Are you eating too much sugar?

It's time to discover if you have unhealthy habits when it comes to the white stuff

- DR PHILIPPA KAYE

When you hear the word ‘sugar’, you’re most likely to imagine a bowl of white, granulated sugar being spooned into tea, or the type of sugar used to make cakes and sweets. These are known as ‘free sugars’ – they’re the sugars added to foods, often to make them taste sweeter, but also to affect their texture, how long they can last on the shelf, and more.

But when it comes to sugar, it can get confusing. Some natural sugars still count as free sugars, such as those found in honey or maple syrup. Even unsweetened fruit/ vegetable juices/smoothies count. That’s because eating a whole orange means you’re getting fibre (which helps slow down the breakdown of natural sugar within the fruit), while this fibre isn’t present in a juice.

Eating too much sugar can lead to weight gain and tooth decay – so it’s these free sugars that you might want to cut down on. Try to eat no more than 30g of added sugar per day – that’s about seven sugar cubes for an adult. Children need less. Free sugars are found in cakes, biscuits, chocolate, ice cream, and many fizzy drinks and juices, as well as places where you might not expect, such as cereals, and processed and packaged foods. Instead, choose water, lower-fat milk or no-added-sugar drinks, pick unsweetened cereal and add fruit for sweetness. It’s best to swap tinned fruit in syrup to ones in juice, too.