Rules of thumb... and yogurt.
Nov. 18th, 2008 01:11 pmThis 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.
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.
Sugar addiction
Date: 2008-11-19 03:00 am (UTC)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. :)