Reducing your sugar intake

We all know that too much sugar is bad for our health and can cause weight gain and damage teeth. Here we share tips to help you cut down your sugar intake and tell you about how we’re continuing to reduce sugar in Co-op products.

Sugar in your diet

Here are some tips to help you reduce sugar throughout the day:

Breakfast

Try switching to lower sugar breakfast cereals such as porridge or wheat biscuits
Top your cereal with fruit instead of a sprinkle of sugar
Instead of adding honey to porridge, try toppings such as berries, grated apple, prunes

Main meals

Try having yogurt and fresh fruit as a dessert
Choose tinned fruit in natural juices over fruit in syrup
If you’re making a crumble, think if you actually need to add sugar to the fruit
Check the labels to compare the sugar levels between different products or look out for products with a green traffic light in sugar as this means they’re low in sugar. Check out our website for more guidance on how to use food labelling
Why not make your own pasta sauces using tinned tomatoes to avoid cooking sauces which can have added sugar?
Look out for no added sugar or reduced sugar versions of products that you normally buy
When baking, try to use fruit for sweetness where possible instead of sugar

Snacks

Sugar is commonly found in products like chocolate, cake and desserts. These are fine to eat in moderation but check out our labels for advice on portion size
Limit the amount of treats you have. Try cutting smaller slices of cake or only have 1 biscuit instead of 2
Healthier snacking alternatives include things like unsalted nuts, rice cakes, oat cakes, plain popcorn
Dark chocolate generally contains less sugar than milk chocolate

Drinks

Fruit juice can be acidic so drinking too much of it can cause damage to your teeth. Limit your juice to a 150ml portion, but you could always try to dilute it with some water to reduce the amount of sugar you’re consuming
Use sweetener instead of sugar in hot drinks. Or you could try gradually easing yourself off sugar in your hot drinks by reducing the amount of sugar you add until you get used to the taste of not having it in your tea/coffee
Swap fizzy sugary drinks for no added sugar and sugar free drinks or water instead. You could try flavouring water with some lemon, lime or mint