Flavored Milk, Jamie Style!

Have you ever seen this episode of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution? This is a small clip, a dramatic example, of how much sugar that's consumed in flavored milk in one week in the entire L.A.U.S.D.

One week! A whole school bus spilling over-the-top with white sugar. Okay, I'll be honest, when Richard and I first saw this we didn't believe it. I thought there must have been some TV exaggeration in there.

But, then we bought some chocolate milk and read the label. Seriously, go look at the label of your favorite flavored milk, and do the math yourself. How much sugar would you be adding to your diet by drinking one glass (sometimes two) for 5 days a week, 9-10 months out of the year?!? I know that was a constant part of my diet for all my school years. *Sigh*

Just one of those things that I have personally committed to cutting out. How about you? What's something you have consciously decided to cut back on recently?

Sugar Trip

Baked goods are my sugary downfall. It's hard for me to resist a freshly baked brownie. Baking cookies is one of my favorite pastimes. And as of late, learning new cupcake baking and frosting techniques has been extremely fun. I prefer to share the cupcakes I whip up, but plenty of them stay with me.

Cereals are another sugary downfall. Bran flakes and plain oatmeal are not the most desired tastes for me. My latest craving has been for Waffle Crisp. (12g of sugar/serving). I would hit my sugar high with just one bowl. (Good thing I haven't seen it in any grocery stores for years--or I might cave).
Another sugary downfall comes in the form of straight up candy bars. Anything from Hershey's to Theo chocolates. Heaven help me!


What is your sugary downfall?

Above Average

Oh, goodness. This isn't going so well. Although I've been doing really well at measuring out my added sugar, I haven't been reducing my sugar intake.

Here are my counts for the past few days-

Thursday: 22.5 tsp., 90 g

Friday: 24 tsp., 96 g

Saturday: 31 tsp., 124 g

My average daily sugar intake so far, seems to be around 29 tsp., or 116 g

It's the start of a new week and I have two goals for myself.
1. Reduce my daily intake this week to 19 tsp/day. This should be as simple as cutting out that extra brownie, or saying no to a cold glass of chocolate milk. Have you ever read the label on that drink?

2. Start measuring out my son's sugar intake. I've been pretty much living in denial about his sugar intake, but I'm ready to face reality here. I can positively declare my son is very sweet, inside and out.

Good vibes welcome.

Did you know?

The average American consumes 21 tsp., or 84 g, of added sugar daily? The recommended sugar intake for adult women is 5 tsp., for adult men it's 9 tsp., and for children it's 3 tsp., a day.

*source: http://www.livestrong.com/article/363283-recommended-daily-allowance-of-sugar/

Just a spoonful of sugar

So this sugar problem of ours has been eating at me for sometime--both at an individual level, and as a parent. I may look fit on the outside, but inside I feel like crap.

Richard pushed us towards a magnificent idea, a visual demonstration of our sugar intake. The next day, we would calculate the amount of sugar in the foods we ate and measure it out, teaspoon by teaspoon.

We have been rather simple in our endeavor. We don't count fruit sugar. If the food we eat has a label, we measure. If we home baked something, we did the math as accurately as we can. We learned approximately 4 grams of sugar is a teaspoon. And we were absolutely clueless as to how many teaspoons we would accumulate by the end of our day.

I must say, doing this is similar to keeping a food diary (which I find short-lived and kind of boring), but the part I like is that I become acutely aware of what I'm about to put into my body. I feel somehow more in control, more empowered. And what woman doesn't want to feel that way?

I had a cereal breakfast, a simple healthy lunch, lots of water and no snacks. Well, I would've had a Reeses cup, but Richard had eaten the rest of them so graciously "saving me the trouble of having to scoop out those teaspoons of sugar." I made tacos for dinner and lime bars for dessert. But that wasn't my downfall. You see, our dinner guests brought over brownies. A lot of brownies. And they were delicious. I am salivating just writing about them again.

So how did our first day measure up?

Richard: 50tsp., 200g (left)

Diana: 39tsp., 156g (right)

But, I realized today that I forgot to measure in servings of canned peaches (in a heavy syrup and additional sugar added to the ingredient list.) Seriously!??!

It appears this is going to be a long, educational journey.