Sally71
Well-Known Member
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Parent of person with diabetes
My daughter has brought home one of those yellow "Change 4 Life" packs which is called "Let's Get Sugar Smart" which makes for quite amusing reading! Basically trying to tell you to swap all obviously sugary food and drinks for less sugary alternatives. Which does make sense, and for most people is probably good advice; but knowing what we know there are some dodgy claims in there!
E.g. You should swap a cake (looks like chocolate chip muffin, but it's only a cartoon drawing with no indication of size, and apparently contains the equivalent of 5 lumps of sugar) for "fruit, cut up veg, plain rice cakes, fruited teacake, toast or bagel". Erm, fruited teacake?! Can't imagine there would be very much less carbs in that!
Also, you should swap a 30g bowl of sugary cereal (2lumps) for plain cereal e.g. Porridge, plain wholewheat biscuit cereal or plain shredded whole grain. Well that makes some sense, but what constitutes a "sugary" cereal? My daughter has been eating plain Rice Krispies for the last few days, which aren't obviously sugary (and no, we don t add any!) and now we've got the Libre we can see that they have been causing massive spikes up to 15 which then take most of the morning to come back down again! She has switched to mini Weetabix this morning so it will be interesting to see what they do. She does like plain porridge too, and I find that a right pain to bolus for, we have to extend it by at least an hour and a half in order to avoid hypos, so can't wait for her to have that again now we can really see what's going on between meals!
What also caught my eye was the statement " you don't need to worry about the sugar in plain milk, plain yogurts and whole fruit and veg as this isn't added sugar." Bah - but it's still sugar!! As far as your body is concerned there is no difference! OK so eating an apple is better than eating a cake, but if you are worried about your total daily intake then you still need to include fruit, surely. Things like raisins are little sugar bombs!
And of course it completely fails to point out that ALL carbs turn to sugar in your body and therefore anything bread/fruit/cereal based needs to be treated with caution if you are really worried about it.
It does make some useful points about why too much sugar is bad for you, and that fruit juices contain loads of sugar and should be limited to 150ml a day and that it's better to eat whole fruit than drink the juice, so I suppose as a starting point for the uninitiated it isn't bad. Perhaps I'm being just a tad too pedantic... Daughter got very cross though, and said when she's old enough she wants to speak to someone about it! 😱 😛
E.g. You should swap a cake (looks like chocolate chip muffin, but it's only a cartoon drawing with no indication of size, and apparently contains the equivalent of 5 lumps of sugar) for "fruit, cut up veg, plain rice cakes, fruited teacake, toast or bagel". Erm, fruited teacake?! Can't imagine there would be very much less carbs in that!
Also, you should swap a 30g bowl of sugary cereal (2lumps) for plain cereal e.g. Porridge, plain wholewheat biscuit cereal or plain shredded whole grain. Well that makes some sense, but what constitutes a "sugary" cereal? My daughter has been eating plain Rice Krispies for the last few days, which aren't obviously sugary (and no, we don t add any!) and now we've got the Libre we can see that they have been causing massive spikes up to 15 which then take most of the morning to come back down again! She has switched to mini Weetabix this morning so it will be interesting to see what they do. She does like plain porridge too, and I find that a right pain to bolus for, we have to extend it by at least an hour and a half in order to avoid hypos, so can't wait for her to have that again now we can really see what's going on between meals!
What also caught my eye was the statement " you don't need to worry about the sugar in plain milk, plain yogurts and whole fruit and veg as this isn't added sugar." Bah - but it's still sugar!! As far as your body is concerned there is no difference! OK so eating an apple is better than eating a cake, but if you are worried about your total daily intake then you still need to include fruit, surely. Things like raisins are little sugar bombs!
And of course it completely fails to point out that ALL carbs turn to sugar in your body and therefore anything bread/fruit/cereal based needs to be treated with caution if you are really worried about it.
It does make some useful points about why too much sugar is bad for you, and that fruit juices contain loads of sugar and should be limited to 150ml a day and that it's better to eat whole fruit than drink the juice, so I suppose as a starting point for the uninitiated it isn't bad. Perhaps I'm being just a tad too pedantic... Daughter got very cross though, and said when she's old enough she wants to speak to someone about it! 😱 😛
The nutrition panel says that each tub contains 48g carbs -- IIRC that's equivalent to 12 lumps/teaspoons of sugar. 
