Don’t quit the sweet things, just cut down

There's no escaping it. Sugar is the bad boy of the food world, with all that implies. It's naughty, exciting and irresistible – so much so that respected US neuroscientist and pharmacologist Candace Pert said she believed it to be as addictive as cocaine or heroin.

That idea has been further strengthened most recently when researchers at the Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation at Queensland University of Technology in Australia said last year in a study published in PlosOne those addicted to sugar should be treated in the same way as other drug abusers.

"Excess sugar has been shown to contribute directly to weight gain. It has also been shown to repeatedly elevate dopamine levels, which control the brain's reward and pleasure centres in a way that is similar to many drugs of abuse including tobacco, cocaine and morphine," neuroscientist Prof Selena Bartlett said at the time. "After long-term consumption, this leads to the opposite, a reduction in dopamine levels. This leads to higher consumption of sugar to get the same level of reward." It's addiction in action.

The more you eat, the more you want it, which is not good considering the health effects of too much such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease and kidney problems among other issues. Irish dentists have spoken out on the number of toddlers having to have their decaying baby teeth extracted.

"Moderation is key," says Dr Eibhlís O'Connor, a nutritionist and lecturer in the department of life sciences at the University of Limerick. "It's all about balance. A little bit of added sugar does no harm, but large amounts on a daily basis are a health risk."

Dr Robert Lustig, a professor of clinical paediatrics in endocrinology at the University of California and a specialist in childhood obesity, says the body can safely metabolise about six teaspoons of added sugar per day. That seems like quite a lot until you hear that the average Irish adult gets through about three times that amount, according to the National Adult Nutritional Survey. This means that even a seemingly "normal" diet may be providing way more sugar than is healthy. Most sugar is empty calories.

Reduce it

So how do you take back control for yourself and your family without going into all-out sugar-free bootcamp mode? “People shouldn’t be afraid of sugar, but they should be aware of how much is in what they are eating,” says O’Connor. “And if they are getting too much they should try to reduce it.”

Avoid too much sugar and you won’t have to spend time exercising to burn off those empty calories. She advises having sweetened foods no more than once or twice a week. “Keep them as a treat, rather than a daily feature of your diet.”

Be aware of what is going on around you too. There is more temptation than ever in the form of cheap sweets, chocolate, biscuits and cakes. There are also the hidden sugars.

Reading labels can be eye-opening. The food industry realised a long time ago we find sugar irresistible and so has put it into more and more foods. It also loves sugar because it's easy to work with. "It makes drinks more viscous, acts as a preservative in foods with long best before dates," writes investigative journalist Joanna Blythman in Swallow This, in which she lays bare how the food industry really works. "Knowing we eat with our eyes, manufacturers use it to create enticing golden crusts and the appearance of patiently roasted meat."

Savoury sauces

Added sugar is often to be found where you least expect, such as in dried fruit, soups, some crisps, savoury ready-made sauces and ready meals. Some Tesco "basted" pork chops have sugar to make them look and taste better.

The cleverest tactic manufacturers employ is to use separate names for different types of sugar in products. So, for example, a packet of McVitie's Rich Tea biscuits contains glucose-fructose syrup, but also barley malt extract – both sugar by another name. Checking out the packaging on one loaf of brown bread, I found it listed among its ingredients black treacle, prune puree and concentrated grape juice, as well as sugar. The lazy way is to avoid anything with more than 10 chemical-looking ingredients.

Lustig's 2013 book Sugar has 56 Names: a Shopper's Guide speaks for itself. You might recognise that many of those ingredients ending in -ose, such as maltose, are sugars. But what about maltodextrin, barley malt or the innocent-sounding fruit juice concentrate? It's all sugar. So check the nutrition label. "If a food is high in sugar it will have more than 15g of sugar per 100g of food. Less than 5g is considered a small amount," says O'Connor.

Taste buds

This matters because we are getting sugar even when we don’t realise it, and it is affecting our taste buds. The more sweet stuff you down, the more you tend to crave. It’s feeding our addiction. So increasingly we expect everything to have a hint of sweetness.

Rebel against that by cooking simple meals from scratch using unprocessed, fresh food. The shelves of bookshops are heavy with titles such as I Quit Sugar but there is no need to give up sugar completely or to use special recipes. Most Irish cookbooks contain plenty of naturally "sugar-free" recipes.

Make your own cakes and desserts and you will automatically use less sugar than any factory would. When baking choose unrefined sugar that has not had all its nutrition removed, such as rapadura or black treacle. Dates and other dried fruit in energy balls are popular now, but be wary. Yes they have plenty of fibre and some minerals, but they should be eaten in moderation.

It’s not just about food, of course. All the sweetened drinks sold in shops and supermarkets are best avoided too. A can of cola, for example, contains about 9tsp of sugar. But it’s not a good idea to drink a lot of fruit juice either, especially for children, as it is high in fructose without the fibre real fruit has. “Milk and water are the best drinks for children,” says O’Connor.

There’s no escaping sugar. So when Easter rolls around, make sure to enjoy that egg. But the next day when you start to crave more sweet treats, realise it’s the sugar that is causing the longing.

How to take back control

- Don't have sweet treats every day
- Find new, healthy snacks you enjoy such as hazelnuts, apples, olives, hummus
- When considering buying anything with a label, read it first
- Check labels on savoury food for sugar by any of its 56 names
- Avoid sweetened drinks even the non-sugar ones
- Eat your fruit, don't drink it.