Deciphering nutrition labels can be a painful task, but Coach Laura makes it a little easier on today’s Extra Kick podcast. Listen in here!
Audio Transcript
Coach Laura McLean: Hey everyone. I’m here with you for this latest episode of Extra Kick brought to you by Runners Connect. Thanks so much for joining me today.
If you have a question that you’d like one of our expert coaches to answer in an upcoming episode, you can submit it at runnersconnect.net/daily.
We’d love to help you train smarter and faster, so please don’t hesitate to ask whatever has you curious.
Today’s question comes from Debbie.
Debbie: I am at a loss for how to interpret the sugar lines and the nutrition facts label on foods. I know there are different types of sugar; sucrose, lactose, fructose, and some of them are good sugars and bad sugars or are they all created equal?
A candy bar or a donut are full of sugars. However, so are the organic familial and granola and a banana I ate for breakfast this morning.
I guess the core of my question is if you are not trying to lose weight, what is it that makes sugars all or some unhealthy? How do they negatively affect you and do you have any scientific evidence for this?
Laura: This is a really difficult question for a number of reasons. First, nutritional labels are different from country to country. What I see on a label here in Canada may be completely different from what you see wherever you are in the world.
If you’re in Canada or the US your carbohydrates are given as a total and broken down in dietary fiber or sugar, but not what kind of sugars.
For that, you need to dissect the ingredients list and finally there are 61 different names for sugar on food labels.
The food industry is notorious for making foods look like they have less sugar, because ingredients are listed in order of quantity and they use different kinds of sugar with those 61 different names.
A simpler way to go about it is looking at how much.
Expert panels worldwide have consistent recommendations on daily sugar intake. The American Heart Association recommends no more than six teaspoons or 25 grams of added sugar per day for women, and nine teaspoons or 38 grams for men.
On a calorie for calorie basis, sugars are all about the same. From white sugar to the blackstrap molasses to maple syrup, all have about 30 to 40 calories per two teaspoons.
How your body reacts to different sugars is what you’re looking for and one of the best ways to separate your types of sugars is by using the glycemic index.
Unfortunately, this isn’t provided on nutrition labels, but it is easily available with a good Google search.
What takes a little work at first quickly becomes second nature when looking at food labels.
The glycemic index is a scale that ranks carbohydrate rich foods by how much they raise a blood glucose levels compared to a standard food.
Carbohydrates with a low glycemic index, a value of 55 or less, are more slowly digested, absorbed, and metabolized, and cause a lower and slower rise and blood glucose.
When you eat foods with a low glycemic index, it may help you to control your blood glucose levels, control your cholesterol levels, control your appetite, lower your risk of developing heart disease, and lower your risk of developing type two diabetes.
A low glycemic diet is one that selects foods based on minimal alterations of circulating glucose levels.
This means that glycemic foods keep your blood sugar balanced. How does this affect your running, you may ask?
When a runner consumes a high glycemic food like white bread or a candy bar, their blood sugar rises and falls quickly.
They will have a rapid increase of energy, but they will also become fatigued more quickly. Whereas a low glycemic food will carry the runner further and faster without experiencing a sugar crash.
Candy bar or donuts are full of sugars so are the organic vanilla yoghurt, granola, and banana you ate for breakfast this morning. Let’s look at the glycemic index level for those foods.
Half of a Snickers bar is 68 on the glycemic index.
A glazed donut is 76 on the glycemic index. Yoghurt and granola are tricky. It really depends on the brands and the ingredients.
Plain yogurt has a glycemic index of 14 while fruited yoghurts are slightly higher with a glycemic index of about 36.
You can make your own low glycemic granola with still cut oats which have a glycemic index of 42 and maple syrup which has a glycemic index of 54 finally a banana which has a low glycemic index of 51. Remember the threshold is 55 before it becomes high glycemic.
A low glycemic meal that you could have before or after a run would be an apple with peanut butter or some steel cut oats.
We learned that all sugars are about equal when it comes to calories. How about on the glycemic index and how can we use that data for nutrition labels to figure this out?
When you look at the ingredients list you may see ingredients like glucose.
Glucose has the glycemic index of 100 and fructose is 25. Sucrose or ordinary sugar which is made up of a combination of the two, has the glycemic index of 65.
In the end it is all very complicated, and we could go on for hours about the different types of sugars and how your body reacts to them.
The best answer I can give to you is do your best.
Try to stay within the six teaspoons or 25 grams a day of added sugars and focus on low glycemic foods by choosing as close to whole foods as possible.
If you have a question for the runners in the coaches leave us a message at runnersconnect.net/daily.
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Until tomorrow, I’m coach Laura McLean for the Extra Kick Podcast brought to you by Runners Connect.
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