WE'RE SWEET, BUT NOT TOO SWEET...

Sugar has been getting a lot of bad press lately. We always knew it was kind of bad for us, what with it sending us into a drug-like high every time we had a few too many gummi bears and our mums warning us it would rot our teeth. But lately the allegations against sugar have gotten more serious. It is accused of upsetting our hormones and fertility, speeding up the aging process and causing the obesity epidemic we are now facing in the western world.

Some scientists are talking about our addiction to sugar and calling for it to be labelled a poison like alcohol or nicotine. Suddenly the justification that sugar is natural and therefore can’t be bad for us doesn’t add up. Uranium is natural, but you don’t want to be adding a teaspoon to your coffee, do you?

None of us have been under any illusions about the consequences of eating chocolate, but sometimes we do the cost benefit analysis of that sugary snack and decide the pleasure is worth it. What we don’t want is sugar entering our diet stealthily through everyday foods such as bread, yogurt and cereal. Most of us now are getting into the habit of checking the nutritional guide on the back of the packet and looking for foods that add flavour through naturally tasty ingredients rather than cheaply coating everything in sugar.

With that in mind, we at The Wild have tweaked our cereal recipes to reduce the sugar content, without compromising on taste. Our Porridge and Bircher now have the miniscule amount of 1gm of sugar per 100gm and the Granola, Muesli and Crumble have around 5gm per 100gm. This doesn’t mean your breakfast slash dessert now tastes similar to cardboard, as flavour comes from the delicious additions such as coconut, berries, lime and cacao. And our new packaging with a plastic window means you can now take a peek at the tempting combinations. Say good riddance to sugar without saying goodbye to yummy food.

Words by Larissa West for The Wild.