FEW people realise just how much sugar we consume in everyday food. So I was really excited when I came across this Jamie Oliver sugar in food video the other day because it explains precisely how many unnecessary calories we’re putting into our bodies
all day long.Have a good think about how many of these foods you and your family are consuming each day.
Scary, isn’t it? Even though I write and advise people every day about how sugar affects their wellbeing this Jamie Oliver sugar in food video certainly brought it all home to me in a very hard-hitting way.
You can find out more about sugar in food and drink by checking out some of my blog posts: More sugar in ready meals than in Coke;
sugar in drinks kills 184,000 a year;
sugar’s killing the world but who cares?
The harm all this sugar is doing to us is well-documented. Australian researcher David Gillespie’s book Sweet Poison talks about how he decided to stop eating sugar and lost six stone without dieting in a year.
Back the Jamie Oliver sugar in food campaign
In an interview in the Daily Telegraph he explains: “You are breaking an addiction, so you need to stop consuming all sources of the addictive substance. They are all hard to give up because they are addictive – but they are all easy to give up once you understand what you are doing and why.
“Your palate adjusts significantly and quickly when you delete sugar. You can suddenly experience a whole range of flavours that either you didn’t know existed before or were muted by the presence of sugar.
“One thing people often remark on after they’ve been off sugar for a month or so is that suddenly they can smell it. They can tell you where the confectionery aisle or the breakfast cereal aisle is in a strange supermarket by smell alone.”
Gillespie is worried about the hidden fructose lurking in your ready-meal. “Very few of us are making decisions about the sugar we eat,” he says.
“The average Briton is consuming more than a kilo – 238 teaspoonfuls – a week, but I bet they’d be flummoxed accounting for more than a few teaspoons of that. Sugar is deeply and thoroughly embedded in our food supply.”
So give thanks for the Jamie Oliver sugar in food campaign, which I give my full personal backing to, which is helping the world to understand what it is doing to itself.