Reducing Sugar, Sodium and Saturated Fat

With it being National Nutrition Month, we are trying to provide you with nutrition topics of all sorts to help you make small, lasting changes to your diet and lifestyle.  Part of the new dietary guidelines, is too limit the intake of added sugars, sodium and saturated fat due to the fact that a majority of Americans follow a diet that is too high in these components. The Dietary Guidelines want people to stay away from food and beverage with these components and take the time to find creative and nutritional ways to add flavor to foods. Which is a great thing to do, but how do we go about actually doing it? 

Sugar: it is recommended that we consume less than 10 percent of calories everyday from added sugars and that foods and beverages without added sugar should be chosen over other, sugary choices.

• Read food labels. Choose foods without added sugars on the label such as high fructose corn syrup, dried cane syrup, evaporated cane juice, molasses, brown rice syrup honey and maple syrup.
• Drink water instead of sugary beverages like juice and soda. 
• Choose snacks with no added sugar. Choose things like plain yogurt and fresh, natural fruit. 
• Eat smaller dessert portions. Taking just one or two bites is usually enough to satisfy your sweet tooth. 

Sodium: the dietary guidelines recommend no more than 2,300 mg of sodium per day. Most sources of sodium consumed by Americans comes from salt added during commercial processing and preparation. Sodium is added to a lot of food, so it is important to check labels and buy low-sodium products. 

• Buy canned and foods with reduced or no salt added.
• Buy fresh meats and seafood rather than processed.
• Cook meals from scratch to control the amount of added salt.
• Flavor foods with citrus, herbs and spices rather than salt. 

Saturated Fat : it is important to know about the different kinds of fat and replace high intake of saturated fat with unsaturated fat. 

• Saturated fats are found in foods such as meat, butter, cheese and whole milk. Unsaturated fats are found in foods such as oils, fish, nuts and seeds.

Are your sugar, salt and fat intakes under control??