A Natural Food Chef Shares Her Secrets For Reducing Sugar Intake

Here are some of the ways I've tweaked my life on the sugar front and kept my cooking just as satisfying.

Breakfast foods tend to rack up more sugar violations than most. Beyond those Frosted Flakes, it's also lurking in gluten-free toast, many nut butters, organic breakfast bars, and flavored oatmeal. When I batch cook on weekends, I try to add a breakfast dish to my rotation—make-ahead frittata bites or coconuty oats (see No. 3) are my go-tos. If I'm running out the door, I'll grab siggi's plain yogurt with a touch of raw honey.

Coconut milk can add some of that sweetness to savory sauces to balance out spice and acid. Finally, coconut aminos are a great substitute for soy sauce and gluten-free tamari and can help you keep homemade peanut sauce and Asian-inspired marinades low-sugar (and soy-free) while maintaining their sweetness.

Because of this, I try not to stock overly processed snacks or sweets in the house. When I do need a grab-and-go treat, I reach for one with simple ingredients such as siggi's vanilla yogurt. If I have an extra sweet craving, I'll mix dark-chocolate chips right into the cup!

Since most commercial dressings have loads of added sugar, our taste buds have been trained to crave a pop of sweetness in our salads. I used to add a handful of dried cherries or cranberries until I discovered that even those are usually sweetened further with fruit juice concentrates. Now it's all about that root-veg base.

The beverage aisle is where many of our added sugar calories come from. Even "healthy" drinks like coconut water still have the same sugar and calorie content of a generic sports drink. I've made plain old H2O my drink of choice for the most part. But when I'm craving something sweeter, I'll grab a bottle of kombucha. These bubbly teas use sugar in the fermentation process—it's what the live cultures eat!—but there's very little by the time it makes it into a bottle. I've even started making my own!

While I try to live with less sugar, I don't want my life to be devoid of simple pleasures like the smell of freshly baked cookies or hot cocoa. I keep raw honey around for adding a little extra sweetness to teas, homemade cocktails, and other minimally heated concoctions (high heat will kill all the added nutrients in unprocessed honey). And I have a cheaper bottle around for baking. Both honey and maple syrup have a lower fructose content than table sugar, and this does my liver many favors, since it's the organ that processes fructose.

The trick to having your cake and eating it too (at least, without a giant blood-sugar crash) is to add as much fiber as possible. This slows the absorption of sugar into your bloodstream and gives your liver more time to deal with the deluge. I try to add lots of nuts and seeds to my baking and to focus on sweet treats that involve fresh fruit, which has its own natural fiber to balance out1 its sugar content.