In The Netherlands we eat 99 cubes of added sugar on average every week. That’s a lot! All this sugar has a big impact on your body. For example, it can cause you to have less energy, it influences your sleep negatively, you can gain in weight faster and you have a bigger chance on diabetes type 2. Therefore, Diabetes Fonds Nederland organizes a NO Sugar Challenge from the 5th until the 11th of June. When you participate, you are not allowed to eat any added sugars for one week. Natural sugars, like in fruit, vegetables, and diary, are part of a healthy diet and can still be eaten. For more information about the challenge you can visite the website of Diabetes Fonds (Dutch Only). For more information and tips about diabetes, you can visit the website of the website of Diabetes UK.
Eating not added sugars for a while can be quite a challenge! Below a few tips from our VerSTERKer and colleague Milou Veenhuis to help you get started. Milou also shares one of her favorite recipes, without added sugar of course😉 .
Tips
- The easiest way to leave added sugars out of your diet, is by avoiding sugary drinks. For example, don’t drink any sodas and fruit juices. You can easily spruce up a bottle of (carbonated) water with fresh fruit, like strawberries or slices of orange, or you can even use cucumber with mint! The varieties are endless.
- If you crave a sugary snack, eat a piece of fruit! The fibers will make sure the natural sugar is absorbed into your body slowly compared to a few pieces of candy with added sugar. This keeps your sugar level steady. You can find more healthy snacks on the website of the British Nutrition Foundation.
- Read the label. In The Netherlands, it is mandatory to label all ingredients on the product. The ingredients are listed from ‘most to least’ on the label. But there is a catch: (added) sugar can be named in up to 50 different ways. Luckily, the Diabetesfonds has made a clear overview of these names (in Dutch) or you can find even more English equivalents here.
- Don’t buy ready-made meals or products as they often contain (lots of) added sugar. By making, baking or cooking your own products, you can easily leave out or replace the added sugar. For example, don’t buy strawberry yoghurt, but buy plain yoghurt and add fresh strawberries or other fruit. This will also provide you with fibers, vitamins and minerals!
Hopefully these tips will help you get started!
Recipe for healthy pancakes without added sugar
Ingredients
- 50 grams of oatmeal flakes or oatmeal flour
- 1 egg
- 1 banana
- Pinch of cinnamon
- Splash of milk or a nondairy alternative
- Oil for baking
Preparation
- Grind the oatmeal flakes in your blender until it’s finely ground. Grind the whole packages of oatmeal flakes and store the flour in an air to skip this step if you want to make the pancakes more often. Of course, you can also use ready-made oatmeal flour.
- Take the flour from the blender.
- Put all ingredients into the blender and blend. Your blender will work best if you add the fluids first. So first a splash of milk, then the eggs, the banana and end up with the flour and cinnamon.
- Heat up a bit of oil in a frying pan to bake the pancakes.
You can choose to make one bigger pancake or several small ones. That is up to you! If you want to decorate your pancakes, you can use some slices of fresh fruit or spread some yoghurt or quark on top.
