Do You Know How Much Sugar is in Your Food?

Tariq Drabu, a leading dentist and specialist oral surgeon, owner of the successful Langley Dental Practice in Manchester has advised that many of his patients are not fully aware of exactly how much sugar they are consuming each and every day.

This dentist advised that there has been a lot of hype over the years regarding sugar intake and the dental profession has been trying to educate patients on sugars and the dangers of these sugars. Sugars have a very negative impact on oral health and is the leading cause of dental decay in children, which leads to thousands of tooth extractions each year and a major drain on the NHS.

Tariq Drabu felt it necessary for everyone to understand how many grams of sugar they can find per one hundred grams in some of the more common foods and snacks consumed in the United Kingdom today.

Biscuits

Tariq Drabu did advise that everyone in the United Kingdom loves to sit in front of the fire on a cold afternoon with a lovely cup of tea and a couple of biscuits to tide them through until tea time. Interestingly, the most common biscuits will shock you in how much sugar they actually do contain.

• Jaffa cakes – 52 grams of sugar per 100 gram serving. That is more than fifty percent sugar.
• Chocolate digestives – 29.2 grams of sugar per 100 gram serving.
• Custard Creams – 29.8 grams of sugar per 100 grams serving.

Chocolates

Now and then parents will allow their children to have a chocolate as a treat. Sweets are the worst thing for oral health, the sugar sticks to the teeth, eating away at the hard enamel and causing unwelcome cavities which cause pain in the long run.

• Crunchie – 61.7 grams of sugar per 100 gram serving.
• Mars Bar – 68.1 grams of sugar per 100 gram serving.
• Snickers – 54.5 grams of sugar per 100 gram serving.

Spreads

So many parents will make the mistake of choosing honey as a healthy option when giving their children toast, over jams, for example. What you may not realise is that honey actually has more sugars than syrup. Honey will give you 84.1 grams of sugar per 100 grams, while golden syrup will give 80.5 grams per 100 gram.

Tariq Drabu advised that this is food for thought and should provide some insight, encouraging people to check labels and do research to ensure that they reduce their sugar intake moving forward.