Healthy Food Choices for the Sugar Busters Diet

Video Transcript

MARY HONDROS: Okay, I am going to tell you a little bit about the Sugar Busters Diet if you have not heard about it. The basic premise of this diet is that it tells you to eliminate all sugar and refined grains from your diet. These includes any sweets any snacks that contain sugar in them, also white flours, white grains, potatoes, beets, carrots and things like that. So it kind of picks--selectively picks from some fruits and vegetables and tells you to eliminate them. The idea behind the diet is that if you eat these foods, they tend to raise your blood sugar too quickly which causes you to gain weight. This philosophy is pretty much untrue because we know that weight gain comes from excess calories and it does not matter where they come from, just the fact that they are there makes you gain weight. So, that does not necessarily mean that Sugar Busters Diet is an unhealthy diet but somethings to keep in mind when you are looking at diets that ask you to avoid certain components of food or the following. So keep these tips in mind when you are looking at diets in general. Refined sugars are generally not as healthy as whole grains for your body but this is not because they make you gain weight easier, it is because they contain less fiber which does not keep you feeling full as long. Secondly, any diet that tells you to avoid any food completely, especially when it comes to fruits and vegetables is not based on any scientific evidence. So just keep that in mind when you come across a diet that tells you to avoid a certain vegetable. Thirdly, keep in mind that you do not necessarily need to limit your carbohydrate intake. You just need to make sure that you have smaller portions of carbohydrate. Your diet should be about 60% carbohydrate so it is considered a basically healthy diet. And lastly, remember that diets like this are kind of similar to high protein diets. They are not necessarily healthy from a scientific point of view because we know that foods that are high in protein also raise your risk for heart disease and cancer and things like that. So those are four things to think about when you look at any kind of diet.