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How to reduce your sugar consumption? A nutritionist gives us her advice
FOOD – Fruit juices, sodas, biscuits, sandwich bread… Sugar is omnipresent in our diet. “Overall, the French, like many Westerners, consume too much sugar”, believes Sophie Janvier, dietician and nutritionist.
A finding supported by the national food safety agency (Anses) which recommends do not consume more than 100 grams of total sugars per day and no more than one sugary drink. According to ANSES, 20 to 30% of French people have sugar intakes above this recommendation.
So how do you reduce your consumption? Sophie Janvier, who wrote “The Gentle Method for Better Eating” (ed. Leduc), shares two methods from his book.
“The policy of small steps”
Above all, the nutritionist reminds us that we must avoid “all or nothing”. Sweet products are part of the pleasure, “the sweet taste is innate in babies”, she recalls. The idea, for her, is not to ban any sweet products, but rather “to learn to eat it in moderation”.
It is in this spirit that Sophie Janvier recommends her first method: “sell sugar at -20%”. The idea? Reduce your sugar consumption by 20%. “I am for the policy of small steps, that is to say not to set too ambitious objectives to, at least, try to keep them” she comments.
Concretely, it is a question of reducing its consumption of sugar a little bit, at each stage of the daily life. “If I put sugar in my coffee, instead of putting two pieces, I’ll put one and a half”, details the nutritionist. When you buy industrial cakes, look at the nutritional data and the amount of sugars listed behind the box and try to find other cakes that are a little less sweet. The sugars to observe in the list of ingredients on foods are glucose, fructose and sucrose. On this subject, ANSES warns: “Sugars are also present in foods under other names, such as invert sugar, glucose and fructose syrups. »
When you prepare a cake or other pastry, you can also reduce the sugar content of the recipe by 20%. “There is no risk of distorting the recipe”, believes Sophie Janvier. Of course, the end result will be less sweet, but “it holds up” according to the nutritionist.
The objective of this method? “Getting out of the habit of sugar little by little, so that we need less of it in a strong way. »
“21 days without added sugar”
The second method requires much more effort. This involves eliminating all added sugars from your diet for 21 days.
“There is a little difficult side, you can have a feeling of lack during the first weekadmits Sophie Janvier. But it’s a bit like the ‘dry January’, it allows us to become aware of the place of sugar in our lives. »
It is therefore a question of eliminating sugary foods from your diet. Be careful, if for certain products, such as sodas, candies or cookies, the choice may be obvious, sugar is often hidden in other foods as well. To sort out and know which ones to eliminate during this period, the nutritionist advises once again to read the list of nutritional values on the packaging. If, in a product which should not normally be sweetened, there is more than 5 g of sugar per 100 g, it is because“we are already being made fun of”. But if a plain yogurt has 4 to 5 g of sugar, ” this represents the amount of lactose, the natural sugar in milk,” she explains, so it’s not added sugar.
At the end of these three weeks without added sugars, you have to do a little “with” to see what has been the easiest and hardest part of these changes. “The idea is to continue what was easy to change and, for what was more difficult, to reintroduce it into our diet but in a moderate way, always with this 20% method”, she explains.
For both methods, the nutritionist also warns against sugar substitutes. According to her, “be careful with sweeteners”, consumption of which is associated with an increased risk of cancer, according to Inserm. They are therefore to be monitored on the labels of products in the supermarket – here is a list to help you find them.
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