I don't believe in eliminating any food from our diet. Acknowledging that people with heart disease should avoid fat and people with diabetes should avoid sugar doesn't mean they must eliminate it from their diet.

Neither sugar or fat provide vitamins or minerals, only empty calories. Too many of these empty calories are hidden in the packaged foods we buy. It's pretty easy to recognize fat on a food label. That's not the case with "sugar." A food can be labeled sugar-free but because that designation applies only to sucrose--the white table sugar you're used to seeing in your sugar bowl. That may lead you to believe you're making a wiser choice when that's not the case. Other "sugars" that have no advantage over sucrose that are used to sweeten "sugar free" foods include:

• "raw" sugar brown sugar cane sugar
• confectioner corn sweetener corn syrup
• dextrin dextrose fructose
• glucose hexitol maltose
• mannitol molasses refined
• saccharin sorbitol turbinado
• xylitol
• fruit juice concentrate high fructose corn syrup
• honey maple syrup invert sugar

If any of these (or sugar or sucrose) are in the first three ingredients on the label of any food you buy, count on it being high in sugar.

This week, if you want sweetness, create it in your life instead of eating it in your food.