Irish families are being encouraged to reduce their intake of sugar this Christmas.

According to Diabetes Ireland, the average mince pie contains up to five-and-a-half teaspoons of sugar and many other festive treats, such as Christmas-themed drinks from coffee shops, are also very high in sugar.

It has launched a Christmas awareness campaign aimed at encouraging Irish families to reduce the amount of free sugars they consume over the festive period.

Free sugars are simple sugars added to foods by the manufacturer or consumer. They also include sugars that are naturally present in honey, syrups and fruit juices. These are different to the sugars found naturally in certain foods, for example, the fruit sugar, fructose, which is found in whole fruits and the milk sugar, lactose, found naturally in milk.

"We all know we need to watch our sugar intake, but many of us would be surprised to learn how high in free sugars some festive treats are. With the average Christmas mince pie containing up to 5.5 teaspoons of sugar, it is important for people to get sugar smart," commented Sinead Powell, a senior dietician with Diabetes Ireland.

She insisted that making even small changes can make a big difference to people's health.

"Swapping sugary drinks for diet drinks, filling up on seasonal vegetables or fruits and going for a family walk after Christmas dinner instead of sitting on the couch with a tin of sweets can all help to greatly reduce your sugar intake this Christmas," she noted.

She acknowledged that it can be difficult to reduce our sugar intake at this time of the year because ‘food high in sugars and calories are playing an increasingly active part of our festive celebrations'.

"We are surrounded by supermarket Christmas food specials and our coffee shops are filled with festive drinks menus. Unfortunately a lot of these festive treats can be very high in free sugars and high intakes of these sugars are associated with type 2 diabetes, dental decay, obesity and they increase the risk of coronary heart disease and cancer," she said.

This Christmas campaign is the latest part of Diabetes Ireland's ‘Sugar Smart' campaign, which was launched on November 14 (World Diabetes Day).

The aim of this campaign is to encourage people to make small, simple, but achievable lifestyle changes to reduce their intake of sugar. For more information on this campaign, click here