[0:00]If you love your sweets, but you don't love how they make you feel. I'm going to show you how you can have your cake and eat it too.
[0:11]Hey everyone, I'm Rajour Dietitian Abbey Sharp and welcome back to Abby's Kitchen. Today I partnered with my sponsor Nex Sweet Allulose to share the easiest hacks to reduce your added sugar intake without giving up carbs, flavor, or let's be real, your will to live. Because we're all about satisfaction, balance, and real life eating over here, not pretending that scrambled eggs and raw cocoa powder is like a direct replacement for rich chocolate cake. But before we get into it, a very quick disclaimer that this video is for general information only and should never replace the advice of your healthcare provider or registered dietitian who knows your unique needs. Also, as with all of my tip or hack-based videos, different suggestions are going to be experienced differently by different people, just depending on your relationship with sugar and food in general. So, if one of my suggestions feels too restrictive for you or makes you feel deprived or just as like sacrilege based on the foods you want to enjoy, like O G Sweet, totally just skip that one. There are 10 tips here for a reason. So, take what resonates and leave the rest. But alright folks, to start, we need to talk about why we are even talking about cutting back on sugar in the first place. So, first of all, unlike what the carnivore charlatans might make you think, not all sugars are created equal. We are not concerned about the sugars in fruit or dairy that are bound up with fiber, protein, or healthy fats, aka the hunger crushing compounds, which help to slow down their absorption. What we are talking about here is an excess of added or free sugars because it's these naked carbs that are the ones associated with increased risk of chronic disease and weight gain. And the main reason for this is not because sugar is inherently toxic, but rather, it is just so damn easy to overeat because it is rapidly digested and absorbed and doesn't stimulate satiety hormones like hunger crushing compounds do, which ultimately contributes to overeating, visceral fat gain, hormone dysfunction, and can displace health promoting nutrients. So according to the World Health Organization, we should aim to keep added sugars to less than 10% of our total daily energy intake and ideally even below 5%. So for context, that is equivalent of two thirds of a Coke, a cup of fruit juice, two sweetened oatmeal packets, or two tablespoons of maple syrup. So based on those examples, you can probably understand why Americans on average are consuming 13 to 17% of their calories from added sugar, or around 270 to 350 calories from sugar, and that's mostly coming from sugar sweetened beverages. So let's dive into some of my personal favorite sugar swaps and upgrades for helping you get the most nutrient bang for your sweet tooth buck. So tip number one, bake with ripe mashed banana. So instead of using a full cup of sugar, try replacing half or more with mashed banana. This will slash up to 25 grams of added sugar per cup while adding fiber, potassium and extra moistness. Moist. Yep. I'm sure I've triggered a lot of folks with that word right now. All right, tip number two, seek out foods that have been sweetened with naturally occurring low or no sugar alternatives. So we've come a very long way since only having diet products sweetened with aspartame or sucralose. And we now have a lot of great natural sweeteners on the market like monk fruit and allulose. If you haven't heard of Allulose, it's a naturally occurring sweet food component found in some fruits like sugar beets, figs, and raisins. But because it moves through the digestive tract un metabolised and largely excreted, it doesn't raise blood sugars and has almost zero calories. In fact, some studies have found that consuming Allulose alone or combined with sucrose can significantly reduce the blood sugar spike. And you can now find Allulose in a lot of your kind of favorite low sugar food products on the market right now like Magic Spoon cereal or Quest brand bars or Chobani yogurt. So just as an example of how this could work, if you had a slice of pie and you wanted to turn it into a hunger crushing combo that can slow the blood sugar response. You could totally serve that pie with like an allulose based high protein Greek yogurt to help flatten the blood sugar curve. Also, Allulose is one of the most sugar-like alternative sweeteners. So you can also use it at home to add to drinks, baking, and breakfast recipes. So as you can now see, you don't have to completely eliminate sugar to see some health benefits. So for my cereal lovers, tip three is to mix a high sugar cereal with a lower sugar options. Everyone that knows me knows that I'm obsessed with sugary cereal like granola, Lucky Charms, cocoa puff, frosted flakes, like all delicious. But as I've gotten older, I just really can't with a mouthful of sugar first thing in the morning. So the hack is to start with a base of like a higher fiber, like bran flakes or bran buds, or a higher protein low carb cereal like Magic Spoon, which was sweetened with Allulose. And then add a handful of the full sugar cereal on top. This way you will slash your sugar by half or more, and you will feel fuller much longer. Bonus if you do a base of that high protein Greek yogurt. Now, moving on to tip four, for my soda lovers, try doing a low sugar kombucha or water kefir, or unsweetened iced tea, or flavored spa water instead. Yes, of course, the most obvious swap for a Coke is a diet Coke. And if you love your carb cigarette, I will never take that away from you. But personally for me, I just can't with the aspartame or sucralose sweeteners. They tend to irritate my gut and they just taste so off to me, especially against other naturally occurring sweeteners like Allulose or monk fruit. And so I've just found a lot of other really tasty ways to hydrate while still getting some flavor. So you can play around with herbal tea flavors, fruits, herbs, citrus, and make yourself a calorie-free refreshing drink. Or for something with a little bit of added