Do you avoid added sugar even if its small amounts?

[Ernest]

Excellent! Some small things are not really worth stressing over.

[KetoCowboy]

If it’s avoidable, I avoid it.
Some items you just can’t escape the added sugar. Comes with the world that we live in these days.
But that’s why I prefer to make my own dressings, sauces etc.
I don’t stress over it though.

I am building my sauces and salad dressings recipes collection up since I am avoiding soybean, cottonseed, and canola oils in addition to HFCS. I do most of my sauces but occasionally I will grab some alfredo sauce or a low carb pasta sauce to have on hand just in case I run out of ingredients.

This convo reminds me of the weird progression of my own nutritional overhaul.

At first, I was hellbent on avoiding sugar at all costs. I didn’t know anything about industrial oils, so I WOULD buy sugar-free salad dressing (Marie’s is a well-known brand), but I WOULDN’T buy worcestershire sauce (because it contains molasses).

So one day I came home from the store with 1) a bottle of Marie’s ranch dressing and 2) all the ingredients to make my own molasses-free version of Worcestershire sauce.

Fast forward to today:

1. I’ve thrown away the Marie’s dressing because it was full of soybean oil and because vinegar & olive oil turns out to be a WAY tastier salad dressing than anything that comes from the store anyway.
2. I never even made the molasses-free worcestershire sauce, I only need 1 tablespoon of Lea & Perrins to make my beef Stroganoff, which includes the equivalent of 1 teaspoon of sugar, IIRC. So when I have Stroganoff (once a week at most), I consume about 4 grams of sugar without stressing over it.

I couldn’t have predicted this outcome, but we have to allow practicalities to influence our decisions to make any eating pattern sustainable. For me, eating industrial oils opens the doorway to a whole host of processed foods that I might over-indulge in out of convenience. So now that I’m 8 months into keto, it turns out that I am far more vigilant about eliminating every drop of industrial oil than I am about avoiding every grain of sugar.

[Ernest]

That’s the way to go to keep sanity. Otherwise, you turn into a keto monster.

[Dread1840]

1000% I avoid all sugar and carbs in general.

[VLC.MD]

I’d say it’s good to avoid as many carbs as possible and get your carbs as low as possible … and then relax up a bit.

The process of avoiding as many carbs as you can … probably has lots of benefits. I’m not sure it would smart to “skip it”. Although, that it how it may seem to other people further on in their path.

Weight loss is hard. Nothing wrong with being strict !

[jobot]

Agree, my SO and I have mixed nuts as a snack, which include cashews, so I really try not to have that many,

[Berengal]

I don’t care if the sugar is added or not. Sure, some of the sausages I eat have dextrose as a listed ingredient but it’s so little the cabbage I’m eating has twenty times the amount of exactly the same chemical. I only care about the total amount of carbs.