Sugars
Whether or not we can eat sugar is not so much about the actual calories in each spoonful (although obviously that doesn't mean you should pile it onto everything) but how our body digests the sugar. If you use a spoonful of refined, white sugar in your cup of tea it can send your blood sugar rocketing and that does nothing for your hormones. Fruit is very sugary, but we can eat it because it is a natural, unrefined sugar and is therefore has a low GI. My favourite alternatives at the moment, since I hate the chemical taste of artificial sweeteners are:
Found this whilst wandering the aisles of my local Cooperative. It's what it says on the bag- fruit sugar which as I've said has a lower GI than regular sugar. It is really good in drinks (there's no strange flavour just a sweetness) and I even used it the other day to make pancakes for pancake day.
My Mum gave me this is my Christmas stocking and I'd never heard of it before. She found it in Booths (which is our northern supermarket chain). It is the nectar extracted from the Mexican Blue Agave plant and as it is a fructose sugar it has a low GI. You can use it in tea or coffee, or as I used it instead of golden syrup all over my pancakes. Yum!
Chocolate
The obvious suggestion here is to eat dark chocolate instead of milk or white as it contains a higher proportion of cocoa solids and less sugar so won't send your blood sugar skywards. That's all very well and good, but personally I'm not a big fan of bitter chocolate. It is possible to buy higher cocoa level milk chocolates but you will still be competing with a lot of refined sugar, so you just can't eat as much. I love chocolate though. I've found that when I need a chocolate fix the best things are:
This is the best hot chocolate ever and I would drink it even if I wasn't trying to avoid sugary chocolate. It's designed as a slimming hot chocolate so a mug contains only 40 calories, it is creamy and very chocolatey so great when you need a fix.
I was brought up eating these, so I'm a little biased but they are a good, low fat, low calorie chocolate snack. Since they are made using soya beans they contain a good amount of protein which is good for maintaining blood sugar levels. My sister swears by the dark chocolate flavour as it is more chocolatey than the others. Stick with Alpro though- I've had some bad experiences with other brands which seem more gelatinous than creamy like the Alpro ones.
