Finding Peace With Sugar and Sweet Foods
Updated 24/07/26
For a lot of people, eating sugar comes with a fair amount of baggage including a tangle of food rules and a dollop of guilt. Yet when you understand what sugar actually is and stop treating sweet foods as something to battle with, the charge around them can settle, and you feel freer to enjoy food without that low hum of worry in the background.
If you feel out of control around sweet foods, this blog is for you. In it I explore sugar in all its forms and how to form a healthy relationship with sugary foods, so you can consume the ones you love in an enjoyable and conscious way.
Please note, if you are currently experiencing a restrictive eating disorder, fine-tuning what you know about sugar isn't likely to be the most helpful way to support yourself right now, and this probably isn't the right blog for you at this time. So please feel free to give this one a miss, be gentle with yourself and do reach out for the support you need to move towards unrestricted eating.
Where Sugar Resides
The term “sugar” can be used as a catch all - but as with most nutritional concepts, the reality is more nuanced. So first, understanding the distinction between free sugars and intrinsic sugars can be a helpful place to start.
Free sugars are those sitting outside the structure of a whole food, whether added by manufacturers or by us at the table. The biggest food sources of free sugars in the ‘standard Western diet’ include fizzy drinks, processed cereals, some low-fat ready meals, packaged cakes, desserts, biscuits, sweets and flavoured yoghurts, plus the sugar we add to teas and coffees. Free sugars also include honey, syrups and fruit juice - anything where the sugar sits outside the structure of a whole food.
Free sugars is where most of the health conversation is really pointing, largely because of where it resides, which is often in ultra-processed foods, and how quickly it is absorbed in the body.
We have likely got the message that consuming large amounts of free sugar over time may be linked to a number of health concerns. And it’s true that even with food industry steps to regulate or minimise free sugars, if a person’s daily diet is predominantly comprised of the kinds of foods high in free sugars, their sugar consumption is likely to be significant, and way above official recommendations.
However, to add perspective - infrequent or even small-moderate amounts regularly, are unlikely to be harmful to most people.
This is why, when you look at the big picture, most people are unlikely to need to cut it out completely. In fact, I encourage you not to write-off all the foods containing sugar as 'bad' (see my later point for more on this).
The second major category of sugars are the naturally occurring kind. Intrinsic sugars are locked inside the structure of whole foods - the natural sugars in fruit, dairy, starchy vegetables and whole grains.
Intrinsic sugars in whole foods come wrapped in fibre, water and a whole host of other beneficial nutrients, and are essentially delivered in a volume and format that our bodies are very well versed in handling.
Negative health implications from consuming natural sugars from whole foods are likely negligible for most people.
Please don't fear fruit
When people connect with simplistic media headlines, there is a risk they can become disproportionately fearful of all types of sugars including those in natural foods. Tropical fruits in particular, such as bananas, grapes or pineapple, can all get a bad rap. However, the sugar in fruits is intrinsic - held inside the structure of the food, alongside fibre, water, vitamins and polyphenols. That means it's absorbed gently. Plus, the fruit has many potential health benefits.
Dried fruit can get unfairly demonised too. Yes it is concentrated so the sugar adds up quickly - but so does the fibre and the rest of the goodness. In sensible amounts it's a perfectly nourishing snack.
However, fruit juice is an exception worth naming. A whole apple behaves very differently from apple juice, even though the sugar content looks similar on paper. Whilst it still provides vitamins, once the fibre is stripped out, the sugar behaves like a free sugar and will arrive very quickly in your blood stream when you consume it. Whilst it’s not to be feared and can certainly be enjoyed in modest amounts, it may be helpful to know this, particularly as it is very easy to drink a lot of fruit juice, and therefore sugar, without realising it.
Keeping it real
You might be wondering where things like yogurts, jams, baked beans, bottled sauces, condiments or ready-made protein balls or bars, fit into the sugar picture. As they are less obvious sources than some of the other foods I mentioned above, they are often described as containing ‘hidden’ sugars. Do you notice how that unhelpfully makes them sound pretty sneaky and a bit sinister?!
There is no doubt that learning about the sugars added to foods can be surprising - but we also need to keep perspective and realise that going to the extremes of avoiding these foods is not necessary and they can happily form part of an overall balanced daily diet. Nor would trying to avoid them completely be practical for most of us or constructive to maintaining a healthy relationship with food.
