Rules of thumb... and yogurt.

[elfs]

This morning, I was excessively hungry despite having had an ordinary breakfast. Since I needed to get cash for parking, I stopped by the grocery store and decided that rather than pay $2.00 for the convenience of getting my money out of an ATM (and it is merely a convenience; I don't have to keep my money in a bank, and I don't have to use the ATMs provided) I decided to buy something instead. I settled on some yogurt.

All of the yogurts at Safeway were excessively oversugared. I could not find one that wasn't: even the "light" ones made with partially artificial sweeteners still got 54.5% of their calorie count from simple sugar. The lowest sugar I could find without buying "plain" was a knockoff brand that got 79.5% of its calories from added sugar.

Now, a rule of thumb that I've tried to accept is this: if more than half the calories in a food come from simple sugars, that food is a dessert. (There are exceptions to this rule that all nutritionists accept, the most obvious of which is fresh fruit. Just eat it.) It's depressing to see just how much of what's on the shelves qualifies as dessert, and makes me wonder just how distorted my tastebuds have become over the years by a diet that made up mostly of desserts.

Comments

[shemayazi.livejournal.com]

Getting food with no added sugar of any kind is tricky and seems to require much label reading, every single time we purchase. Too often, something that was "safe" before has had substitutions made that make it no longer safe, or sugar free. Evaporated cane sugar, high fructose corn syrup, dextrose, fructose, honey, maple syrup, rice syrup, date syrup, maltose. Sugars. They seem to be the main ingredient in many cases.

[grum]

Have you noticed how many products have recently been reformulated to include MSG?

[srmalloy.livejournal.com]

Maltose at least doesn't punch your blood sugar the way simpler sugars does; it may be empty calories, but it's less bad than the others.

[codeamazon.livejournal.com]

I buy full-cream Organic yoghurt and then dress it with fruit, jam, nuts or maple syrup to my tastes. Doesn't take a lot.

My kids remain baffled about why I won't allow them to eat "healthy yoghurt!" out of little cute containers very often. I've taught them to check the sugar levels on things and they do at least often put things down without even asking.

I also have an absolute no-artificial sugar rule.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

1) I read that first as "all the youngsters at Safeway were oversugared".

2) Life is short. Eat dessert first. [On a slightly more serious note, I have found that I *can't* eat plain yogurt for breakfast, because my blood sugar levels are too low for basic reading and audio comprehension otherwise. I wish they'd break the nutritional information down farther into how much sugar is contributed by the fruit and how much is just added sugar, though.]

[shadowfey.livejournal.com]

I've taken increasingly to using Spud; I find it saves me both money and time, for organic produce and other organic items, including yoghurt. You might consider having a look, if it's something you and Omaha would find useful; if so, let me know - as an existing customer, I have a discount code which will give you money off your first handful of orders. The URL is simply spud.com.

[bldrnrpdx.livejournal.com]

Lately, almost everytime I think I've found something with low sugar content (yogurt being a prime example), it turns out to have artificial sweetner instead. Which I refuse to ingest.

[kengr]

I'm appalled at the number of products that proudly proclaim "Sugar free!" but have a high carb count. Especially the number that have most of it as "sugar alcohols".

Beside making "sugar free" worthless for diabetics and for folks watching their carbs, the sugar alcohols are known for causing things like diarhrea if you aren't very careful to limit your intake.

Sugar addiction

[rand0m1.livejournal.com]

I was doing some research for some friends of mine and ran across Sugar Addiction. I'm pulling this from memory so I may not have all the details straight, but sugar causes similar reactions in the brain as many drugs. Even if its not physical, I am certain our society has a severe mental addiction to sugar/sweeteners. Sweeteners are added to so many different foods that its almost impossible to find stuff that hasn't been sweetened.

Personally I can't stand sweet drinks. All they do is make me thirstier than I was before I drank them. Since most iced tea in restaurants and other places is either sweetened or really nasty instant stuff, all I can really stand to drink anymore is water, and that causes me to get a lot of weird looks. :)

[(Anonymous)]

At our Super Wal-Mart, all of the flavored yogurts are mostly corn syrup, but the *plain* yogurt has no sugar added. We buy the plain and blend in our own fruit. After you get used to that the corn syrup stuff is just nasty.

You can also make your own yogurt, although it is kind of a mess and bother. Last we checked, homemade cost about the same as the buying the plain stuff, so we don't do that.

Sounds like your story above was a one-off, so maybe more than you needed to know, but perhaps it will come in handy someday.