Who hasn’t heard about sugar-free diets by now? The average French person consumes around 30 kilograms of sugar per year. The blame lies with poor habits and a raw ingredient that is (far) too cheap.
Check the labels on your everyday products and you’ll see it fast, the food industry adds sugar everywhere… Even though glucose is a key fuel for training and racing, as an endurance athlete you still want to limit added sugar. And focus on foods with a low glycemic index!
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Sugar is addictive
The more sugar you eat, the more you want. It activates the brain’s reward pathway and releases dopamine, the hormone linked to desire and pleasure.
This addiction, similar to a drug dependency, affects more than 5% of French people. When sugar intake is too high, your body stores the excess as fat. That’s why high-sugar eating patterns often lead to weight gain. Over 25 years, obesity rates have doubled.
Sometimes the liver becomes inflamed and starts storing that fat too, this is NASH (non-alcoholic steatohepatitis), also known as fatty liver disease. It affects 6% of French people.
A dirt-cheap ingredient
To keep you coming back for more, manufacturers add sugar even to unlikely products like ham or pickle brine… A simple way to make sure you buy it again on your next grocery run. In cakes and pastries, sugar also acts as a preservative.
In France, 85% of produced sugar comes from sugar beet. Once the vitamins, minerals, and fiber are removed, what’s left is about 18% sucrose molecules, plain table sugar.
Sugar beet is currently overproduced, and the cost is unbeatable, €25 per ton. Once processed, sucrose is sold to manufacturers for about 50 cents per kilogram. Only wheat flour is cheaper, around 30 cents per kilogram. No surprise it’s a go-to ingredient for producing ever-cheaper ultra-processed foods.
Breakfast, a shocking sugar cocktail
Who hasn’t poured a bowl of cereal with fruit juice for the kids in the morning? Those cereal boxes with friendly cartoon characters are not as wholesome as they look. They often contain over 40% sugar. How can you tell? Look at the nutrition facts per 100 grams, the sugar line is often above 40 grams.
Fruit juices contain as much sugar as soda. For a 20cl glass, that’s about 20 grams. On top of that, when fruit juice is industrial, the quality of vitamins and minerals is usually low.
Worse, if you have a small bowl of 50 grams of cereal plus a glass of fruit juice, you’re already at 40 grams of sugar. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a limit of 25 grams per day…
Your blood sugar spike hits about 30 minutes after breakfast, then you or your kids crash into mid-morning hypoglycemia… If you listen to the ads, you then slip a sugary snack into the school bag and it will “hold them” until lunch. Food marketing is very good at what it does…
It’s true, sometimes it’s easier… If you want to keep cereal, choose oatmeal, we share a few ideas for athlete-friendly breakfasts.
Is the glycemic index more useful than counting grams of sugar?
The glycemic index (GI) measures how strongly a carbohydrate raises blood sugar levels. Paradoxically, foods like white bread have a high GI. You don’t think of it as “sweet,” but it can send your blood glucose soaring.
The key takeaway is that most vegetables have a low glycemic index, and many fruits do too when eaten with their fiber.
You can find a table of foods ranked by glycemic index here.
What can you replace table sugar with?
Table sugar can be replaced with agave syrup, natural stevia, coconut sugar, or certain low-GI honeys like acacia honey.
We do not recommend synthetic sweeteners such as aspartame, used in Zero or Light sodas. They can be addictive and may be harmful to health.
Food should still be a source of pleasure. Try adjusting your habits so you can combine healthy nutrition with strong energy levels for sport, training, and endurance performance. If you want to build better habits, our weight loss running programs include specific guidance. Of course, eating should also stay enjoyable.