To this this woman is being rather daft

[giraffesCantMakeResolutions]

DM link here

Basically she decided her dcs ate too much sugar eg cocopops for breakfast . In her example menu the only fruit or veg they have is raisins.

So she decides to cut down sugar...and instead feeds them special k oats and HONEY for breakfast. Along with a fruit smoothie. They also have fruit juice for lunch. Snacks include a prepacked cereal bar and an actimel yog. She is astounded that these things then have sugar in them.

Overall on her so called healthy diet they ended up with more sugar.

"I’d also swapped the lunchtime Fruit Shoot drinks for a glass of Tropicana fresh orange juice. I need not have bothered.
‘A 200ml glass of orange juice contains 20g of sugar — almost exactly the same as the 22g of sugar within the Fruit Shoot,’ says Angela. ‘That’s five teaspoons in just one glass." What is wrong with water?! Or weak squash?

Buy some bloomin veg!

i guess it's just the DM's over sensational way of telling all us really stupid people out here that there is a lot of hidden sugar in supposed healthy foods. What else do you expect from the DM?

You actually think that is a REAL family?

It's obviously a badly disguised bit of rubbish written to coincide with the astonishing revelation that sugar exists in loads of stuff, that's been all over the news lately.

I don't suppose she is surprised, or even changing her diet, at all.

It's badly written, space filling, fiction.

I don't think she's especially daft, just fallen foul of the marketing plots of these products as lots of people do.

My mum was astounded at the amount of sugar in smoothies and always argued the toss that they were worse than Ribena.

I haven't read the article but it does highlight the bigger issue that a lot of people just aren't aware of the sugar content of things and assume that if something is sold as being good for you it is low sugar

My dentist thinks smoothies are just slightly down the ladders from Red Bull on things that'll wreck your teeth. Followed by dry fruit, grazing on fruit constantly, tomato ketchup & baked beans.

I don't know what "Fruit Shoot," is, so I looked it up. It does have about the same sugar as OJ. However, an 8 oz glass of OJ also has over 100% of your daily vitamin C, it has potassium, calcium, niacin, B6, folate, etc. Fruit Shoot has 30% of your daily vitamin C, and that's about it. I would personally still consider the OJ healthy.

Our kids drink mostly water, though. My husband is obsessed with the idea that people don't get enough water (he's right, it just gets annoying, his answer to everything is "drink some water!"). Much better to give the kids the whole fruits, than juice, IMO.

"i guess it's just the DM's over sensational way of telling all us really stupid people out here that there is a lot of hidden sugar in supposed healthy foods. What else do you expect from the DM?"

There was a recent programme on BBC2 highlighting the same, so mid-informed people come from all walks of life.

Unless you are bought up learning what a core xt healthy diet is, you are at the mercy of advertisers, so become confused.

I hate that this is laughed at, it isn't the fault if the individual.

It isn't a case of being stupid (or low intelligence which many MN seems to enjoy laughing at).

I read through the Smart Swap choices that is the back up literature to the Telly campaign and there is a lot of misinformation on there.

We need food tech classes from primary age, so people understand different forms of sugar/fat and how the body processes them.

Also, dentist concern themselves with teeth (obviously) but they can be unrealistic about the nutritional value if foods and their focus is to narrow when they make comments.

Although my teeth were destroyed by my neglectful/abusive childhood and it is the one aspect I cannot fix, without taking out a very large loan, but my confidence is affected by my teeth, so I can see the need to consider them.

The smart swap (I assume thats the NHS campaign thats on tv now?) has bugged me though, some of the swaps they encourage are daft - swapping fizzy drinks for diet drinks may cut down the sugar but its still far from a healthy choice

I don't know why they don't talk of empty calories more.
A smoothie is good for you, fruit is good for you. Yes they contain a massive amount of sugar but with that sugar comes vitamins and minerals
A can of coke contains a lot of sugar again but there's no nutritional value in there.

It's balance and there is a difference.

Oh and yes I agree they should not be suggesting a diet drink is a healthy alternative, they are proven to prevent you absorbing calcium, vitamins etc. Not to mention the chemical fact.

There are much better sources for those vitamins and minerals than even a smoothie though. I think its easy to see smoothies as healthy because they are full of fruit but really who would sit down and eat 5 or 6 pieces of fruit in one sitting? So we do we think blending it together and drinking it is going to be a good option? Its better than other options but its still not necessarily a good choice.

Too much fruit isn't good for you really either. Its about moderation

I do think there's a real conversation to be had about sugar and while I did read the article and shout 'FFS HONEY?!?!' a couple of times I do have some sympathy for the writer and anyone else who finds this stuff hard to navigate. Like me.

I think the idea of empty calories makes sense to me Damn. DS gets one smoothie a day which I think is infinitely preferable to a coke (he doesn't eat fruit really but that's another thread), I am aware there's sugar in there but there's also fruit and minerals. But that's the only 'drink' he gets apart from milk and water so I'm relaxed about that.

I agree with "empty calouries" as a teaching aid.

I couldn't believe "100 diet myths" the other night advocated fizzy drinks and totally used the biased evidence to show that artificial sweeteners had been proven as good for us.

They compared diet coke to OJ and deemed diet coke as better choice.

Not everyone reads, good quality material, if you went on the media alone, you would be totally confused.

diet coke is better than OJ?? FFS!

I dont think she's being daft, she's just representsative of the lack of knowledge that there is about foodstuffs. There is a widely held perception - reinforced by advertising - that things like fruit juice, cereal bars, anything with oats in, or made from yoghurt, and yes honey, are somehow virtuous and healthy. And there is a widespread lack of knowlegde about how much sugar is in stuff, processed foods as well as natural fruits.

Its the Concern about the levels of type 2 diabetes that lead HCP's to advise that diet drinks are 'better' for us than fruit juices.

As far as they are concerned, if everyone switched to aspartame then the diabetes levels would be almost non existent. Much like the dentists saying if nobody ate fruit then cavities would be almost non existent.

They operate in their own small spheres. What is needed is someone clever to come along and advise moderation in all things. A normal healthy persons body can cope with a bit of sugar.