Added sugars

There’s sugar and then there’s ADDED sugar. As a dietitian that specializes in diabetes, I talk about sugar alot! Sugar is one type of carbohydrate and is naturally occuring in fruits and milk and found in smaller amounts in vegetables. These naturally occuring sugars do impact your blood sugar but aren’t a big concern when considering your overall health.

Added sugar is a different story and it’s something we all need to keep an eye on when making food choices. Picture common foods like yogurt, bread, salad dressings, and cereals. Now picture a measuring cup full of sugar getting dumped in during manufacturing. That’s added sugar!

Why should you care about how much added sugar you consume? Researchers have found that as your added sugar intake increases so does your risk of higher blood pressure, inflammation, weight gain, diabetes, and fatty liver disease. Most health organizations recommend consuming less than 50 grams of added sugar per day, but I prefer to go with the American Heart Associations recommendation of limiting added sugar to 38 grams per day for men and 25 grams per day for women.

Sugar is sweet and sneaky, it’s often disguised as other names on the ingredient list. Here are just a few of sugar’s other names: honey, agave, high fructose corn syrup, maple syrup, cane juice, cane syrup, coconut sugar, dehydrated cane juice, dextrin, dextrose, malitol, maltose, sucrose, and sweet sorghum. In all, there are over 60 other names for added sugar!

The next time you grab a packaged snack, take a look at the ingredient list and see if you can identify any sneaky sugars. In part two of this blog, posting next week, I’ll walk you through reading the food label for added sugars.

Resources:

University of California San Francisco’s article on added sugars, Hidden in Plain Sight

Harvard Medical School’s discussion of the dangers of added sugars

American Heart Association’s recommendations for added sugars