My 'healthy' family are eating the equivalent of 215 Krispy Kreme doughnuts every WEEK: One mother discovers the shocking amount of sugar her children actually eat after keeping a meal diary
- Antonia Hoyle measured the sugar content of her family's weekly diet
- In total, she, her husband and their two children ate almost 5lbs of sugar
- Kale and banana smoothies have the same sugar as three doughnuts
- Lager contains less sugar than orange juice according to the figures
Like most well-meaning mothers, I try to shop sensibly for my husband Chris and our children, Rosie, four, and Felix, two. So when I was asked to work out our sugar consumption, based on a weekly shop, I didn’t think we’d have much cause for concern: we aren’t big on junk food and the children are young enough we are able to limit their intake.
So it was staggering to discover that we were chomping through approximately 5lb of sugar a week. To put it another way, that’s the same amount of sugar as you find in 215 Krispy Kreme doughnuts. We wouldn’t eat that many in a decade!
Little wonder a quarter of adults and ten per cent of four-year-olds are now clinically obese, and almost half of eight-year-olds have signs of decay in their milk teeth.
Antonia Hoyle, centre, is pictured with her her two children, Rosie, left, and Felix, two and their weekly shop
Shockingly, Antonia's family eats the equivalent of 215 doughnuts a week due to hidden sugar in their food
Advisory group Public Health England has urged Ministers to impose a sugar tax in an attempt to stop us exceeding the seven-and-a-half teaspoons a day limit that is currently recommended by the Government.
But the average British diet contains nearly three times that amount. And, as this experiment proves, sugary foods aren’t so much the culprits as the grocery staples we think are doing us good.
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For my experiment, I did a supermarket shop for the week and looked at the back of the packets, where sugar is listed.
I calculated the number of teaspoons of sugar in a product or serving based on the label’s information about ‘carbohydrates of which sugars’.
But labelling doesn’t differentiate between this added sugar and total sugar in, say, a tin of tomato soup and this is part of the problem, says nutritionist Zoe Harcombe. ‘Your body doesn’t know the difference between sugar in sweets and “hidden” sugar in fruit smoothies, ready-meals and bread,’ she says. ‘Sugar is sugar, no matter where it comes from.’
Here I’ve listed a week’s meals for my family and the teaspoons of sugar in the food we ate.
Is your shopping basket hiding stacks of sugar too?
Our cut-out-and-keep guide will help you decide.
A 100g tub of zero per cent fat yogurt contains the same amount of sugar as two doughnuts
A 250ml home-made kale and banana smoothie has the same sugar as almost three doughnuts
Ready made sauces which are used in home cooked dinners can contain large amounts of sugar
According to the figures, Prosecco contains less sugar than a smoothie and lager is better than orange juice
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