Humans have a natural fondness for sugar. Special receptors on our tongue respond only to sugar. This is a survival mechanism. For prehistoric hunter-gatherers a hint of sweetness in a piece of vegetation was a sign it contained calories and was safe to eat.
Most of us get more sugar from starchy grains like wheat, potatoes and rice than from sweets. You don’t realize how much sugar you get from these foods because the sugar molecules in starch are linked together so they don’t active your sweetness receptors. Your saliva contains an enzyme that releases about 2 percent of the sugar in starch, so you can detect a hint of sweetness. However, the other 98 percent of the starch in these foods is tasteless. If you don’t believe that, try eating a spoonful of flour. It’s not very exciting.
Tasteless or not, as soon as starch reaches your intestine, enzymes break it down to sugar. Starch will raise your blood sugar levels just as much as the same amount of pure sugar. As one researcher put it, you can sprinkle a teaspoon of sugar on a bowl of Wheaties or a teaspoon of Wheaties on a bowl of sugar. Once it hits your stomach, it’s all the same.
So, what about the sugar we add to things to sweeten them up? When we add sugar to baked goods and soft drinks, it further increases the amount they raise blood sugar levels.
Here’s the trick to enjoying sugar: a little goes a long way. Try eating a spoonful of sugar; it’s sickeningly sweet. It doesn’t take much sugar to sweeten things up. The carbohydrate content of a teaspoon of sugar is 4 grams. Compare that to a slice of white bread, which contains 13 grams of sugar.
The problem with sugar is that when you mix it with starch or with water it loses its sweetness. Consequently, you have to add a lot of sugar to taste the sweetness. For example, a typical cookie contains 5 teaspoons of added sugar. It’s almost 50 percent sugar. A 12 ounce can of Coca-Cola contains 10 teaspoons. Diluting sugar with starch or liquid tricks us into consuming more sugar than we otherwise would. This is why cookies, cakes and sugar-sweetened soft drinks are among foods with the highest glycemic loads.
Sugar Is Not a Problem If You Can Taste It
You can enjoy sweets without overloading your system with sugar if you really taste the sugar. For example, it doesn’t take much sugar to sweeten chocolate. Two squares of Ghiradelli’s dark chocolate contains 1-1/2 teaspoons of added sugar. A handful of JellyBeans contains 1-1/2 teaspoons. You can sweeten up a bowl of berries just fine with a half-teaspoon of sugar. Compare that to a 12-ounce Coke that contains 10 teaspoons of sugar or a cookie with 5 teaspoons of added sugar along with the flour in it that quickly turns to sugar in your stomach.
Bottom line: sugar is not a problem if it’s not dissolved in water or mixed with flour.
A Rule of “Thumb“
How much sweet stuff can you eat without spiking your blood sugar? No matter what you eat–a piece of chocolate, some Jellybeans, a cookie–an amount you can hold in the palm of hand and wrap your fingers around isn’t going to add significantly to your glycemic load.
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