When you're craving dessert and craving something sweet, try this.

When you're dieting, desserts are especially appealing. If you find it difficult to suppress your sweet cravings, try the following methods.

Instead of unhealthy cakes or jellies, eat a small portion of fruit. It satisfies your sweet tooth while also providing a balanced diet rich in fiber, vitamins, and other nutrients. However, the sugar in fruit, like table sugar, raises blood sugar levels, so avoid overeating. According to the Korean Dietary Reference Intake, the recommended daily intake of fruit is 50 kcal.

This is equivalent to: ▲3 apples (100g), ▲2 pears (100g), ▲1/2 banana (100g), ▲1/2 orange (100g), ▲1/4 bunch of grapes (100g), and ▲3/4 tangerines (100g). Eat within these amounts. If you don't want your blood sugar levels to spike, eating vegetables that become sweeter when cooked, such as onions and cabbage, can also help.

Sometimes, you simply crave something sweet because you're bored. In these situations, chewing sugarless gum is a good option. Chewing gum reduces hunger and makes you feel full, reducing your cravings for sweets. This is confirmed by a study conducted by researchers at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center (PBRC) in the United States. The research team provided 115 men and women aged 18 to 54 with the same lunch and gave half of them sugarless gum. When given a snack three hours later, the group that chewed sugarless gum had less of a desire for sweets than the group that didn't. They also consumed 40% fewer calories from their snacks.

If you must have dessert, add nuts like almonds. You'll end up eating less sweets than if you were to satisfy your hunger with dessert alone. Nuts are rich in fiber, so blood sugar levels rise more slowly than if you eat dessert alone. A research team from the Endocrinology Department at Fortis C-Dok Hospital in India followed 60 obese adults for three months and found that those who consumed 20 grams of almonds before meals had 10.07% lower postprandial blood sugar levels than those who didn't. Don't eat all your dessert at once; break it up into small pieces and eat a piece whenever you feel hungry.