I do like sugar, but does sugar like me?

Most people go a little crazy during the holiday season with their eating. I, however, went totally nuts with the baked goods. I wasn't able to eat chocolate and things tasted weird during the 2012 holiday season, so I made up for it this year. Oh you brought in a tin off cookies for the office? Don't mind if I eat the top tray of (~12) cookies by myself. I earned it. Oh, we have a party to go to? Well, let me bake 4 dozen cookies and sample 4 before we go and eat 4 more while we are there. Oh, you left out a tray of brownies and chocolate covered macaroons? Well, two brownies and 6 macaroons should go into my belly. Obviously.

I earned my celebration and I ate my weight in cookies.

Now, in order to continue living a cancer free lifestyle it is time to reel it in. I have been doing research to see if there are solid links of added sugars and cancer. Because, yes, that is what dietitian's do with there spare time. Diet studies are hard because they are riddled with bias and they rely so much on the participants being truthful and having good memories. Also, it's nearly impossible to do a random controlled trial. You can't give someone a placebo cookie that doesn't have sugar for their whole lifetime and see if they get cancer. You also can't control their environment. But, I digress. The only studies I found that linked sugar to cancer are ones about type I endometrial cancer and sugar sweetened beverages (that's shop talk for soda, soft drinks). But, again one study supports it, another does not. Reading a review of the data (only published in Spanish) demonstrated how all over the map the data is. And the fact that I attempted to read a Spanish review should tell you about my research spree....

My bottom line. I am going with the American Heart Association recommendation (Johnson, RK, et al. Dietary Sugars Intake and Cardiovascular Health: A Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association. Circulation 2009:120:1011-1020) which is for woman is 24 grams of added sugar a day. That is 6 teaspoons or 6 sugar cubes for the visual (for men it is 9 tsps). That is less than the mini can of coke. I know the AHA is not cancer related, but when you have your crazy pants on and you are researching like a fiend it is soothing to find an actual hard number.

Now, as I am, and probably always will be a full on cookie monster (see above) I did the following math:

Original Tollhouse	recipe  grams of sugar
Chocolate Chips 2 cups	256
White 3/4 cup	144
Brown 3/4 cup	144
Total Sugar in Recipe	544
Sugar Per Cookie (Assuming 3 dozen made)	15.11111
Added Sugar Grams Recommended per day	24
% of days added sugar	63%
Modified
Mini Chips 1.5 cups	192
White 1/4 cup	48
Brown 1/2 cup	96
Total Sugar in Recipe	336
Sugar Per Cookie (Assuming 3 dozen made)	9.333333
Added Sugar Grams Recommended per day	24
% of days added sugar	39%

I love a Tollhouse chocolate chip cookie. I enjoy that the package says it makes 5 dozen. It does not and I use a measured cookie scoop. Basically, I wanted to see how many cookies I could eat per day while being within the my 24 grams of sugar. Using the original recipe it turns out to be 1 and 1/3 cookie. Yup, because everyone is able to stop at 1/3 a cookie. However, if I take a look at the way I usually make cookies with reduced sugar and using mini chips I can then have a respectable 2 cookies. Well, if I don't quite fill the measuring cup with 1.5 cups of chips I could have 3. That seems much more reasonable, if I don't have any other added sugar all day.

This is not to say that I will not be partaking in birthday cake, ice cream and other baked goods on the occasion. It's just a way to motivate myself to get it under control.

And now I'm going to go eat some dates and not cookies. {Full disclosure I have been trying to reel it in all week and last night found the Gingerbread Cookie Family in my cabinets left over from my work's holiday party this weekend. I ate the entire family. They were fairly large. This takes time!}