Added Sugars - The Seductive Killer

Recommend Limit: Do you follow it?

That soft chocolate chip cookie or the melt in the mouth doughnut are both full of one ingredient - Sugar, not natural, but the added kind.

Added sugars refer to sweeteners and syrups that are added to foods or beverages when they are processed or prepared to make food not just tasty but preserve them too. Meanwhile, foods in nature come with their own naturally occurring sweetness. Did you know that milk contains natural sugars and so do fruits? 

The biggest issue with added sugars is that they are biggest source of empty calories!

Americans consume about 156 pounds of sugar every year! That includes the milkshakes, pies, cakes and sodas which are exploding with sugar. But surprisingly it also includes canned tomato soup, crackers, ketchup, bagels, etc. All the sugar in these foods are added sugars since they were put into the food while being prepared in the factory. In fact, vitamin water that most people mistakenly assume to be healthier (because of the added vitamins) actually contains 33 grams of sugar when compared to the 0 grams of sugar in plain water!

Because of the backlash against sugars, many food manufacturers try to disguise sugars by calling them other names that may be too scientific to understand or which we may consider to be healthy. (Look for my next blog on other names under which sugars come disguised in our foods). 

A good place for you to get information about added sugars is in food labels. Look at the top three ingredients of any food. If sugar is one of them, then that item of food is rich in sugar. Also  check the sugars section on any label. It will give you a wealth of information about the sugar content in the food. The proposed new label has an entire section on just added sugars.

Infographic showing the sugar content of different beverages

People in India have been crystallizing cane sugar for at least 2,000 years. When Alexander the Great’s companions arrived there, they marveled at the production of honey without bees.