Go easy on those sugary treats | Bangkok Post: news

SMARTCHOICE

Many of us adore spoiling our loved ones with sweet things on St Valentine's Day, but it can often be hard to decide which type of confectionary _ chocolate, cakes, candy, fancy biscuits, ice cream, etc _ is best to indulge in and when to call a halt.

"We all like sweet things because they tend to make us feel happier," said Sujit Saleepun, a senior technical nutritionist at the Ministry of Public Health's Bureau of Nutrition. "But no one seems to know when they've had enough! Eating too many sweets can make you feel tired because of the way they increase the pace of your body's metabolism." She went on to explain that a large intake of sugary food causes our pancreas to release large amounts of insulin in order to quickly lower our blood sugar levels. This sudden decrease as the level plummets is what makes us feel fatigued.

According to Sujit, chocolate _ one of the most popular St Valentine's Day treats _ is all right as long as we can limit our intake to three morsels a day. The energy supplied by food is measured in kilocalories (kcal). An individual heart-shaped chocolate from a popular brand contains about 60kcal, so three of them would give 180kcal. But if you can't stop at just three and go on to devour the whole bag, you'd be well advised to compensate by eating less of something else, Sujit says, in order to prevent a jump in your total calorie intake for that day. A small bar of milk chocolate weighing 100g supplies about 520kcal of energy. If you get through half of this in one day, then you have consumed 260kcal, which puts you over Sujit's daily recommended limit of 180 and means that you need to make a saving of 80kcal elsewhere in your diet.