Counseling Sheet

Agatha M. Thrash, M.D.
Preventive Medicine

• Do not put sugar on the table. Try using raisins, dates, or some other fruit for a natural sweetener instead of sugar.
• Use dark brown sugar, molasses, honey, and dried fruits with as little white or raw sugar as possible. Be sparing with all concentrated sweets.
• When serving a dessert high in calories, plan for it in the meal by serving fewer calories in the main part of the meal.
• Build up a supply of recipes using little or no sugar. In many desserts the quantity of sugar used can be cut in half, and the dessert will be acceptable.
• Buy no sugar-coated breakfast food.
• Avoid large amounts of sugar and milk in combination (e.g. ice cream) for they are likely to cause fermentation.
• Avoid desserts that use large quantities of milk, sugar, and eggs together (like puddings).
• Learn to make desserts without the use of baking soda.
• Let desserts be a special treat - not served every day of the week.
• Use unsweetened fruit juices rather than heavily sugared ones.
• Many fruit recipes do not need any sugar at all. Use more fresh fruit and frozen fruit without large amounts of sugar added. If you buy canned fruit, purchase it with light syrup rather than heavy syrup. Well prepared fruit dishes can take the place of the concentrated, refined sweets so freely eaten by children (and adults).
• Take sweet foods chiefly at the end of a meal.
• Do not eat candy or other sweets between meals.
• If today's diet is to provide thiamine and niacin as the wholesome diet of a former era, we will have to give as hard a look at sugar as we did at roller-milled white flour. We are eating huge amounts of sugar in candy, desserts, breakfast sweets, and beverages that have no nutritional significance, only extra calories.
• Keep the total amount of sugar in the diet low, and take only small amounts of concentrated sweets.
• Use unrefined fiber - not processed.
• Read labels.