Fat-Free? How dumb do I look?

You might be surprised if you take a look at the list of ingredients on the labels of so-called "Fat-Free" food products. Seems like the number one ingredient is often corn syrup, high-fructose corn syrup or sugar. Salt often comes in a close second. So, they take out the fat and then sweeten it up to keep us thinking, "Hey, this is fat-free and it tastes pretty good!" OK, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

I'll stick with the standard version. Forget the low-fat, low-carb, low-sodium stuff. I'll just eat less of the regular foods, thank you very much.

I have not yet started keeping a strict count of my calories or grams of fat, sugar and sodium but I'm pretty sure I have been consuming a lot less lately.

Here's an excerpt from an interesting page:

http://www.reducetriglycerides.com/diet_triglycerides_sugar.htm

At present, the USDA recommends limiting added sugars, from packaged foods and the sugar bowl, to:

24 grams a day (6 teaspoons) if you eat 1,600 calories
40 grams (10 teaspoons) for a 2,000-calorie diet
56 grams (14 teaspoons) for a 2,400-calorie diet, and
72 grams (18 teaspoons) for a 2,800-calorie diet.

As you can see, this is even less than 12 teaspoons (48 grams) of a sugar a day recommended by the recent WHO's report for an average 2,000-calorie diet.

What you should do then? First of all, cut back on:

soft drinks (40 grams of sugar per 12 ounces) - nutritionally empty "liquid candy" - by far the biggest source of sugar in the average American's diet

fruit "drinks," "beverages," "ades," and "cocktails" as they are essentially non-carbonated soda pop; Sunny Delight, Fruitopia, and other fruit juices have only 5-10 percent juice and are loaded with calories and can be as fattening as pop

candy, cookies, cakes, pies, doughnuts, granola bars, pastries, and other sweet baked goods

fat-free cakes, cookies, and ice cream as they may have as much added sugar as their fatty counterparts and they're often high in calories ("fat-free" on the package doesn't mean fat-free on your waist or thighs).

Instead drink water, eat more vegetables and low-sweet fruits. And don't worry about the natural sugars from them.