Just a Spoon Full of Sugar…..Grams to teaspoons

My friend Karen made my jaw drop when she informed me that one of my favorite “healthy breakfast” options  had 9.5 teaspoons of sugar.  Here I thought I was eating something healthy only to find out that ounce for ounce this was as sugar- heavy as drinking a can of coke. (ok, that’s a bit of an  exaggeration, but not much). 

Learning how to convert sugar from grams to teaspoons is helpful because grams are listed on the Nutrient Fact labels of processed foods, and it’s easier for those of us who are used to Imperial units to mentally picture a teaspoonful of sugar than it is to picture a gram of sugar. One teaspoon of granulated white sugar is close to four grams. If you buy a 12 oz bottle of cola with 41 grams of sugar, you would divide 41 by 4, which is equal to 10 teaspoons of sugar. That’s a lot of sugar – and a lot of calories with no additional nutritional value.

My ex-breakfast beverage has some fat, some fiber, good vitamin content and some protein….but it has A LOT of calories mostly coming from SUGAR. This is certainly a recipe for blood sugar blast off, only to be followed by a certain blood sugar crash.

The other unfortunate part of learning the truth about my ex-breakfast is that is was super easy and finding a substitute is not-as-easy. Let’s look at some other really-super-easy breakfast options and practice our new skill of converting grams of sugar to teaspoons of sugar.

There are many breakfast foods you might want to evaluate for sugar before you lift the item from the shelf into your grocery cart.

Let’s look at a few:

Chocolate Carnation Instant Breakfast w/milk – (powder and bottled ) 19g = 4.75 teaspoons

Pop Tart (unfrosted Strawberry) – 13 g = 3.25 teaspoons sugar

Pop Tart (frosted Strawbery) – 16 g – 4 teaspoons sugar

Cheerios  – 1g or .25 tsp (per 1 cup of cereal)

Wheeties (reg)- 4 g or 1  tsp (per 3/4 cup cereal)

Wheeties Fuel – 14g or 10 tsp (per 3/4 cup cereal)

Two eggs – 0 gm sugar, 6 gm protein  per egg

Quick review:  to find the teaspoons, divide the sugar grams by 4.

Not sure how much a teaspoon is?  Check it here.