This week is all about nutrition in our KGW "Journey to Wellness" series.
The project stemmed from my diagnosis earlier this year that revealed I'm prediabetic. I didn't see it coming.
But the CDC says one in three Americans is prediabetic and 90% of them don’t even know it. With it impacting so many people, I knew I wanted to bring more attention to it.
The good news is that it's reversible and the first step is knowing what's in the food that you're putting in your body.
After a bit of research, I found that some of the foods we think are healthy are actually packed with sugar.
Things like peanut butter and tomato sauce can have added sugar you might not have been aware of.
So we decided to go grocery shopping with Courtney Cronk, a nutritional therapist, to get her take.
We didn't waste any time and headed first to the nutrition and protein bar aisle.
“I just picked this randomly,” said Cronk as she grabbed a popular protein bar.
“It's got organic rolled oats, so it's gotta be good for you, right? The first three ingredients are sugar, which means it's mostly sugar you're eating with one of these bars,” she said.
Another big offender is cereal which often contains lots of sugar as well as carbohydrates that turn into sugar.
“Granola is another thing a lot of people think is healthy right,” said Cronk.
She grabbed another popular brand, noticed the second ingredient is sugar, and began listing off even more sugar.
“Molasses, blueberry puree, apple puree concentrate, plum puree, brown rice syrup.”
Then it was to the juice aisle.
“Who doesn't love a big glass of OJ first thing in the morning,” Cronk said.
Sure, orange juice has some good things going for it. It’s got vitamin C, and it’s natural.
“But an 8-ounce serving has 23 grams of sugar,” she said.
It’s natural sugar, but it’s still sugar that'll amp you up and send you into a sugar crash.
Another thing to think about is how much juice is in an actual orange.
The amount of juice from one orange is way less than the typical glass of OJ most people might pour themselves.
Eating the orange itself would reduce on the amount of sugar and add good-for-you fiber.
Then we headed to the dairy aisle.
“The deal with yogurt is we all think of yogurt as being a healthy food and it is except when you get a flavored yogurt. It's gonna be full of sugar,” said Cronk.
“This has 20 grams of sugar, one little cup of yogurt. I've seen some with like 35,” she said.
To give you an idea of the amount of sugar you might be consuming, let's take a pumpkin spice latte.
A grande might have about 50 grams of sugar. Here's the math: 4 grams of sugar equals one teaspoon of sugar.
That means, in one drink you're essentially eating 12.5 teaspoons of straight sugar.
Take a look at the picture below and you'll get a good idea of what that looks like. Ask yourself, would you eat all that sugar dry?
“We have so much sugar coming at us all the time every day and sugar adds to inflammation,” said Cronk.
The big takeaway here: as Americans, we are eating way too much sugar. Sometimes it’s unintentional. So next time you go grocery shopping, check those labels.
Coming up on Thursday we've got good alternatives to those sugar-packed foods. Then at 11am we'll talk to a dietitian live. You'll be able to ask any questions you have. We'll stream it on our KGW Facebook page.