Your healthy food product might be hiding added sugar
“Aha! I’m having energy bars made of real fruits and whole grains.”
“My breakfast contains bran cereals; I’m not consuming added sugar.”
“My juice product contains no high fructose corn syrup and has 100% vitamin C.”
Are you the one with the same thoughts? We assume that healthy food products contain no or a few added sugars, which doesn’t have a severe effect on the body. However, is it so?
Now let’s go into deep inside the thoughts, which we have above taken the example of. An energy bar contains 15 grams, bran cereals have 20 grams, while juice products consist of 30 grams of sugar per serving. That’s just an estimate of a single meal consumed, which can contribute to exceeding the daily sugar intake value.
You don’t realize this fact because the food companies do not want you to know the truth, and do not list the added sugar in the ingredients label. This makes it challenging to know the amount of sugar coming from natural ingredients and how much from added sugar.
So now your myth has been broken, you might be wondering how I would know if I’m eating added sugars?
Even if you don’t see the label with added sugar, the food product might contain them. Because the added sugar occurs in many forms, it’s challenging to find them on the ingredients list. The food companies may replace sugar with its other name. There are 61 different names for sugar, which you can find on the ingredients list.
To address this issue of hiding added sugar on the label, the FDA is considering revising the current label design. It consists of a separate highlighting of the amount of added sugar and changing the way a service size is measured.
To know more, visit: http://sugarscience.ucsf.edu/hidden-in-plain-sight/
Link: http://sugarscience.ucsf.edu/hidden-in-plain-sight/ (URL: http://sugarscience.ucsf.edu/hidden-in-plain-sight/)