Low-sugar foods
I've found that eating a lot of sugar makes my stomach feel weird and bad, so I pay an outsized attention to the amount of sugar in the food I eat. And many foods are sweetened a lot more than you expect, which is something I started noticing after I read the excellent book Salt Sugar Fat.
Here are nice low-sugar foods I've found:
- Target Brownie Batter Dessert Hummus - this is basically why I'm writing this post. I just discovered this last week and it is SO GOOD. It's delicious and chocolatey and tastes like a dessert, yet it's mostly just chickpeas and only has 1g of sugar per serving. Absolutely mindblowing.
- Cereal: I used to be a die-hard Frosted Mini Wheats fan, but at some point realized it's actually quite sweet at 12g of sugar per serving. I always thought it was magically delicious, but apparently that's only lucky charms. Since then I've found Life cereal is a good pick at 8g sugar per serving, as are Quaker oatmeal squares at 9g sugar per serving. Most recently I discovered the holy grail, which is Kalshi Autumn Wheat. This is a daintily sweetened version of my old pal Frosted Mini Wheats, with just 7g sugar per serving but still tasty. You'll note I have left out cereal like Cheerios from this list, because Cheerios are neither yummy nor filling, so what's the point?
- Lately I've stopped eating much breakfast cereal at all because even my Top Picks here are pretty sweet. Muesli can be a great alternative, as are oats. I'll have to write about oats someday. I love oats.
- Most coffee shops can make a vanilla (or other flavor) latte using sugar free syrup, and it tastes mostly as good.
- Diet soda is a given.
- Skippy peanut butter has 4g sugar per 2Tbsp, compared to Jif's 3g and Adam's 2g. I still eat Skippy because the difference here is marginal and Jif tastes weird to me. I might give Adam's another shot if I can find the no-stir variety.
- Beverages are the absolute worst. A bottle of Nesquik chocolate milk from a gas station has 39g of sugar. For comparison, a can of Coca-Cola also has 39g of sugar. I have no idea how Nesquik gets away with this.
- Anything that tastes unexpectedly yummy probably has been sweetened excessively. King's Hawaiian rolls have 5g of sugar per roll!
- Greek yogurt is a challenge. Many have a ton of sugar; a Chobani strawberry greek yogurt cup, for example, has 15g of sugar. Oikos Triple Zero seems like a good choice, but for some reason they also made it 0g fat. I want the fat! It's tasty and filling! FAGE is a good option for full-fat, low-sugar greek yogurt.