Cutting Down on Sugar

Ana Holland with the Texas A&M Agriculture Extension has been teaching classes on Nutrition at the Los Frensos Memorial Park on Friday’s at 9:30am. This past week she shared an interesting way to bring awareness on the amount of sugar we consume when drinking Coke products. She suggests considering the amount of sugar packets each container of Coke has before drinking it.

 

To figure the amount of sugar packets in each container of Coke we’ll start by understanding each packet of sugar contains one teaspoon or about 4 grams of sugar. Next we’ll need to find the total grams of sugar per container on the nutrition label on your Coke product. Divide the total grams of sugar by 4. A 20 ounce bottle of Coke contains 65 grams of sugar, which means a 20 ounce bottle of Coke contains over 16 packets of sugar!

Daily Allowance
Health professionals recognize it’s ok to treat yourself once in a while with an indulgent snack. This is why the American Heart Association (AHA) put together a maximum intake allowance for sugar. According to the AHA women should have no more than 6 teaspoons of sugar per day, which is 25 grams of sugar. Men can have no more than 9 teaspoons of sugar per day, which is 38 grams of sugar.

No matter your gender a single 20oz bottle of Coke goes over the maximum sugar allowance for the day. Because Coke is so high in sugar and offers no health benefits to our bodies ideally we should attempt to remove it from our diets all together but for some that option is just not that easy.

An Alternative
Here are a few ways you can cut soda out of your diet little by little. Start by cutting out every other soda for carbonated water. Mix carbonated water with a splash of cranberry juice, orange juice or lime. This will drastically reduce the amount of sugar in your diet. As you adjust to the taste, eventually you might consider drinking carbonated water in place of soda all the time.
To consume caffeine without the added sugar try having a glass of unsweetened iced tea, herbal tea or black coffee.

Resources: American Heart Association; Texas A&M Agriculture Extension

Attend one of the FREE exercise programs offered by the City of Los Fresnos at Los Fresnos Memorial Park Monday – Friday at 8:30 am and Monday and Wednesday at 5:30pm.

For more information contact Christine De La Rosa, Los Fresnos Community Health Worker at 956-407-3348 or email at [email protected] or Los Fresnos City Hall at 956-233-5768.