Sweet but deadly: why sugar is so harmful
As I discovered, part of what makes sugar so unhealthy stems from the way most of the sugar – called refined sugar – in our diets is manufactured. Refining sugar takes the natural sugar found in sugar cane, removes the fibre and concentrates it to become pure energy. If this energy isn’t quickly burnt off it is turned into fatty acids by your liver, which your body then stores as excess fat.
I was horrified just how quickly eating too much sugar can make you fat. The scientist I talked to explained that having just two teaspoons of sugar in three cups of tea a day for a year could cause half a stone weight gain.
When you think about all the other sugar we eat daily clearly this spells bad news for our waistlines and health.
Highly concentrated liquid sugar is particularly toxic. Indeed, many experts believe sugary drinks – which both my boys love – are the biggest problem of all when it comes to obesity. This is because in drinking them we consume so much sugar so quickly. And fruit juice can be as bad as fizzy cans. In the documentary we asked one volunteer to drink a litre carton containing the juice of 12 oranges and another volunteer to try to eat 12 whole oranges. The second lady struggled to finish more than one and a half of the whole fruits, meaning she consumed three teaspoons of sugar.
Meanwhile the first lady had no problem in drinking most of the juice – an incredible 18 teaspoons of sugar. We think of juice as healthy, but take away the natural fibre and
concentrate it and it becomes just another high-sugar food.
concentrate it and it becomes just another high-sugar food.
Our research also found that consuming a sugary drink before eating actually makes you likely to eat larger amounts of food.
We also discovered why having some sugar makes you crave more calories using bran scanners. They revealed how sugar activates the reward centres of the brain. We’re basically biologically programmed to seek out as many high-calorie, sweet foods as possible. This was vital in ancient times when food was in short supply. But today we’re surrounded by cheap, convenient sugary foods and our evolutionary instincts aren’t helping us to eat sensible amounts.
Of course, too much of most foods will make you fat but sugar really is different because our body craves it. It doesn’t fill us up and we’re hard-wired to binge on it.
Hidden sugar: why we eat more than we think
Finding out how much sugar you’re really eating can become a superhuman challenge because it’s hidden in so many places you wouldn’t imagine.
I was shocked how many of our seemingly savoury supermarket foods contain surprisingly high levels of sugar – for example there are four to five teaspoons in a can of
tomato soup.
tomato soup.
Even “healthy” drinks such as smoothies can contain your entire recommended daily sugar allowance in a single glass.
But why are manufacturers adding so much sugar to their products? I discovered that exacting research goes into identifying the precise amount of sugar that will appeal to consumers – the so-called “bliss point”.
These tricks make me so angry. I think we need a legal limit to the amount of sugar shop-bought food is allowed to contain. In the meantime, however, it’s down to consumers to navigate the confusing world of nutrition labels.
Since finding out more about sugar’s dangers I’m an angry supermarket shopper, stomping round the aisles, glasses on, reading every label.
Food manufacturers vary but I’m a big fan of the traffic-light system in which red means high sugar (more than 22g of sugar per 100g). Currently M&S and Sainsbury’s use this method, but I’d like to see all brands forced to take it up.
The sad truth about sugar is that it’s addictive, surprisingly common and can cause you to pile on the pounds, leading to serious health problems frighteningly quickly.
So until food manufacturers decide to reduce the sugar levels in everyday foods – or laws are brought in to enforce this – we all have to become sugar detectives, checking labels carefully and cooking from scratch wherever possible.
In other words, these days you really can’t have your shop-bought cake – and eat it.
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