How Many Teaspoons????
I just ran into this excellent, excellent post about sugar in foods that are supposed to be good for you.
http://mtbakercrossfit.blogspot.com/2008/01/coming-soon-my-newest-rant-poisoning-of.html
Try this exercise yourself some time. One teaspoon of sugar weighs four grams. If you can divide by 4 (and please tell me you can divide by 4!), you can visualize how many teaspoons of sugar are in that product you are about to consume. If it’s more than one, maybe two, run, don’t walk, to the nearest garbage can. Then go have a nice piece of cheese or a few nuts.
One thing that the author of this post does not mention is that all carbohydrates (other than fiber) break down into sugars. This means that, if the label of a food says that it contains 40 grams of carbohydrate (as in 2 oz of dry pasta), you are putting 10 teaspoons of sugar into your blood. And of course, many people eat more than one serving. If you eat 4 oz, you are consuming 80 grams, or 20 teaspoons of sugar. This is just under 7 tablespoons, which, in turn, is just shy of a half cup. Would you serve yourself a half cup of sugar with a nice marinara sauce on top?
Migraine aura picture from 
Yeah, that’s one of the first eye openers I saw when I read “Sugar Shock” last year! That meant that my favorite Dunkin’ Donut had 36 carbs…or 9…that’s right 9 teaspoons of sugar.
And a Dunkin’ Donut ‘Reduced Carb’ Bagel has 45 carbs…which is a little more than 11 teaspoons of sugar!
Does that mean the Donut is healthier than the Bagel? NOT!!!
Ron, aka The Former Donut Junkie
Comment by Ron — February 19, 2008 @ 6:43 pm
This is one of the hardest points to get across to people. They read and hear that complex starches are ok, or even very good, because they digest slower or are bound to fiber, so sugar is more slowly released into the blood stream, blah, blah, blah.
BUT, it’s still a *lot* of sugar to process, and it all needs insulin to usher into cells for use as energy, stored short term energy as glucogen, or stored ong term energy as body fat, whether it is slow or fast absorbing (granted, a fast sugar rush starts an insulin rush, which clears out too much sugar too fast, creating deeper dips and steeper highs). Given the a normal blood glucose level of the average sized person equals about 1 teaspoon of glucose in the entire blood supply, it is hard to think about adding 11 teaspoonsof glucose to it with a bagel and not creating a roller coaster effect.
Comment by Anna — February 19, 2008 @ 9:22 pm
Thanks for this - it gives me a better way to explain it to my fella. Most people don’t look at a bagel or plate of whole wheat pasta and convert it into teaspoons of sugar - “Pasta doesn’t have any sugar!”
Comment by Tracy — February 23, 2008 @ 9:25 am