This week I went to a class at Whole Foods Market in Mason about the effects of sugar on the body. It was about an hour long and I learned some new things. One of the most simple, but interesting, is how some food products can lead you to think they have less sugar than they really do.
If you're a label reader, like me, you know ingredients are listed in the order of the amount is makes up of the product. For instance if water, or granola, or sugar is listed first, that means that ingredient is the most used in the product. Ingredients are listed in descending order of the use, with the last one being the least used. But what can happen in some foods is that different types of sugars are listed separately in the ingredients list making it appear that there is less total sugar in a product than there really is.
There are lots of names for added sugars including corn syrup, high-fructose corn
syrup, fruit juice concentrate, maltose, dextrose, sucrose, honey, and
maple syrup.
So what's the big deal about sugar? Too much sugar can contribute to obesity, tooth decay, heart disease, poor nutrition and more.
Keep this in mind as your watching your sugar intake. The average American gets more than 22 teaspoons of added sugar each day. But the American Heart Association recommends six teaspoons a day for women and nine for men. And one gram of sugar equals about 4 teaspoons. A 12 oz. serving of regular soda has 37-46 grams of sugar!!!
So it's not easy to keep sugar counts low, but it's something to shoot for! Find the sugar counts in more drinks here.
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