1. Eat your fruit don’t drink it
Fruit is high in nutrients but it’s also high in the naturally occurring sugar, fructose. If you juice your fruit, it’s likely that you’ll consume a lot more serves than if you were to eat it whole, purely because juicing eliminates the pulp which contains fibre (and fibre makes you feel fuller for longer). It’s also pretty likely that your fruit juice will be high in sugar.
So if you want to cut back your sugar intake, cutting down on your fruit juice consumption is a good place to start.
2. Swap soft drink for sparkling mineral water or kombucha
This is not breaking news: soft drinks and energy drinks are full of sugar. But if you regularly drink either of these, you can easily and quickly drop the amount of sugar in your diet by cutting back or eliminating these drinks.
Stick to water if you’re thirsty. If you’re not a fan of still H20, why not opt for sparkling water with a squeeze of lemon and a sprig of mint instead? Or, try kombucha, a fermented drink that is good for your gut health. Emmerton adds that you should check the sugar content of kombucha bottles, as sugar levels vary brand-to-brand.
3. Shop smarter
The government site, Eat for Health, offers a few helpful tips to help you make healthier choices at the supermarket. These include writing a shopping list (and sticking to it); only shopping once a week when there is time and only after you have eaten (this helps to avoid temptation); reading the nutritional labels on the back of food products to be aware of their sugar contents; limiting the amount of junk or frozen fried foods you buy.
4. Rethink your hot drink habits
If you have sugar in your tea or coffee, then you’ve just scored one extra way to eliminate more sugar from your diet.
Every teaspoon of sugar adds up, so if you have two cups of coffee a day with two teaspoons of sugar in each, that’s four teaspoons of sugar alone. Reduce the amount you put in your hot brew, one teaspoon at a time. Or, if you’re up for the challenge, eliminate it from your hot beverage totally. Easy Ways to Reduce your Sugar Intake
5. Swap processed foods for home-made meals
“Stay away from processed foods as much as possible,
The fact is a lot of the sugar we ingest comes from processed foods we buy outside the home or when we eat something that comes out of a packet or can. Easy Ways to Reduce your Sugar Intake