If you’ve read our blogs, you know I have a personal beef with sugar. Added sugar was once my crutch in life. When stressed, I turned to chocolate. If I celebrated something, I turned to cake. And when bored, I baked sweet stuff. It’s so addictive! And here’s my other beef with sugar – it can be difficult to identify. Because many of us are onto the fact that sugar is destructive, companies put it in the nutritional information with different names. I decided to do a blog series on the many names of sugar. Today we look at the O.G. – added sugar in the original form.
What Are the Long Term Effects of Added Sugar?
So, I’ve talked about this in all the articles I’ve done in this series. We all know that North Americans take in too much of it, on average. We also know that it’s a contributing factor to our obesity crisis and chronic diseases such as Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular issues. What else is there to say?
The added sugars we eat are literally killing us. We can fancy it up, put it on the individuals, and play the blame game, but the truth is that it is not easy to realize how much we are eating every day. Companies hide added sugars and to promote their products as healthy to a point where even nutritionists are eating more sugar than they should in the forms of bread, yogurt, and granola. It’s easy to stay away from chocolate bars and soda, but added sugar is in many of the foods we consider good for us.
What Is My Obsession with Added Sugar?
So, I’ve been doing this series on the different names of sugar, and that is part of my issue with it. Companies use chemical names and slightly different types of sugar to disguise the ingredient on the nutritional label. Seriously, what the heck is dextrose and how are we supposed to know that’s an added sugar? Also, are more natural sources of sweetness better for you, like molasses and honey? The media leads you to believe so, but the bottom line is that they still don’t have a lot of essential nutrients, so they aren’t necessary in our diets.
How to Find Hidden Sugar
As a good keto person, I try to read the list of ingredients so I know what I am taking into my body. It’s easy if it lists sugar, but there are so many other names for it. There are over 60 different names for sugar listed as ingredients. The most common name for added sugar is sucrose or high fructose corn syrup. Added sugar names often end in -ose. Fructose, glucose, dextrose, maltose, and lactose, are just a few examples.
Companies also use the word “cane” instead of sugar – because it is often made from sugar cane stalks. So, if you see the term “cane juice” or “cane crystal,” that’s sugar. Syrups are often sugar as well – including of course corn syrup and maple syrup. And, if there is sugar in the name, it is an added sugar. That seems obvious, but some examples that threw me were “date sugar,” “castor sugar,” and “demerara sugar.” Then, of course there is honey and molasses.
Checking all these ingredients can be exhausting. So, I’ve learned to look first at the nutritional label. They have to list the carbohydrates and under that listing is the total sugar count and total added sugar count. If it has added sugar, I put it back on the shelf. Simple as that.
A Final Thought About Sugar
We do take in some sugar from natural sources. We eat some berries and even the low-carb vegetables we eat have a bit of natural sugar in them. But, they also have fiber in them that helps to process the sugar in a healthier way. They don’t significantly raise our blood sugar so we don’t have insulin highs and lows. And, they have other nutrients in them that we need to be healthy. That is totally okay and normal – we just have to keep track and measure so we aren’t taking in too much.
We do not need added sugars to live. Some would argue that it makes life better, but as a recovering sugar addict, I disagree. Alcohol sometimes makes life easier in the short term too, but the after-effects are not worth turning to it daily as a coping mechanism. I feel so much better since giving up added sugars and I find other foods taste better. Losing some of the sweetness palate was like discovering other flavours for the first time!
I guess my final thought on all this is that everyone has a choice of whether or not they eat sugar. But, we should all have correct and easy-to-follow information. Stop hiding the added sugars under names we can’t recognize or pronounce. Let us make our own decisions with plain language and labels we can read.
Wendy
