Sugar: tasty, but dangerous
STEER CLEAR: IGNORANCE IS BLISS, SO PEOPLE WITH A SWEET TOOTH DON’T THINK TWICE
It has been an interesting week and I have realised I am most happy creating, coaching or watching my team help to inspire athletes to improve their physical and mental abilities. We have just come off a five-day SpeedKills clinic where athletes have sacrificed their holidays to acquire “speed tools” for their various sports to have a competitive edge over their competition.
Just before lunch we did a social experiment with three elderly athletes. We gave one athlete a Coke which he seemed very pleased about, the second a 100% pure orange juice blend and the third we gave a bowl of sugar to eat.
The first athlete cracked open the Coke and downed like it was his gummy berry juice. The second athlete had a smile because he was enjoying his healthier option and the third athlete could not believe his poor luck when we asked him to eat a bowl of raw sugar.
In reality, all three items had over eight teaspoons of sugar in them. In reality, they all had the same core DNA make-up which was sugar.
Then why was the last athlete so upset about eating raw sugar?
He simply perceived the eating of raw sugar as being unhealthy and not good for him, yet the first two athletes who were also drinking over eight teaspoons of sugar had no problem gulping down every drop. The “orange juice” athlete thought he was being smart because it was pure orange juice blend. Little did he know that the blend means it contains added sugar and some oranges. Juice blend actually has more sugar than a Coke.
The core essence of a cold drink company’s objectives is to sell more products and because the consumer is so addicted to sugar, they have to make it incredibly sweet to keep up with the competitors.
It is important to understand how to read the labels. The sugar will be given to you in grams, see how many grams of sugar it displays and then look how many millilitres your cold drink is. Once you know the total grams then you divide that number by 4.2g to give you how many teaspoons of sugar you are consuming. A can of Coke has 34g of sugar per 330ml, so divided by 4.2g it equals eight teaspoons of sugar.
The more we educate ourselves with reading the labels the smarter choices we will make as athletes and smart choices will lead to greater sports performance, recover and opportunities.
Children up to the age of eight years old should not have more than three to four teaspoons of sugar per day according to the World Health Organisation. Children older should not consume more than eight teaspoons. When you think a can of Coke has your total recommended daily allowance then this should start causing alarm bells to go off!