Some people looking to increase nutritional awareness may find it interesting to check labels. However, UK food labels only show total sugar so you can't easily see how much is free versus intrinsic anyway. A workaround is to glance at the ingredients list which is ordered by weight - if a form of sugar sits near the top, it is likely there is a fair bit in there. A yoghurt might look high in sugar on the label when much of it is simply the natural lactose. A protein bar might look high in sugar when the sugar is from dried fruit (intrinsic) and sits down the list from a lot of other ingredients such as nuts.
Another, perhaps more helpful approach than getting caught up in labels, is simply to consider how much of the food in question you would typically eat and what else you might pair it with whilst you eat it. Take honey as an example here. Eating it pure by the tablespoon is one thing - but how many of us are likely to do that? Most of us are likely to consume it on a slice of toast with butter for taste, or drizzled on protein-rich greek yoghurt and berries, or to sweeten up our parsnips.
Sugary drinks are probably the closest most of us get to sugar in a pure, fast-absorbed form in large amounts, which is why they come up so often in the health conversation. A single can of Coke has nearly ten times the amount of sugar as your cup of tea sweetened with one teaspoon.
But it’s well worth remembering that most of the time we rarely eat sugar on its own. It nearly always arrives inside a food, wrapped up with other things which slow down its absorption rate. A cake, for instance, is mostly flour, eggs, fat and a bit of fruit or milk, rather than a spoonful of sugar in disguise. This changes both how it's digested and what it offers you nutritionally, and the value of a whole meal or snack usually looks very different from its single ingredients.
Dairy is another good example. The processing varies widely - a brie looks nothing like cheese strings, and kefir nothing like a Muller Corner - yet ultimately they all bring some of the milk sugar lactose alongside calcium, protein and natural fats, so each can still add something worthwhile to your overall intake.
BUILDING A HEALTHIER RELATIONSHIP WITH SWEET FOODS
If sweet foods such as chocolate, icecream, biscuits or cake feel loaded for you - for example, you regularly experience strong cravings, a sense of being out of control around these foods and guilt after you eat them - please know that this isn't about greed or a lack of willpower.
Understandably you may associate sweet foods with the enjoyment or comfort they bring or the quick energy hit. Even if you have concerns about your health and sugar intake, you may struggle or feel resistant when it comes to changing your habits. Perhaps you have tried to follow mainstream dieting advice to cut sweet foods out completely, only to find it has backfired into preoccupation or bingeing on these foods.
None of this is your fault. It is hard to rigidly maintain restrictive rules. And the research around disordered eating tells us that creating strong attachment to a story that “sugar is bad” can, ironically, put higher sugar foods on a pedestal and heighten our interest in them.
The good news there is a way to find more peace with sweet foods and essentially ‘de-charm’ them so they can have a place in your daily diet that feels proportionate and unloaded. Here is some guidance to help you take your first steps with this:
Start by noticing your own patterns. What actually tends to pull you towards sweet foods - hunger, tiredness, stress, going too long between meals? Once you can name what's really going on, you can respond to the real need rather than white-knuckling the craving.
Eat enough and eat regularly. Choose meals and snacks that feel nourishing and genuinely satisfying which incorporate protein, grains/starches, vegetables/fruits and fats. So much of reaching for sweet foods is simply due to under-fuelling and hunger catching up with you.
Give yourself genuine, full permission to eat sugar. This may sound counter-intuitive but when sweet foods stop being forbidden, they slowly come off the pedestal you've put them on. You get to choose them because you actually want them, not because you're rebelling against a food rule.
And if it helps your energy, pair sweet foods with something more substantial, for example, fruit with yoghurt, or a biscuit with a handful of nuts.
My Conclusions
In the west, our relationship with sugar is an interesting one - potentially overly complicated by mainstream advice and demonising media headlines that oversimplify what sugar is.
My key message in this blog is that in the current food environment some nutritional awareness can be helpful - but more important is staying curious about what your body is telling you and to allow sugar and sweet foods to be nothing more to you than one part of a varied, enjoyable, normal way of eating.
If you have an eating disorder or are concerned about your relationship with sweet foods, professional nutritional support is available to help you find more peace, ease and freedom.
If sugar-related health concerns are weighing on your mind, then also check-out my companion blog, Getting Real About Sugar and Your Health here.
Take a nourishing step forward today
If this resonated with you, you don't have to navigate this alone. I offer nutritional therapy and behaviour change support for binge eating disorder, emotional eating, disordered eating and yo-yo dieting patterns, and I'd love to help you find your way back to more ease and trust with food.
Explore my support options or book a confidential, no-obligation enquiry call to see if working together feels right.
