Hidden Added Sugars (Video)

In other videos in the Real Food series, we’ve discussed the importance of looking at the ingredients list of the foods you’re thinking about buying when grocery shopping. One of the most important pieces of information you can get from the ingredients list is the amount of added sugar—the forms of sugar that have been added in addition to the sugars naturally found in that food.

Sugar is basically calories in the form of very easily digested carbohydrates, devoid of any other nutrients. While some of those calories can be burned for energy, the number of added sugars that most Americans consume on a regular basis promotes obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Increased added sugar intake can increase blood pressure, inflammation, weight gain, diabetes, and fatty liver disease.

All of these conditions increase the risk of heart attack and stroke, and the Journal of American Medical Association recently published a 15-year study that found a strong association between a high-sugar diet and death from heart disease. Added sugar is found in many food products, and it is easy to overconsume if you don’t make a conscious effort to evaluate the ingredient and nutrition facts label.

According to CDC data for 2017-2018, both adults and children consume an astonishing 17 teaspoons (about 71 grams) of sugar per day. This rate is climbing steadily, so it’s vital for consumers to know how much sugar is in food products in order to keep their consumption below levels associated with health problems.

Food manufacturers have a lot of reasons to add sugar to processed foods. Sugar enhances flavor and improves texture and color. It helps preserve foods and helps bread rise. It is used to give bulk to baked goods and ice cream and can balance the acidity of foods.

But sugar also has the potential to be addictive.

Food manufacturers are well aware that many of their customers have concerns about consuming too much sugar. Their solution to this problem is to find ways to hide the amount of sugar in a food product. For example, because ingredients are listed in order of weight, many products with high amounts of sugar use multiple forms of it, listing each one as a separate ingredient.

If one were to add up all the forms of sugar in such products, in many cases it would likely be the main ingredient. To beat the manufacturers at this game, you just need to know the different names and forms of sugar. Here are the most common:

• Anything that ends with –ose(dextrose, fructose, galactose, glucose, lactose, maltose, sucrose)
• Syrups(high fructose corn syrup, agave, brown rice syrup, carob syrup, corn syrup, maple syrup)
• Juices (evaporated canejuice, fruit juice, fruit juice concentrate)
• Solid and Granulated sugars(beet, brown, cane juice, coconut, date, dextrin, turbinado, ethyl maltol, dextrin, corn syrup solids)

It’s also a good idea to look at the grams of added sugars on the nutrition facts label. You might be surprised to find out that, for example, a 20-ounce Coca Cola drink contains 65 grams of added sugar—over 16 teaspoons. From a nutrition and health point of view, the correct number of grams of added sugar is zero.

While it is obvious that soda, candy, and baked goods contain added sugars, many other processed foods are secretly harboring added sugars, even though you might not think of them as tasting sweet. Here are some common examples:

• Pasta Sauces
• Granola, Granola Bars
• Yogurt
• Instant Oatmeal
• Salad Dressing
• Breakfast Cereals
• Packaged FruitCups
• Coleslaw
• Ketchup, Sauces

Added sugar and its dangers may seem inescapable, but you can protect yourself quite easily: Just flip the package over, check the ingredients list for all types of sugar content, and note the grams of added sugar on the nutrition facts label.