According to the World Health Organization and the American Heart Association you should limit your added or free sugar intake to less than 6 teaspoons or 25 grams of sugar.
These are sugars that added to processed food, not sugars that occur naturally in fruits, vegetables, dairy, and whole grains.
In order to figure out if your eating added sugar you need to look at the ingredients and the nutrition label. For more details on how to do this click here.
As you can see on this tomato sauce label is 10 grams of sugar in just one serving.
As we discussed in our previous article, some sugar is naturally occurring in fruits and vegetables, so just looking at the nutrition label doesn’t necessarily tell you if the sugar was “added.”
In order to figure that out, you need to look at the ingredients, and we can see above that “sugar” is an ingredient.
Sugar By Other Names
It is not that simple because sugar can have many names. Regardless of the name, it is all the same to your body.
Sometimes the natural sugar source is listed such as “honey,” “agave,” or “fruit juice concentrate.”
Don’t let the word “organic” fool you on this food “healthy” chocolate cliff bar health food label. There are three different types of sugars in there adding up to 20g!
As Shakespeare may have said
“A sugar by any other name would taste as sweet”
Notice in the cliff bar that “Beet Juice Concentrate” is one of the sugars. In addition to honey, agave, nectar, and fruit juice concentrate there 5 other ways that sugar can be listed on food labels
1) Anything That Has The Word “Sugar” In It
I know it seems like “duhhhh,” but it has to be said.
It does not matter what color sugar is, the shape of the sugar (fine, coarse, etc), or where it comes from (wood, beets, or coconut). Sugar is sugar.
Here are some of examples of sugar you may see on food labels
- Bar sugar
- Berry sugar
- Beet sugar
- Cane sugar
- Caster sugar
- Castorsugar
- Amber liquid sugar
- Apple sugar
- Arenga sugar
- Bakers special sugar
- Barbados sugar
- Blonde coconut sugar
- Brown sugar
- Burn sugar
- Carmalized sugar
- Coarse sugar
- Coconut palm sugar
- Coconut sap sugar
- Coco sugar
- Coco sap sugar
- Confectioner’s sugar
- Corn sugar (HFCS)
- Dark brown sugar
- Date sugar
- Decorating sugar
- Dehydrated sugar cane
- Demerara sugar
- Free flowing brown sugar
- Fruit sugar
- Golden sugar
- Granulated sugar
- Granulate sugar cane juice
- Grape sugar
- Icing sugar
- Invert sugar
- Inverted sugar syrup
- Light brown sugar
- Liquid sugar
- Maple sugar
- Muscovado sugar
- Palm sugar
- Pearl sugar
- Powdered sugar
- Pure sugar spun
- Raw sugar
- Rock sugar
- Sanding sugar
- Sugar
- Sugar beet syrup
- Sugar beet crystals
- Sugar cane juice
- Sugar cane natural
- Sugar hat
- Table sugar
- Terbinado sugar
- Unrefined sugar
- White crystal sugar
- White refined sugar
- White sugar
- Wood sugar
- Yellow sugar
- Soft sugar
- Refiners sugar
- Superfine sugar
2) Anything that has the word “Syrup” in it
- Agave syrup
- Apple syrup
- Barley malt syrup
- Beet syrup
- Brown rice syrup
- Buttered syrup
- Carob syrup
- Coconut syrup
- Corn syrup
- Corn cyrup solids
- Fruit syrup
- Glocose-fructose syrup
- Golden syrup
- Gomme syrup
- High dextrose glucose syrup
- High-fructose corn syrup
- High fructose maize syrup (HFCS)
- High maltose corn syrup (Often with HFCS)
- Maize syrup
- Invert syrup
- Malted barley syrup
- Malted corn syrup
- Maltitol syrup
- Malt syrup
- Maple syrup
- Organic agave syrup
- Organic brown rice syrup
- Orgeat syrup
- Palm syrup
- Pure cane syrup
- Raisin syrup
- Refiner’s syrup
- Rice syrup
- Rice syrup solids
- Sorbitol syrup
- Sorghum syrup
- Sugar beet syrup
- Sweet sorghum syrup
3) Anything with the word “molasses”
- Beet molasses
- Blackstrap molasses
- Dark molasses
- First molasses
- Golden molasses
- Light molasses
- Second molasses
- Sorghum molasses
- Sulfured molasses
- Unsulphured molasses
4) Anything that ends with “-ose”
Anything has the suffix, or ending of -ose is most often a sugar.
Here are some examples:
- Anhydrous dextrose
- Cellobiose
- Crystal dextrose
- Crystalline fructose
- D-arabino-hexulose
- Dextrose
- D-fructose
- D-fructofuranose
- D-mannose
- D-xylose
- Fructose (HFCS)
- Fructose crystals (HFCS)
- Fructose sweetener (HFCS)
- Fruit fructose (HFCS)
- Galactose
- Glucose
- Glucose-fructose syrup (HFCS)
- Glucose solids
- Gluctose fructose (HFCS)
- Granulated fructose
- High dextrose glucose syrup
- High-fructose corn syrup
- High fructose maize syrup (HFCS)
- High maltose corn syrup (Often with HFCS)
- Isoglucose (HFCS)
- Isomaltotriose
- Lactose
- Levulose
- Liquid dextrose
- Liquid fructose (Often with HFCS)
- Liquid fructose syrup (Often with HFCS)
- Liquid sucrose
- Maltose
- Maltotriitol
- Maltotriose
- Maltotriulose
- Meritose
- Mycose
- Mylose
- Nigerotriose
- Raffinose
- Saccharose
- Sucrose
- Tagatose
- Trehalose
- Tremalose
- Triose
- Xylose
5) Anything With the Ending “-ride”
A word that has the suffix or ending of -ride is most likely a sugar.
This twinkie has almost every type of sugar, and you can see the “-ide” ingredient in red
- Disaccharide
- Monosaccharide
- Oligosaccharide
- Trisaccharide
- Diglycerides
- Fructooligosaccharides
Summary
If you want to limit your sugar intake, watch out for the following things on food labels:
- Anything with the word “sugar” in it
- Anything with the word “syrup” in it
- Anything with the word “molasses”
- “Natural” sugars like “honey” or “agave”
- Fruit Juice Concentrates
- Words that end in “-ose”
- Words that end in “-ride”
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