Sugar may be sweet, but the effects it can have on your health are decidedly not.
While some foods naturally contain sugar — fruit and milk, for example — many foods have sugar added to enhance their flavor, including some you might not suspect because they don’t taste overly sweet. Processed foods, baked goods, and even condiments like ketchup and salad dressing often contain added sugars.
“Added sugars contribute sweetness and palatability to foods, but don’t add any beneficial nutrients. This is why they’re called ‘empty calories,’” says Brittany Poulson, RDN, CDCES, a certified diabetes care and education specialist in Grantsville, Utah.
The current Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend limiting added sugars to no more than 10 percent of your total daily calorie intake, which is approximately 12 teaspoons of sugar for a standard 2,000 calorie a day diet. You can reach — or even exceed — those limits pretty quickly if you’re not careful. In fact, according to data published in Frontiers in Nutrition in June 2021, Americans consume an average of nearly 17 teaspoons of added sugars per day.
Overdoing it on sugar has been linked to a wide range of health problems. An umbrella review published in BMJ in April 2023 found associations between excess sugar in the diet and 45 different health issues, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular problems, asthma, cancer, and depression.
Sugar is thought to contribute to these and other health issues by wreaking havoc on blood sugar and causing cellular inflammation, a marker of many chronic diseases, according to a study published in Frontiers in Immunology in August 2022.
Breakfast provides an excellent opportunity to cut back on added sugars, says Lauren Harris-Pincus, RDN, the founder of Nutrition Starring You in Green Brook Township, New Jersey. Many traditional morning foods, including cereal, pastries, pancakes, French toast, and even yogurt may be loaded with the sweet stuff, and lack nutrients like fiber or protein that blunt the impact on blood sugar (the reason the sugar that occurs naturally in fruits and vegetables tends not to have similar negative effects).
“Swapping out added sugars for natural sugars, such as fruit, increases nutrients while still bringing the sweetness many people desire in their morning breakfast foods,” Poulson says.
Fortunately, rustling up a breakfast with no added sugar is easier than you might think, and doesn’t have to mean sacrificing taste. These 15 recipes prove it.
1. Raspberry Quinoa Porridge
Freshen up classic oat porridge with this quinoa-flake version, which adds protein, since quinoa is technically a seed, not a grain. Raspberries add natural sweetness along with a host of nutrients, including fiber, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, Poulson says. The best part is you can whip up this healthy breakfast in just two minutes.
Nutrition per serving (serves 2): 124 calories, 1g total fat (1g saturated fat), 3g protein, 26g carbohydrates, 5g fiber, 5g sugar, 8mg sodium