5 expert ways to decrease sugar intake

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Prediabetes is when a person's blood glucose levels are higher than normal, but are not high enough to be diagnosed as type 2 diabetes, according to the American Diabetes Association. Prediabetes is also often called impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) or impaired fasting glucose (IFG), which increases a person's risk for developing type 2 diabetes.

TIME reports that Americans are consuming as much as 22 teaspoons of added sugar every day, which amounts to 56 pounds in a year. For a regular 2,000-calorie diet, this amounts to 18 percent of a person's daily intake, much more than the recommended 10 percent by health authorities.

In order to decrease sugar intake for one's self and one's family, here are a few tips from health experts.

1. Keep young children away from food and drink laden with artificial and added sugars. Sugar scientist Laura Schmidt of the University of California, San Francisco told Huffington Post, "The goal should be to delay the age at which a kid first has a soda, and a child does not need juice...it’s better to give kids whole fruit or maybe blend fruit up in a smoothie."

Schmidt said that this is the same tactic as delaying a teen's first alcoholic drink or cigarette so that they grow up not looking for the taste of sugar.

2. Read the label of food packaged in bags, cans, and boxes, or anything that's not in the fresh produce area of the grocery. Reading the label of food bought from groceries not only makes one an informed consumer, it also makes a parent aware of each and every ingredient he or she decides to put inside their own and their children's bodies. Best to watch out for sugars in all of their forms, sucrose, sucralose, and other artificial sweeteners.

TIME reports that keywords to look out for are brown sugar, corn syrup, maltose, fructose, dextrose, molasses, agave, brown rice syrup, cane sugar, cane syrup, and evaporated cane juice.

3. Keep it out of sight. The first step to making a better choice for one's self and family is to decrease consumption of sugars by keeping it away or refusing to make it available in the household. This can help those who struggle with consuming too much sugar to curb the habit.

Schmidt explained, "We call it harm reduction in addition treatment. If I have a soda problem, then I don’t have it in my house, and I try to avoid contexts where it’s highly available."

4. Stop purchasing sodas, packed juices, and the like. For those who regularly consume sugary drinks such as soda, gradually lessen intake. For example, if one consumes two cans of soda per day, cut the consumption by half and drink one, then move down from there. People may also opt for diet sodas to curb cravings, and eventually cut it off completely. Do not forget to keep hydrated with water to avoid getting thirsty and over consume sugary drinks.

5. Make healthy swaps, such as sugar cookies for fruits. Cynthia Sass writes in TIME, "One of my favorite tricks...is how to replace foods laden with added sugar for fruit, which is naturally sweet and just as satisfying."

She explained that "Fruit—whether it’s fresh, baked, grilled, or pureed—makes a great replacement for sugar in lots of dishes, from cookies to coleslaw."