The sugar quiz we have in the first session of every Eat Well Programme asks participants to guess how much sugar is in every day food such as bread, potatoes, rice, pitta bread, chapati. Because these are all savoury foods people are often puzzled about where the sugar is hiding.
The truth is that the starch in these foods are simply long chains of sugar (glucose) and once we eat a potato or slice of bread, this gets digested into simple sugar and circulates in our blood, raising our blood sugar and causing the body to release insulin to deal with it.
The presentation from Session 1 shows how much sugar can be found in what is considered a 'normal' day's food - for example, cereal and toast for breakfast, a sandwich or jacket potato, crisps and fruit for lunch, and chicken and rice for dinner - turns into about 52 teaspoons of sugar once digested.
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