It is not seen and barely perceived in the palate.We are not aware of its consumption, but it is a watchmaking bomb in our body, because its daily intake creates addiction and, worse, mine health.
Guess what it is?As if it was a convoluted deduction, it is difficult to realize that hidden sugar in processed foods is an omnipresent ingredient in the daily diet that helps propagate the epidemics of obesity and diabetes in our country.
Not surprisingly, Spain is one of the countries in Europe with the highest percentage of obese patients (21%) and diabetics (14%), as revealed by the nutritional study of the Spanish population.
«To this is added that about half of these diabetic patients do not know that it has this disease, which means that they do not especially take care of their diet and that in many cases they take more sugars than their body is able to metabolize, which aggravatesAnd it makes it difficult to control the pathology, ”says Ricardo Gómez strikes, first vice president of the Spanish Society of Internal Medicine, Semi, and former Coordinator of the Diabetes and Obesity Group of society.
The data is overwhelming: after the day we consume the whopping of 94 grams of added sugars, which means twice the amount recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) and four times more than the amount considered ideal for theAgency, according to the Organization of Consumers and Users (OCU).
«The latest recommendations of the Spanish Community Nutrition Society, SENC, advise a consumption of sugars that suppose less than ten percent of total caloric intake.WHO shares this recommendation and adds that consumption less than five percent would produce additional health benefits.
Thus, a person who has a consumption of 2,000 kcal per day, should never exceed 50 grams of this type of sugars and as far as possible should consume less than 25 grams per day, that is, less than six lumps per day», Details Virginia Santesteban, dietitian of the University of Navarra Clinic and Technician of the Biomedical Research Center of Network of the Pathophysiology of Obesity and Nutrition, Ciberobn.
Where is it hidden?
Even if we only throw a lump of sugar into coffee, let's avoid consuming chucheías or cakes and opt for seemingly healthy products such as a denied yogurt or a cereal bar, the sum of added sugars that we take after the day shoots without hardly realizing.«Beyond the sweets, there are other foods, such as manufactured products, which contain a non -negligible amount of free sugar, that is, those that include monosaccharides and disaccharides added to food by manufacturers to improve conservation, andThat the body does not always burn, so it metabolizes it in the form of fat, ”says María José Tapia, endocrine of the University Hospital of Malaga and a member of the Nutrition Area of the Spanish Society of Endocrinology and Nutrition, Seen.
But where are those sugars hide?Well, in food that, a priori, do not have to be sweet, «such as salty cookies, breakfast cereals, dairy products, sauces such as fried tomato or ketchup, some mold breads and in general all pre -cooked dishes, such as pizzas, lasagas, etc. », lists Virginia Gómez, dietitian-nutritionist collaborative of the Sinazucar.org project, a platform created by photographer Antonio Rodríguez that aims to visualize the hidden sugar in many of the processed foods we consume daily.
The intake of 25 grams a day of sugar is difficult to calculate, since we should add the grams that we take after the day and that appear in the labeling of the products, something thatMost of the obvious consumers.«But it is enough to do a very simple exercise to realize that we exceed the recommended amounts, since sugary soft drinks and energy drinks (which in many cases have a healthy appearance because they are intended for athletes) already duplicate theConsumption of sugar advised for the whole day, ”says Gómez strikes.If we add a juice, a yogurt or two tablespoons of ketchup, it seems clear that the account is triggered.
Health danger
Excessive sugar consumption is directly related to weight gain and, with it, the greatest risk of obesity.«In addition, these foods with added sugars are usually very poor nutritionally, in terms of contribution of other vitamins or minerals, so excessive consumption can also cause malnutrition.Without forgetting that it has a direct relationship with the increase in cardiovascular risk and insulin resistance, which multiplies the possibilities of suffering from type 2 diabetes mellitus, ”says the dietitian of the University of Navarra Clinic.
In this sense, it is precisely patients with diabetes who put their health more at risk when they fall into the hidden sugar trap of food, «since a bad glycemic control facilitates the appearance of infections and inflammations at an oral level, it contributes to theAcceleration of cardiovascular disease by producing inflammatory substances that lighten the aging of arteries and can lead to vision disorders and renal failure, ”says the first vice president of the SEMI.
These consequences are even more alarming when we talk about minors, since much of the products most demanded by children are loaded with hidden sugar."The health repercussions are nefarious, because in Spain almost half of the children are already overweight, and even those genetically thin also have a bad prognosis," says Gomez, who adds that "when we get used to sweet flavors from newborns, withExamples such as "Baby cookies" or dairy products called "My first yogurt", which already contain sugar, is then very difficult to go back.In fact, to get used to such intense flavors, it then rejects more neutral, such as fruits or vegetables, since they have distorted the sense of taste ».
For all these reasons, experts agree that in order not to fall into the bait of hidden sugar, it is essentialHomemade in the face of already packaged foods.Nothing happens to take a soda on the weekend, the problem is to turn it into custom, ”says Tapia.That recipe is the best way to sweeten the health of our body.
Learn to read the labeling, key to discovering where it camouflages
If there is something in which all experts coincide in the need to improve the nutritional education of the Spaniards, and that happens because they learn to distinguish in what foods the added sugars are hidden that are so harmful to health if they are consumed in excess.
To achieve this, it is enough to learn to look at products labeling, since manufacturers are obliged to specify the amount of sugar."We must look at the carbohydrate section and within it, in the part that says" of which sugars. "
That figure is the one that marks the grams ingested in each food, ”they point out from the SEEN.For OCU it is necessary to achieve the reduction of salt, fats and sugars in products, with measures that make a decrease in at least 10% ofSupported sugars in processed products, without it being accompanied by a substitution by sweeteners.
