The Sugar Smart Diet: Stop Cravings and Lose Weight While Still Enjoying the Sweets You Love (28 page)
Authors: Anne Alexander,Julia VanTine
Good for the heart, good for the soul, maybe even good for your sugar belly! Dark chocolate, with its distinctive bittersweet taste and “top notes” of coffee, nuts, or cinnamon is an example of a better-for-you treat. Swap it for milk chocolate, and you’ll consume significantly less sugar. But that’s not the only reason we swoon for it: Although its flavor isn’t traditionally sweet, its health benefits are.
Dark chocolate is rich in antioxidants called flavonoids, which give it its unique “bite” and are responsible for many of its health benefits. For example, flavonoids appear to benefit cardiovascular health by lowering blood pressure, improving blood flow to the brain and heart, and making blood less sticky, which reduces the risk of heart attack and stroke.
Moreover, compared to milk chocolate, dark chocolate promotes that I’m-full feeling known as satiety, lowers the desire to eat sweets, and reduces calorie intake, which may help with weight loss, a study published in
Nutrition & Diabetes
found. When researchers gave 16 participants 3½ ounces of either dark or milk chocolate and 2 hours later offered them pizza, those who consumed the dark chocolate ate 15 percent fewer calories from the pizza than those who had milk chocolate.
If you’re used to milk chocolate, go dark gradually so you train your taste buds to appreciate the stronger taste. Look for a variety that has a 70 percent or higher cacao, or cocoa, content and lists cacao as its first ingredient.
You won’t miss the sugar in these swaps—the natural sugars in peanuts, yogurt, and fruit products are sweet enough on their own!
| Swap this . . . | . . . for this |
 JIF Peanut Butter (2 tablespoons): 190 calories, 3 g sugar | Smucker’s Organic Peanut Butter 2 tablespoons): 210 calories, 1 g sugar |
| Stonyfield Organic Fat-Free French Vanilla Yogurt (8 ounces): 170 calories, 33 g sugar | Siggi’s Icelandic Style Skyr Strained Nonfat Yogurt, Pomegranate & Passion Fruit 5.3 ounces): 100 calories, 9 g sugar |
| Healthy Choice Modern Classics Sweet & Sour Chicken: 390 calories 19 g sugar | Smart Ones Bistro Selections Slow Roasted Turkey Breast: 200 calories, <1 g sugar |
| Mott’s Original Applesauce (sweetened, 4 ounces): 90 calories, 22 g sugar | Mott’s Original Natural Applesauce (unsweetened, 4 ounces): 50 calories, 11 g sugar |
| Del Monte Peach Chunks in Heavy Syrup (½ cup): 100 calories, 23 g sugar | Dole Frozen Sliced Peaches (¾ cup): 50 calories, 10 g sugar |
Sweetened beverages such as sodas, sweetened teas and waters, and specialty coffee drinks count toward your daily added-sugar allotment. We count 100% fruit juice as an added sugar because juice has no fiber to slow the digestion of the sugar. While none of our swaps include artificial sweeteners, we recommend all-natural thirst quenchers like water, seltzer, green tea, black tea, and coffee. (You can put milk or cream and a teaspoon of honey or sugar in your coffee or tea, if you want.) If you haven’t yet mixed up a pitcher of one of our flavored waters (
Chapters 7
and
9
), or tried our DIY flavored coffee (
this page
), give them a try.
| Swap this . . . | . . . for this |
| Sprite (12 ounces): 140 calories, 38 g sugar | 8 ounces of seltzer mixed with 4 ounces of 100% fruit juice: 55 calories, 11 g sugar (if made with orange juice) |
| Starbucks Hot Chocolate, made with fat-free milk and no whipped cream (8 ounces): 130 calories, 23 g sugar | Homemade Chocolate Milk (served warm -8 ounces): 105 calories, 19 g sugar |
| Snapple Green Tea (16 ounces): 120 calories, 30 g sugar | Honest Tea Jasmine Green Energy Tea -16 ounces): 34 calories, 10 g sugar |
| Welch’s Grape Juice (8 ounces): 140 calories, 36 g sugar | R.W. Knudsen Family Just Cranberry juice -8 ounces): 70 calories, 9 g sugar |
| Arizona Rx Energy (23 ounces): 345 calories, 83 g sugar | Sweet Leaf Unsweet Tea, Lemon and Lime -16 ounces): 0 calories, 0 g sugar |