If you had no idea what nutritious food was and only had a supermarket as a guide, you may be forgiven for naively thinking that the snack food aisle must fit the bill given the prominence supermarkets give to soft drinks, biscuits, chocolate and chips. The snack food aisle stands out like a neon sign, and it is one of the first things you see when walking into a supermarket. Unfortunately for a lot of us, we stock up big from this aisle. The occasional snack is perfectly fine, but if you consume these every day, you will have some serious health problems. Those problems can manifest themselves quite quickly. But is it even possible to avoid sugar in today’s world?
The snack food aisle is an obvious example of pushing foods with high added sugar content. Another obvious example would be fast food. What is not so obvious is that sugar is added to virtually all the food we eat to enhance the flavor. From this respect, it can be quite difficult to avoid sugar since it appears in even the most unlikeliest of foods, like sliced bread for example. The only real way to avoid sugar is to stick to fresh food. You may not get a 100% success rate, but you’ll be about 98% there if you cut out snacks and processed foods. At the very least, your body and waste line will thank you for it!
I will never forget the time I decided to cut out soft drinks in favor of water over a decade ago. The initial period was hard to get through because the water didn’t taste good. But after a few weeks, I left the sugary sweetness of soft drinks behind. I still have the odd soft drink on occasion, but I find that the hit of sugar doesn’t agree with my system anymore, and as such, I only tend to have a small glass in any one sitting. I also feel a lot healthier too!
If you decide you want to avoid sugar, one thing to note is not to be so afraid of it that you stop eating food with natural sources of sugar, such as fruit. Natural sources of sugar are part of a normal, balanced diet. It only becomes a problem if you have too much of it, which applies to just about anything you eat. And if you can stay away from refined, processed sugar, it’s so much better.
Could You Avoid Sugar If You Tried?
Image Credits: [D.D. & Sons] [The Reluctant Eater]
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