Eat less sugar: 12 tips to get there

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3/12 –

Replace sugar in your recipes
The first tip to reduce sugar in your recipes is to replace it with natural solutions: a mashed banana, applesauce without added sugar or dates, which have an interesting sweetening power but will help lower blood sugar.

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4/12 –

Choose simple foods
Choose raw foods as much as possible because ultra-processed foods often contain added sugars (this is the case for vegetable soups or sauces, for example). Ditto for fruit juices: drinking a glass of orange juice will cause a spike in blood sugar because the sugar arrives directly in the blood, whereas if you eat an orange, the fibers it contains and the simple fact of chewing will bring a soft and progressive energy.

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5/12 –

Replace sugar with spices
In a yoghurt, in a bowl of cottage cheese or even in a petit-suisse, the traditional white sugar is replaced by cocoa, cinnamon, anise, vanilla extract, cardamom, lemon zest. orange or lemon. You gain taste while saving calories.

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6/12 –

Turn to natural alternatives
To get rid of the sweet taste, sugar can be advantageously replaced by honey or maple syrup (full of vitamins and trace elements), agave syrup (with a low glycemic index) or even coconut sugar, rapadura or stevia.

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7/12 –

No more fruit yogurts!
Fruit yogurts are among the processed products in which there are a lot of added sugars. By comparison, a pot of plain yogurt contains 6.4g of carbohydrates (the natural lactose in milk) while a pot of fruit yogurt contains 14.8g of carbohydrates, the difference being only added sugars. The solution: cut a fruit into pieces in your plain yogurt.

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8/12 –

No sweet breakfast
The traditional baguette-butter-jam breakfast or (worse) the bowl of cereal causes a significant influx of sugar in the blood and, behind it, the mid-morning crash. To avoid it, eat a fatty and protein breakfast: wholemeal or sourdough bread, raw milk butter, boiled egg or slice of ham. This will prevent sugar cravings and mid-day compulsions.

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9/12 –

Take the time to read the labels
At the supermarket, we take the time to take a look at the nutritional composition of food. Thus, on the label, the ingredients are listed in descending order of importance: if sugar (or its derivatives: sucrose, fructose, glucose, glucose syrup, glucose-fructose syrup, dextrose, etc.) is in the lead list, we do not buy!

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10/12 –

Control your sugar cravings
A sudden craving for sugar? Quick, we pull out the secret weapon: cinnamon essential oil. This contains molecules that act on the limbic system (the area of ​​the brain in particular responsible for pleasure) and block the feeling of hunger and the desire for sweets. We deposit 1 to 2 drops on an orange peel and we calmly breathe in the perfume.

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12/12 –

Trust the glycemic index
The glycemic index (or glycemic index or GI) reflects the ability of a food to increase glycemia, that is to say the level of sugar in the blood. The weaker, the better! Thus, to reduce your sugar consumption, you will prefer rye bread (IG 45) to sandwich bread (IG 75) and apple compote (IG 35) to jam (IG 65).