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Sugar Staples Our body consumes two main types of nutrients: macronutrients and micronutrients. Macronutrients include carbohydrates, which have sugars and starch.
To remain healthy, humans need to consume enough to function and have energy, but not more. Habiba said that every individual should take in enough sugar for daily activities, such as breathing and walking. Sugar is, after all, one of our required calorie intakes.
Depending on your weight, height and age, your ideal sugar consumption varies. For example, let’s take a 30-year-old female with moderate exercise. Her ideal consumption would be 130 grams of carbohydrates with only 5 percent as sugar (meaning the other 95 percent comes from starch). Based on this estimation, an average 30-year-old female needs 6 to 7 grams of sugar per day.
Choose Your Sugar Wisely Just because you need a little sugar in your diet doesn’t mean it’s acceptable to munch on Junior Mints and call it a day. Different types of sugar impact the body in different ways.
Habiba advises opting for natural sugars, like the sweet taste of fruit, not processed sugars. “The natural sugars, like in fruits, are better,” Habiba said. “They get digested slowly, and the sugar is released slowly so that will be taken care of.”
On the other hand, processed sugars can wreak havoc on your body. “Artificially made things, like fruit juice, cause the sugar to be released into the blood all at one time so the sugar load in the blood is higher.”
Digesting slower helps regulate your sugar intake and keeps your body on schedule. Pumping too much sugar into your body causes the sugar to stay on as fat.
Weight gain isn’t the only concern. Sugar in the body moves to the blood before ending in the body tissue, a process that requires insulin. Putting pressure on your body to release more insulin to handle excess sugar can put you in danger of severe health risks.
“After some time, the pancreas is overloaded with secreting more insulin, and it just burns out,” Habiba said. “That’s one way people get Type 2 diabetes.”
Your Child’s Sugar Cravings Explained Maybe you have your own sugar consumption under control, but your child shrieking for his favorite candy every other minute concerns you. After the baby fat disappears, what can you do to keep your child at a healthy weight?
Habiba notes that an average 6-year-old boy should consume 1,700 calories per day of carbs, fats and proteins. Every child is different, but recall that this number is slightly lower than the 2,000 needed for adults.
If you want to keep your kid off the sugar, start early. “Whatever we give to them, their taste buds develop accordingly,” Habiba said. “If we are going to give more sweet food, the more the sweet taste buds are developed so they want to eat more and more sweets.”
