Going Sugar-Less

Over the last couple of weeks, we've tried taking as much sugar out of our diet as possible, mostly for health reasons. I decided we needed to do this after sitting down and making a list of how much sugar we consumed in a day. It was really ridiculous, even though we eat healthy and don't have a lot of junk around the house. The kids and I went on an "adventure" to Wal-Mart to try to investigate and find foods that didn't have sugar in them. We were mainly looking for foods that had NO corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup, as well as foods that didn't have sugar as one of the first three ingredients (but preferably no sugar at all). We found ranch dressing, peanut butter, chips, rice cakes, applesauce, and dried fruits. We even discovered gluten-free chocolate chips and cereal that contain evaporated cane juice instead of sugar--a better alternative. It was tough, and took us a while to examine all of the ingredients, but I was really surprised at how wonderful the kids' attitudes have been about the whole thing. It's quite adorable to hear my three-year-old ask me, "Does this have wheat in it?" Then turn around to daddy and say, "Daddy, we can have this; it's gluten-free. But, does it have sugar in it?"