Natalie Butler: Hi, guys. My name is Natalie Butler and I'm a nutritionist and I'm videotaping this today because I really want to bring to light how much sugar we all consume on a daily basis. So, if you have a lollipop in your hand, put it down, throw away your coke and listen up, this is for you. When we consume sugar, it goes into our blood stream really quickly and that does give us a quick energy effects. We use the basic foundation of sugar is glucose, some of our bodies use that for quick energy and so when we're consuming a lot of sugar, our body wants to use it for energy, but what happens is if we're consuming excess sugar, we're going to get these spikes of energy, and then these really low pitfalls of being exhausted and tired, and then it makes you go for the sugar again.
So, when someone is craving sugar and is giving into the cravings and is constantly on really a sugar bench, we're going to be riding waves of energy in peaks and valleys of feeling tired and exhausted, and then feeling alive and awake. The USDA only recommends us to have ten teaspoons of sugar a day, no more, they don't want us to have ten teaspoons, but they say we should not be consuming more than ten teaspoons of sugar a day. The reason for this really is because sugar does offers calories, there is no nutrients in sugar. So, I'm going to point out some specific foods and show you actually how much sugar is in those foods, so that when you're eating it, you realize what you're taking in, why, maybe you're having a hard time controlling your core intake, maybe you're getting to any excess of calories in the day and how that can contribute to weight gain and some inflammatory problems.
Here is our box, just the plain strawberry, I think that's pretty common and one bar on the nutrition label, says that there are 13 grams of sugar in one Nutri-Grain bar. So, I don't know if you can see this very well, but this is about seven, no lets see, three and a quarter teaspoons of sugar, so that doesn't look like a whole lot, but three and a quarter teaspoons in just one bar and you can eat that bar in about four bites. So, imagine just pumping that into your mouth in about five minutes. Now, we're going to show how much sugar is in about two Blueberry Muffins and it is about four and a half teaspoons of sugar and so this is going to be more than the Nutri-Grain bar, but that is just in two Blueberry Muffins.
And then, next we're going to look at, how much you would consume if you had some ketchup with maybe some french fries or hamburger or something like that and the serving size on ketchup is two tablespoons, but I have a hard time believing that people are only consuming two tablespoons of ketchup. So, I estimated for five tablespoons of ketchup and that is going to be five teaspoons of sugar and so that combined with some of the bread or if you're having a hamburger or french fries that's going to add up to even more carbohydrates, this is just refined sugar. Now, we're going to look at barbeque sauce, this is a very common you know product in the grocery store, there is tons and tons of brands, this is just one that I picked up, the recommended or the serving size on the bottle is, let's see, it is two tablespoons. I estimated about four tablespoons to compensate for having aside of it with whatever you're eating. That is going to come out to about six teaspoons of sugar, so there it is right there out of four tablespoons of barbeque sauce, you have six teaspoons of sugar.
Say, you're waking up in the morning, you're rushing, your kids are crying for cinnamon rolls and so you just happened to have some in the refrigerator. So, I bought a little miniature cinnamon roll thing to look at the serving sizes. If you eat two of these cinnamon rolls, you're going to get about five teaspoons of sugar, so that's going to be just about the same as the ketchup and almost as same as two Blueberry Muffins. The next one that I want to show you is the Lucky Charms and unfortunately there is probably a lot of kids who get to eat this every morning for breakfast, hopefully not every morning, but the serving size in the box was three-fourth cup of cereal, but unfortunately, I think that most of our bowls are not filled with three-fourth cup of cereal, probably more like one and a half, probably even more than that actually. But I estimated one and a half cups of Lucky Charms and that came to six teaspoons of sugar. So, if you're sending your kids out with a bowl of Lucky Charms cereal before they go to school and they're always saying that they're tired whether at sports, possibly because they're eating Lucky Charms for breakfast.
The next thing that we're going to look out is Gatorade; popular sports drink, this one is a 32 ounce container and the serving size on this is four per container and I don't know about you, but I think most people are going to be drinking more than a fourth of this bottle when they purchase it. So, if you're giving, you know drinking Gatorade when you're sliding, when you're hot and you're tired or given this to your kids when they're on the soccer field. I want to show you how much sugar is in this Gatorade. Okay, so the seven teaspoons of Gatorade in this cup is actually half of the bottle of Gatorade, so it's going to be twice this, it's going to be 14 teaspoons of sugar, if you are drinking the whole bottle of Gatorade.
Now, I want to show you Strawberry Yogurt Yoplait. I've picked the original because it does unfortunately have the most amount of sugar in it, 27 grams of sugar, and this is only six ounces of yogurt, but six ounces of yogurt has almost seven teaspoons of sugar. So there we go, seven teaspoons, at way too much to be in six ounces of yogurt. Okay, the next one Pop-Tarts. I've been in a lot of families homes and unfortunately this is in the pantry and a lot of times they say it was just a weekend breakfast, we just let me you know on the weekends, but at the same time, if your kids are running around and if you're doing stuff on the weekends, you know there is definitely better choices than to have Pop-Tarts. And the serving size on the box of Pop-Tarts says one pastry. We all know that there are two Pop-Tarts in a bag, so I don't believe that people are opening the bag and only eating one pastry.
So, in two Pop-Tarts there is 34 grams of sugar, which is eight and a half teaspoons of sugar. That's a lot of sugar for two pastries and hopefully you're not eating more than two pastries. The next one is the Starbucks Grande Mocha Frappuccino. This I pick the medium Frappuccino because the times that I've gone to Starbucks, the most of the times that I hear the drinks called out either Grande or Lighter, so I pick that. So, this is Grande Mocha Frappuccino, 12 almost 13 teaspoons of sugar in a Mocha Frappuccino. So, if you're consuming this much sugar in a coffee beverage, it's really a dessert, you really have to view it as the dessert because if you're drinking this as a snack, and then you have dessert later, it's really going to add up.
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