Hello and welcome to the Blue Door Neighborhood Center. My name is Auqea Wynn and I serve as health educator here. Today's presentation will be offered in both English and Spanish. If this is your first time joining us, the Blue Door Neighborhood Center is the first community based center owned by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois.
Our goal is to make a positive impact on community health, and we do that in a variety of ways, offering health education classes, programs and events. Today's wonderful class is going to focus on health matters. Rethink your drink.
Today, we will introduce and talk about the importance and best practices in reducing sugars in your favorite drinks. Let's think for a minute. From the time we wake up in the morning until the time we go to sleep at night, our bodies yearn for something to drink.
So think about it for a second. What you, your kids and your family may consume and drink on a daily basis. That includes sugar. It could be soft drinks. It could be sodas. It could be iced tea, coffee, juice and even those favorite energy and sports drinks.
So what are sugary drinks? Well, sugary drinks are also known as sugar sweetened beverages or any liquids that are sweetened with added sugars, beverages such as regular sodas that don't contain sugar free options or fruit drinks, sports drinks, energy drinks, sugary waters and coffee and tea beverages are all opt to contain added sugars.
So let's also think for a minute. What sugar got to do with it? So people who often drink sugary beverages tend to face a host of health problems. Some of those problems include weight gain, type two diabetes, heart disease and even dental cavities.
It's important to limit your sugar intake because this will help you to maintain a healthy and balanced diet. A key to remembering how much sugar you're taking is guess what, reading their food label. So be sure to check out and identify whether or not your favorite beverage contains added sugar.
Some of those may be identified by or as high fructose corn sirup, fructose fruit juice concentrates, honey, sugar, syrup, corn syrup, sucrose and even dextrose. So be sure to check those out. when reading food labels on your favorite beverages.,
So let's take a look at some examples and the not so sweet truth of all the sugar that's contained in our favorite beverages. For instance, a bottle of your favorite soda. It contains 16 grams of sugar in that entire bottle.
It's important to remember that one gram of sugar is equal to four teaspoons. So here we have an example in our baggie. This contains 16 grams of sugar. Again, that is contained in our favorite bottles of that soda.
Right. So you can see just how much sugar you are consuming at any given time when you're consuming a bottle of soda. You know, we get it. Life is busy and we're not always going to make the best beverage choices.
Right. Some are healthy, not containing sugar and some may contain tons of sugar. What is important to remember that here at the Blue Door Neighborhood Center, we're here to support you and offer better healthy choices. So what is we think your drink really look like?
We like to use the metaphor of the traffic stop, light Red for stop, Yellow for caution and Green for go. So when you think about rethinking your drink, you want to think about Red as being the least healthy choice, right?
Those could be sports drinks, energy drinks, sodas, fruit drinks and other added sugars and then sweetened tea. Right. Love the sweets. But guess what? Put a halt on that. And then there are those drinks that fall into the Yellow category, which is a moderate, healthy choices which we may consume occasionally, such as chocolate milk, 100% juice,
diet soda and low calorie drinks. And then there are the Green, healthier choices that we want to consume all of the time. Those be the all natural H2O or water, fruit infused water, skim or 100% milk, crystal light or unsweetened tea.
Remembering all of these tips and tricks can help you and your family again maintain a healthy weight and a healthy diet with less and less sugar. So here are the Blue Door Neighborhoods Center we encouraged you to take care of your health.
Please join us for more information on how to reduce sugar in your drinks and your entire diet through our classes on chronic disease and prevention management. We also offer nutrition, education, health education class and into how to rethink your drink and our low impact fitness classes such as Zumba, Yoga and Line dancing.
Thank you so much. And we love to stay connected to you. Please visit our website BlueDoorCenterIL.com For more information on programs and events. We're also now on Facebook, @BlueDoorCenterIL. You can keep up with us and all of our classes, programs and events.
See you soon. Bye.
