Читать книгу The Ultimate PCOS Handbook: Lose weight, boost fertility, clear skin and restore self-esteem - Theresa Cheung - Страница 65

Most of the sugar we eat is hidden in our foods – not just in cakes and sweets but in juice drinks, sodas and refined, processed, pre-packaged foods from cheese slices and crisps to breakfast cereals, pre-packed pasta sauces and pickles.

It’s easy to cut down on sugar by cutting down on sweets, biscuits, cakes, pies, doughnuts and other processed refined foods with added sugar.

Start reading labels on your favourite foods. You may be surprised at how much sugar you discover there, in one of its many disguises: sucrose, raw sugar, brown sugar, turbinado sugar, sucrose, dextrose, honey, lactose, invert sugar, confectioner’s sugar, corn syrup, fructose, glucose, sorbitol, mannitol, malitol, treacle, molasses and so on. The higher up the sugar is listed, the more there is in the product.

Are any of these sugars better than the others? No. Forget the fancy names. The bottom line is ‘sugar is sugar’ – and in any form it’s high in calories and low in nutrients. Honey offers no special health benefits, either (unless you smooth it on to sunburned or dry skin as a natural face mask!).

Eat fresh fruit or choose low-fat low-sugar muffins or dried fruit. Go for oat or wholegrain breakfast cereals that contain no more than 5 g of sugar per serving. Make batches of your own pasta sauce and freeze them. And look at what you’re drinking – sodas and fruit drinks are often very high in sugar. Most popular brands contain only about 10 per cent juice, so try watering these down with spring water or choose freshly pressed juice and add water.

After a while you may find that your body starts to lose its taste for sugar and you don’t even miss it. (If you’ve ever given up having sugar in your tea you’ll know what we mean here.) It’s the same with cutting down on sugar in all your food – the more you cut down, the less you hanker for it.

Sugar substitutes and sweeteners aren’t much better if you’ve got PCOS – they’ve been linked to stomach upsets, hormonal problems, headaches and even weight gain and cancer.⁷ If you really need some sweetness, a tiny pinch of sugar is OK, but far better to add natural sweeteners like fruit juice or fresh fruit. The herbal alternative Stevia, available from most health food stores, is sweet tasting, calorie free and worth checking out.