Avoiding Added Sugars

Reduce  Added Sugars in Your Diet:
Added sugars are found in sweet snacks, beverages and processed foods, usually to enhance the flavor, although not all processed foods with added sugar actually taste very sweet. Eating too many added sugars adds extra calories to your diet that can lead to weight gain, and studies show that they increase your risk for both diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
This doesn't mean that you have to avoid all sugars; foods that contain natural sugars can be part of a healthy diet. Milk and unsweetened yogurt contain lactose, or milk sugar, and fruits and vegetables contain fructose (fruit sugar). These foods are also rich in nutrients, while foods high in added sugars tend to be less nutritious 'junk' foods.
The World Health Organization suggests that no more than 10% of your total daily calories come from added sugar. The American Heart Association recommends that women eat less than six teaspoons of added sugar every day, and that men should not eat more than nine teaspoons of added sugar. That's about 100 and 150 calories for women and men, respectively. Maybe that doesn't sound like much, but if you drop 100 calories every day, you'll lose about ten pounds in one year.
Most extra sugar is added when foods are made, rather than at the table, so it's important to know how to recognize how much is in the foods you buy.
Packaged foods have Nutrition Facts labels that will state how many grams of sugar are in each serving of the food product. Six teaspoons of sugar (and about 100 calories) is close to 25 grams of sugar, and nine teaspoons of sugar (about 150 calories) is about 37 grams.
Keeping track of your added sugar, as well as your nutrition in general, is easy when you join Calorie Count -- a free service of About.com. You enter the foods you eat, and Calorie Count shows you how much sugar you've eaten.

High In Added Sugar

Sweetened soft drinks, pastries, cookies, candy bars, syrups, jams, jellies, and pre-sweetened breakfast cereals are all obvious sources of added sugars. However, other foods such as salad dressings, flavored yogurts, instant oatmeal and fruit smoothies can also be high in added sugars. Look at the ingredients list for these following words:

• Sugar
• Brown sugar
• High fructose corn syrup
• Corn sugar
• Syrup
• Corn syrup
• Fructose
• Glucose
• Sucrose
• Raw sugar
• Turbinado sugar
• Honey

If any of these forms of sugar on the ingredients list, be sure to look at the Nutrition Facts label to determine how much added sugar is lurking in each serving.

Taming Your Sweet Tooth

If you love your sweets, it might be difficult to give up the added sugars at first. Swap out your cookies and cake for fresh fruit and berries, and drink sparkling water or diet soft drinks. Add fresh fruit to plain yogurt and cereal.
You don't have to give up added sugars completely -- you can still have one small piece of chocolate every day, or one cup of soda, or maybe even a small ice cream treat. Just be sure to watch your portion sizes.