How Much Sugar is in That??

   This post is about sugar. I love sugar! It's yummy. There's white sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon sugar, etc. But, despite it's yumminess, unfortunately, it's also bad for you. Bad for your teeth, bad for your body, bad for your heart. And this isn't news. There are a lot of articles and studies about it going back years and years. Here's a few:

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1983542,00.html
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/HeartDiseaseNews/story?id=8399251
http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/106/4/523

I try to talk to the kids about nutrition - you know, throw in some tidbits here and there about what constitutes a healthy diet, what foods are good choices and what aren't. And even if we don't always succeed at making those good choices, just having that knowledge is a step in the right direction. It's not always easy these days to eat healthy what with the prevalence of convenient, ubiquitous, sugar-laden foods and drinks. And on top of that I really enjoy baking. That can wreak havok on a healthy diet! But there is always room for a little junk food - as long as we don't get carried away. Moderation is the key and I try to convey that.

So the other day I decided to put things into perspective a little bit, I took this bottle of soda that Sweet Pea likes to occasionally enjoy and put it on the table. This pretty typical 16 oz bottle of soda has 64 grams of sugar. Ok, so 64 grams. Great. What does that mean? Is that a lot? Just how much is that?

So next to it I put a bowl. And in that bowl I put the same amount of white table sugar that is in that soda. 64 grams of sugar. At 4 grams per teaspoon, that's 16 teaspoons of sugar, or 1/3 cup. That's a lot of sugar! Sweet Pea's eyes got wide.

The boys weren't quite as impressed. They don't yet have the frame of reference to recognize if that's a lot or not. But if I do things right, they will. They will know what things are healthy and which aren't, even if they don't always act upon it. Knowledge is the first step, right?

Even this much smaller can of soda has 39 grams of sugar. That's a lot of sugar! (and the perspective in this photo makes it look like even more! :)

I also stumbled across this site recently which shows you just how much sugar is in a variety of foods and beverages. It's an eye-opener. Check it out.

Quack!