Over on the good old BBC today, slightly buried, is an article about parents being urged to get the free sugar app from change4life to check the sugar in your products. It works by scanning the barcodes on products and telling you how many sugar cubes or grams of sugar in that product.
Public Health England say that young children are eating three times …yes THREE …more than their sugar limit.
Its been widely shouted that a can of cola contains NINE cubes of sugar and a chocolate bar about SIX cubes. But that means diddly squat unless you know how much is in a sugar cube and how many should you be having a day.
[box type=”info”] One sugar cube = about 4 g of sugar = a teaspoon of sugar. So if you just made a cuppa and put two teaspoons of sugar in thats 8 g or 2 cubes . [/box]
- 4 to 6 year old daily limit is 5 sugar cubes or 19g.
- 7 to 10 year old limit is 6 sugar cubes or 24 g
- 11 and over the limit is 7 cubes or 30 g.
Wondering about yourself as an adult how much sugar you should be eating ? (Oh and these are all limits not goals to aim up to) Its the 30g or 7 cubes. If your a 2 spoons sugar in your cuppa person then 4 cuppas and your over your limit. BUT that doesn’t take into account anything else you eat or drink in the day.
The app helps but you need to be food label savvy. Read the labels. Looks for ‘carbohydrates ( of which sugars)’ thats the number you want to look at. As a quick guide ….
[box type=”info”]
- More than 22.5g per 100g its bad
- 5g or less per 100g is low. [/box]
Its not just the cola and the chocolate though. Something for you to think on……Special K that you merrily eat in the morning because you’ve been told its healthy? In 1978 it had 9.6g sugar per 100g …so ok but not brilliant. If you check the packaging now in 2016 and its sneakily gone up to 17g per 100g. Didn’t shout about that bit in the adverts did they
Leave a Reply