We all know that Sugar is an ingredient to avoid in all kinds of diets. But food manufacturers are doing “a good job” hiding added sugar in food packaging!
In fact, all studies have shown the harmful effects of high sugar consumption. Sugar and artificial sugar have been linked to many illnesses like obesity, type 2 diabetes, cancer and heart disease affecting adults and children.
Many recent studies showed that for the first time in history, children can have shorter average life spans than their parents and this is ALARMING! And the main reason behind this is the massive consumption of highly processed food, high amount of added sugar, preservatives and artificial flavors intake.
Unfortunately, a large amount of our daily sugar intake is hidden inside packaged and processed foods, marketed as “Light”, “Sugar Free”, Zero Sugar”, “Healthy” etc. and there are many ways that food companies can use to hide the sugar content. Most common ones are:
1- Using different names of Sugar:
There are more than 200 alternative names for sugar, excluding artificial sweeteners and sugar substitutes.
Here’s some of the most common names:
- Agave nectar
- Agave syrup
- Barley malt
- Beet sugar
- Brown rice syrup
- Brown sugar
- Cane sugar
- Coconut sugar
- Corn sugar
- Date sugar
- Dextrin
- Dextrose
- Diastatic malt
- Ethyl maltol
- Fructose
- Fruit juice
- Glucose
- Golden sugar
- Grape sugar
- High fructose corn syrup HFCS
- Hydrogenated starch
- Honey
- Icing sugar
- Lactose
- Maltodextrin
- Malt syrup
- Maple syrup
- Molasses
- Organic agave syrup
- Palm sugar
- Panocha
- Rice syrup
- Sorbitol
- Sucanat
- Sucrose
- Sugar beet syrup
- Table sugar
- Tagatose
- Treacle
- Turbinado sugar
- Xylose
- Yellow sugar
The most common Artificial sweeteners are:
- Aspartame
- Saccharin
- Sucralose
2- Using different types of sugar:
As you might know, ingredients are listed by weight on all food packages. In some products, food manufacturers use more than three types of sugar making their product look low in sugar and healthier. By adding these up, the main ingredient will be Sugar.
3- A Health claim on packages:
To make their product look healthy, food manufacturers add health claims on their packages example: ‘light’, ‘low fat’, ‘low calorie’ ‘sugar free’, ‘natural’, ‘diet’, ‘healthy’ etc. while it is loaded with added sugar. Unfortunately, these terms are not regulated by the FDA and can be used on processed food packages to mislead consumers.
4- Lowering the serving size:
Which can trick the consumer and make the product look a bit healthier. So, by reducing the serving size, the sugar amount in each serving might look low, but consumer can eat two or three servings at a time.
5- Adding sugar to unsweet foods:
It can be logical to have added sugar in sweets like cakes, chocolate and candy bars etc. But some manufactures are pouring sugar into many other foods like tomato sauce, bacon, yogurt… This could be confusing as people are unaware of what they are consuming.
Conclusion
To avoid added sugar, we must ignore what is written on the front package and read carefully the ingredients list, and even better, choose whole foods instead of highly processed foods.
To learn more about label reading, let’s get together to tackle the main ingredients to avoid, loopholes, fake claims on food packages and more.
Follow Us