Sugar -- friend or always foe?

Reasons for sugar addiction: Like fat, sugar makes food taste good. Even a small amount can change the flavor of something that would be otherwise dull and tasteless. Compare the taste of porridge just cooked in water with the almost gourmet effect when it is laced with cream and honey or sugar.

That quick boost: As well as enjoying the taste of sweet things, simple sugar in the form of sweets, chocolate or pastries gives us a quick lift when we feel tired or weak. That's why “elevenses time” came about. If we've had an early morning breakfast, or worse, no breakfast at all, by midmorning we're likely to be ravenous. But what kind of foods do we crave at that time? A healthy salad? A portion of fat-free grilled chicken? No way. It is a sweet lift we want, and that is because our blood sugar levels have dropped and so has our energy. Savory snacks can give us the energy we need, but we don't crave them in the same way since they don't have the same “instant” effect as sweet treats.

Sure, wolfing down a couple of calorie rich cookies or a chocolate bar will give us a boost, but only a very short-lasting one. Not only that but soon afterwards, the opposite effect occurs, i.e., a drop in energy levels because it stimulates the production of insulin thus causing sugar to be converted to glycogen. This in turn causes hypoglycemia, a lowering of the blood sugar, which causes us to feel unpleasantly lightheaded. Just the opposite of what we were trying to achieve.

Worse still, the body's glycogen capacity is limited to about 350 grams, and once this is reached, any excess glucose is quickly converted into fat.

Simple sugars versus other sugars: Simple sugar (glucose) is that white powdery stuff that we add in cubes to our çay, sprinkle on breakfast cereal or use in baking sweets. Of all the sugars, it's the baddie of baddies and called simple sugar since in its pure form it hits the glycogen levels faster than any of its sugar counterparts.

So if you eat a piece of baklava or halva, it's going to end up as fat on your body a lot faster than if you downed a large banana, which is anyway lower in calories. Not only that, as per the paragraph above, it will mess with your energy levels, and you'll be feeling the usual dieter's remorse.

The other sugars: Sugar is present in most carbohydrates in one form or another. Apart from simple sugar, there is lactose, fructose and maltose.

Maltose is present in starch and therefore appears in potatoes, pasta and bread. Bread is a baddy for sugar since it is present at the start of dough making, and white bread is the worst for this. Maltose is also present in beer. Just because something doesn't taste sweet doesn't mean that sugar isn't present, and maltose is a good example of this.

Fructose is much sweeter and gram for gram, sweeter than simple sugar. It is present, as the name suggests, in fruit. It isn't as bad as glucose, but it isn't that good, either. Of course, if given the choice, we should opt for fruit instead of chocolate cake, but that's because chocolate and pastries contain large amounts of that other baddy -- fat --and therefore are higher in calories. Some fruit is worse than others. When I started my bodybuilding diet, I was banned from everything except bananas and apples. Sadly I had to give my morning orange juice a miss. Nearer to the contest I had to give up all fruit, and this should tell you that fruit is not as innocent as it seems.

It is only recently that dieters have started to wake up to the fact that they cannot eat as much fruit as they like and that gorging piles of cherries and strawberries in the summer is not a good thing.

Which is worse? Sugar or fat?

A newbie dieter might well want to know the answer to that question and, from a dieting point of view, the answer is fat. This is because, gram for gram, it is far higher in calories than sugar.

Long-term overdosing on both of course has its health risks; sugar can cause late onset diabetes, and fat is a well-known cause of heart disease.

The correct approach: When I'm not dieting for a competition I nevertheless limit my sugar intake. I do indulge from time to time, of course. I love biscuits and cookies from the UK and bring them back with me. Knowing that I can't get them here in Turkey in itself limits my consumption. I have three pieces of fruit a day normally -- orange juice, an apple and a banana. I also enjoy dried fruits. These are higher in fructose since they are concentrated but again, better to take with you for that quick boost than glucose-based sweets. My favorite are figs followed by dry Hunza apricots.

I try to avoid chocolate on the whole as it is so full of fat. Ditto with ice cream, which is a shame because I love it. Once in a while, of course, you can indulge. The keywords here are to re-educate your palate and wean yourself off that glucose craving. I remember after months of near starvation once I'd finished a contest diet and the contest was over, my trainer and I raided the local bakery and at first I didn't enjoy what I was eating as it tasted so sweet. If you consume a spoonful of sugar, you'll notice that slightly burning sour taste afterwards, so you can imagine what it's doing to your teeth enamel.

Sugar substitutes: I remember using lots of these and sugar-free sweets but came to the conclusion that wasn't such a smart idea. Remember that we are trying to “de-addict” ourselves from a sweet taste and not to imitate it with sorbitol-based substitutes. They have chemicals and too much salt so also aren't that great for one's health. As usual, the answer is to reduce the amount of sugary foods you are eating, to avoid the mid-morning sugary snack by eating a protein and complex carbohydrate breakfast, which keeps you satisfied until lunch time, and to look at food more as fuel than entertainment.