The recommended daily intake is 9 teaspoons of sugar daily for men, or 6 teaspoons for women. Remember just 4 grams of sugar = 1 teaspoon.

Let’s look at the average breakfast. Say you start you day with 1 bowl of cornflakes with skim milk, 1 serve low-fat strawberry yoghurt, 1 glass organic apple juice and 1 slice of raisin toast. Beware – you’ve overloaded.

Apple juice – up to 10 teaspoons; Cornflakes per 100g serving – 8 grams (2 teaspoons); One serve low fat yoghurt – 11 teaspoons; One slice of raisin toast – 4 teaspoons.

That’s a crazy 28 teaspoons of sugar! A whopping 3 times the daily recommendation for men, 4 ½ times that for women. (www.fitlink.co.nz)

Food has moved further away from its natural state, to that of a processed state. More and more foods are being packaged and processed - therefore we are consuming more and more sugar everyday. Even when we think that we are buying "the healthy option", you can be sure that if it says "99% fat free" it has a lot more added sugar to make up for the lack of fat.

My journey started 3 years ago, when after coming across Gary Hayman's NZ Sugar Free (nzsugarfree.co.nz) and organising a talk to hear him speak. I decided to start reducing the sugar intake in my family’s food, reducing added sugar wherever I thought it hid. In baking, hot drinks, "treat food", drinks.

Then 1 year ago I watched “That Sugar Film” by Damon Gameau.

What a wake up call! A LOT of the foods I thought were healthy were infact heavily laden with sugar!! Things like low fat yoghurt, muesli bars, juices and cereals, that I fed my family EVERYDAY!

“We are not focussing on the wonderful natural sugars found in whole fruits and vegetables. Our goal is to help people reduce the amount of added sugars they are consuming." Damon Gameau. That Sugar Film

Upon checking out foods further, I realised that even though they listed SUGAR content on the Ingredients of food - wouldn’t it be great to see a label on products showing what are the portions of the SUGAR listed? Are they "sugars that naturally occur" or "sugars that are added"?

Ie Yoghurt. Yoghurt naturally contains sugar, but of the Sugar in the ingredients list, what of that is the natural sugar and what of that is added sugar?

It would be an easy start to manufacturers to add this piece of information to their product packaging. 

It should be made easy, for those of us who are trying to limit our own and our family's sugar intake, to make informed choices.

Please take a moment to sign, to show that there is a strong movement for change, that would allow us to make healthy informed choices!