74 Ways to Swallow Your Sweetness! Finding Hidden Sugars in Your Foods!

[Massageman]

SUGAR BY ANY OTHER NAME IS JUST AS FATTENING!

(With apologies to ol' Willie Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet)

A spoonful of sugar by any other name is just as sweet- AND filled with calories!

Mary Poppins sang that a spoonful of sugar helped the medicine go down, but it might as well have been agave syrup, date paste or cane juice, because in addition to those little white crystals in a bowl on your table, sugars come in many forms.

Since most forms of sugars are very similar chemically, switching from one kind to another generally won't make a very big difference in terms of your overall health: they are still all calorie energy. The key is to cut back on sweet treats in general. It's conservatively estimated that 75 percent of packaged foods sold in the U.S. contain some sort of added sugar(s), whether or not they are called sugar (more on this in a minute) but you have to read the label to find it.

And if you see a sweetener listed as one of the first three ingredients in any pre-prepared or packaged food, it likely contains a SIGNIFICANT amount of added sugar. But, there is even a legal way to skirt THAT requirements through “creatively” listing the ingredients on the Nutrition Panel.

The sweetener loophole: hide the calories in plain sight, just give them an alias.

Let’s assume that our particular mythical food is made of 51% sweeteners. If only one sweetener is used, it MUST be listed first since it constitutes 51% of the ingredients by weight. But, if the sweeteners were divided amongst five differently named sugar equivalents, here is what the label could look like:

Ingredients:

Flour 18%, egg solids 16%, milk 14%, sorghum 13%, date paste 11%,

maltodextrin 10%, HFCS 9%, sugar 8%, flavorings 1%.

(Labels don’t typically list the percentage of each ingredient, but I’ll do it for clarity of the example.)

Wow, you might think! This must be a health food! Sugar is second from the bottom! Awesome! But, if you total ALL the sweetening ingredients- sorghum, date paste, maltodextrin, HFCS and sugar- then you see that our mythical food is really 51% sugar and sweetener equivalents! Without this loophole in nutrition labelling, the ingredients should read: Sweeteners 51%, flour, 18%, egg solids 16%, milk 14%, flavorings 1%.

Nearly half of added sugars that people consume are in the form of sweetened beverages, especially soft drinks, but also including fruit drinks, coffee, tea, sports and energy drinks, rehydrating drinks, flavored waters, and many more. Other major sources of added sugars include snacks and sweets such as candy, ice cream, cookies, granola bars, flavored yogurts, cake, doughnuts, and even protein bars (yes, folks, those dates and raisins pack a high caloric punch). People also get a significant amount of added sugars from less obvious sources, such as pasta sauces, breakfast cereals, breads, dressings, ketchup, barbecue sauces, baked beans, and many others. Nutella, for example- promoted as having just a few ingredients, and all natural- is made of 58% sugars!

So, how do you spot hidden sugars in Packaged Foods?

It can take some real tracking ability to find all the sweeteners in today's products.

So, what is biggest problem in spotting hidden sugar? The fact that sugar isn’t always spelled S-U-G-A-R. Added sugars hide behind a multitude of names on package labels, but the body metabolizes them (or stores them as extra calories) all in essentially the same way.

So, here are 74 (YES! 74! ) sugars and sweetener equivalents

to look for on the ingredient lists:

A few of the many crystalline forms of sugars.

SUGARS

Granulated sugar

Caster sugar (British sugar, sometimes mistakenly spelled castor)

Confectioner’s sugar

Powdered sugar

Brown sugar

Beet sugar

Raw sugar

Icing sugar

Invert sugar

Cane sugar

Sugar cane

Yellow sugar

Various sweeteners being tested in a laboratory kitchen.

OTHER NAMES FOR SUGARS AND SUGAR EXTRACTS

Barley malt

Diastatic malt

Ethyl maltol

Maltodextrin

Cane juice

Cane juice crystals

Florida crystals

Evaporated cane juice

Caramel

Corn sweetener

Corn sweetener solids

Fruit juice

Fruit juice concentrate

Grape sugar

Honey

Molasses

Refined molasses

Blackstrap molasses

Coconut sugar (sucrose, glucose, fructose)

Date sugar (sucrose)

Date paste

Raisin paste

NECTARS

Agave nectar (about 80% fructose, 20% glucose)

Peach nectar
Pear nectar

Fruit nectar

Some of the syrupy liquid sweeteners.

SYRUPS

Corn syrup

High fructose corn syrup (typically HFCS 55)

HFCS 55 (55% fructose, 45% glucose, so, similar to sucrose)

HFCS 90 (90% fructose, 10% glucose)

Inverted sugar syrup

Carob syrup

Karo syrup

Maple syrup

Malt syrup

Brown rice syrup

Rice syrup

Rice malt syrup

Refiner’s syrup

Buttered syrup

Sugar cane syrup/juice)

SWEETENERS ENDING IN “-OSE” (WHICH ARE ALWAYS SUGARS)

Glucose (a monosaccharide, the simplest sugar)

Dextrose (another name for glucose)

Mannose (related to glucose)

Pyranose (type of mannose)

Furanose (type of mannose)

D-ribose (a monosaccharide)

Fructose (a monosaccharide, fruit sugar)

Galactose (a monosaccharide, component of milk sugar)

Sucrose (a disaccharide containing both glucose and fructose)

Maltose (a disaccharide of two units if glucose, malt sugar)

Lactose (a disaccharide of glucose and galactose, milk saccharose, or mannose)

Sweeteners sometimes hide under exotic-sounding, foreign names.

FOREIGN AND UNUSUAL NAMES FOR SUGARS

Demerara (partially refined light brown sugar)

Muscovado (partially refined, very dark brown sugar)

Panela (unrefined whole cane sugar)

Rapadura (unrefined whole cane sugar)

Panocha/penuche (caramelized brown or unrefined sugar)

Sweet sorghum

Sorghum (similar to millet)

Sucanat (unrefined dried sugar cane crystals)
Treacle (British golden syrup or British molasses)

Turbinado sugar (minimally refined light-medium brown sugar)

And this list is by no means inclusive. Most notably absent are “alcohol sugars” such as xylitol which DO have a caloric value (7 per gram) but are metabolized differently by the body and typically don’t promote tooth decay.

Recommended sweetener limits for better heart health.

The American Heart Association recommends woman and children limit intake of added sugars to 2 tablespoons or less a day, and men aim for less than 3 tablespoons per day. Nutrition panels on the foods, however, list sugar content in grams. I’ll do the math for you. Since carbohydrates contain about 4 calories per gram, women and children should have less than 96 calories of added sugar daily, and men should have less than 144 calories worth of the added sweet stuff.

Finding and limiting those hidden sugars can result in a trimmer, sexier YOU!

So, do your homework BEFORE you shop, keep your eyes open for hidden sugars WHEN you shop, and exercise restraint eating those sweeteners AFTER you shop. We want you to be GaG-ing for a long time!

[legalboxers]

very informative! I guess a spoon full of sugar does help the medicine go down!

[Massageman]

As long as it isn't insulin ;- ) Thank you.

[legalboxers]

lol true

[legalboxers]

ty for the mh

[Montana07]

Excellent

[Massageman]

Thank you.

[Kurαȷ]

You don't really have to know all the specific types of sugar, though.
Looking at the nutrition label should be enough, since most countries require sugar amount to be listed under carbohydrates.

[Salmon4056]

Good mytake