sugar, kombucha or water kefir have just like 10% of the added sugar of regular soda, plus they pack in some healthy probiotics. But just make sure to read your labels carefully as not all kombuchas are created equal, and you'll ideally want to look for one with less than five grams of sugar and those live active cultures. All right, tip five for my sweet drink lovers or parents of sweet drink lovers. You can dilute your favorite chocolate milk with regular milk. I do this all the time with my kids and if you're going halveses, this will automatically cut the added sugar in half. But for bonus points, you can try using an ultra filtered milk like Fairlife to get less total sugars, fewer added sugars, and more protein per ounce, which can also help to stabilize the blood sugar response. Tip number six is to swap your jelly or jam with a homemade chia jam. And you don't even have to turn on a burner to make this. So basically I just mash up some fresh or frozen berries, add a spoonful of chia seeds, maybe a little bit of lemon juice if you want, and just let it sit in the fridge for a couple of hours to set. And this cheap and cheerful hack will cut 15 grams of sugar, while adding four grams of fiber and two grams of healthy fats per two tablespoon smear. Moving on to tip number seven, make a quick little microwave fruit compote instead of maple syrup or honey for pancakes or waffles. Listen, I'm a Canadian. It is basically my patriotic duty to love maple syrup, and I do, so I will never tell you not to enjoy maple syrup in moderation. But maple syrup is processed in the body, no different than just like white refined sugar. And so for me, starting my day with a stack of carb heavy pancakes or waffles or French toast and then drenching it all in pure liquid sugar, doesn't always feel so good. But warm fresh fruit compote, now that, that always hits. So basically, I would just like thinly slice an apple or pear, or throw a handful of berries in a dish with a little cinnamon, and just microwave that until it's soft and bubbly. And oh my gosh, this on a store-bought, like protein waffle, little Greek yogurt, a drizzle of peanut butter in there, that just totally slaps. And if you still love that drenched in syrup experience, I get it, but liquid Allulose can also be used as a sugar-free alternative. All right, moving on to tip number eight, brown everything. Okay, so what exactly does that mean? Well, you know I am a geek when it comes to food science, and browning or roasting and toasting foods in a dry high heat is a scientifically proven way to make foods taste more sweet. You hear that Rimy, I'm basically Taylor Swift. Now, this is partially due to the Maillard reaction when amino acids and natural sugars form hundreds of different flavors and aroma compounds. Plus, of course, it also has to do with water loss and caramelization, which concentrates sweet flavors. So this explains why like roasted carrots are always way sweeter than like a steamed carrot. And toasted coconut is far more aromatic than just raw. So, my tip is to make your veggies and nuts and seeds sweeter without added sugar, by getting them out of the steamer and making sure that they are super dry, and then roasting or pan-frying them in a high heat. Tip number nine is to create sweet perception with the aromatics that enhance sweet. So I know that we think what we taste in a candy dish is like an absolute universal truth based on its grams of sugar and whatever else is added into it. But what we perceive as flavor is also shaped by aroma, texture, temperature, associated flavors, and your own expectations and experience. And your brain relies heavily on smell to interpret flavor. So adding in things like vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, maybe orange zest, all of these can add flavor complexity to recipes that can help you naturally reduce the demand for added sugar. Adding a pinch of salt and acid like lemon or vinegar can also make existing sugars taste sweeter by essentially waking up your taste buds to be fully present for the naturally sweet experience. And this is why adding a couple drops of balsamic vinegar to strawberries just makes them pop, or rubbing a little bit of salt on your pineapple really makes the sweetness sing. And if you haven't tried that, trust me, do it now. Okay, my final tip of the day, tip number 10, which is a bit of a curveball maybe, but perhaps the most important takeaway here, but that is to not cut all sugar out. If you are craving dark chocolate brownies, I will never tell you to eat around your craving by like raw dogging some raw cacao nibs because A, Ew, and B, it will likely result in a bench. So my take is to simply be more mindful of sneaky sources of added sugars, make selections that actually bring joy to your day, and then when it makes sense, dressing up those naked carbs with hunger crushing compounds to stabilize the blood sugar response and help you edge out the less nutritious components. So that could mean pimping out that brownie that you crave with a few spoonfuls of Greek yogurt, maybe a handful of berries, and a sprinkle of almonds on top, rather than eating the entire pan. And I have loads more ideas where that came from, if you want to check out my Fear Food Hunger Crushing Combo playlist for some more inspiration. But remember folks, healthy eating is not about eliminating all of the bad things. And so sugar can and should have a role in your diet. So I really do encourage you to work sweet foods into your day in a way that feels good to you. Sometimes that's going to be dressed up as hunger crushing combos, and sometimes that is going to be sugar in its birthday suit because that is what our soul needs. The goal is to find little habits for daily meals and snacks that feel good to your body without obsession or deprivation. So, if you found this helpful, please don't forget to hit that subscribe button and ring the bell so you never miss out on any of my weekly evidence-based nutrition videos. And if you're looking for more in depth nutrition discussions, definitely check out my podcast Bite Back with Abbey Sharp. And I will see you next time on Abbey's Kitchen. Bye.
