People acquire around half of their added sugars from drinks and snacks like sodas, ice cream, and candy, so sugar may appear to be hiding in plain sight, but the other half is concealed in the most unlikely places. Sugar can be found in ketchup, bologna, spaghetti sauce, soy milk, sports drinks, fish sticks, and peanut butter, if you care to look at the ingredients. In fact, added sugars can be found in three-quarters of the 600,000 goods offered in grocery stores.
But where does sugar hide? Isn’t it enough to look at food labels? It is not that simple because added sugar has so many different names. And by a lot, we do not just mean five or six; we are talking about fifty-six. Brown rice syrup, barley malt, demerara, Florida Crystals, muscovado, and high fructose corn syrup, sometimes known as HFCS or corn sugar, to name just a few.
Even sugar’s enigmatic moniker has a moniker. Grape or apple concentrate has the same effects on your body as its 55 other sweet counterparts. Even though organic evaporated cane juice sounds healthy, when it is evaporated, sugar is produced! Chemically, everything is the same.
What is even trickier is when numerous types of added sugars are used in one type of product, they become buried in a long list of ingredients, so the sugar content may appear to be fine on the surface, but when you add them all up, sugar can be the single biggest component.
Because the FDA does not currently set a daily limit for sugar intake, it is difficult to say if 65 grams in a bottle of Coke is a little or large amount. However, the World Health Organization recommends that you consume no more than 5% of your total calories from sugar, or around 25 grams per day. So 65 grams is more than twice as much.
Sugar is responsible for the chewiness of cookies and the crunchiness of candies. It even browns the bread crust to a lovely golden colour. It is also a fantastic preservative because it does not spoil or evaporate, making the items to which it is added easier to store and send long distances while also being less expensive. That is why sugar can be found hiding everywhere. It might be easier to list the foods that do not contain added sugar, such as vegetables, eggs, meats, seafood, fruit and raw nuts.
Water is an excellent choice if you would like to avoid added sugar by simply selecting it over soda, juices, and sports drinks. At the very least, make an effort to read food labels so that you can maintain a healthy sugar intake. Because you win every time you do not find added sugar in this game of hide and seek!
