The Many Names of Sugar
Jun 18, 2018 | Sarah Tendler BSc.
Last month we spoke about what your sugar intake is, and why you should care about it. One of the recommendations I gave was to be familiar with the many names of sugar that you will find on ingredient labels. When you check the ingredient label on a product, the amount of sugar can be misleading – because it can have plenty of sugar in it, just that the sugar is going by a different name. Or even many different names.
Here is an example ingredient label: Whole grain oats, sugar, canola oil, yellow corn flour, honey, soy flour, brown sugar syrup, salt, soy lecithin, baking soda, natural flavour. Can you guess the product? It’s Nature’s Valley Oat N’ Honey Oat bar. It has 3 different sugars – sugar, honey and brown sugar syrup – 12g out of the 42g bar is sugar – 28.6% of the product. This was quite an easy label to read. The recommended sugar intake (government guidelines) for children is 3-6 tsp or 12g-25g per day. So with one Nature’s Valley Oat Bar a child has already consumed their recommended limit of sugar for the day (if you take the lower limit). For women the recommended daily limit of sugar is 6 tsp and for men it is 9 tsp.
Here is another ingredient label: Salt, corn starch, sugar, maltodextrin, flavour enhancers (monosodium glutamate, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate), palm oil, dehydrated onions, flavourings (contains celery), dehydrated parsley, edible acid (citric acid), spices, antioxidant (rosemary extract). Did you guess the product? The ingredients are listed in order of highest quantity first – if I just take the top 5 ingredients in this product we have salt, corn starch, two types of sugar and flavour enhancers. Did you guess it yet? It’s Osem Chicken Soup Powder. This product has a ‘hidden’ sugar – maltodextrin. Not a name that you would think is sugar. The soup powder is almost 20% sugar by weight. Many people use it very liberally in all their cooking.
There are currently 61 different names for sugar! I’m not going to give you all of them but I will outline the main sources of hidden sugar in packaged foods. To make foods ‘low-fat’ many food companies will add sugars. There is growing research showing that added sugar is linked to heart disease, diabetes and cancer. The efforts that food manufacturers go through to hide sugar from you is quite disturbing. It is worth your while to have some sugar knowledge so you can know what to avoid. Here are some of the many names of sugar that you should try to be familiar with:
Anhydrous dextrose, brown sugar, cane crystals, cane sugar, sucrose, corn sweetener, corn syrup, corn syrup solids, crystal dextrose, evaporated cane juice, fructose sweetener, fruit juice concentrates, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), honey, liquid fructose, malt syrup, maple syrup, molasses. Other types of sugar you might commonly see on ingredient lists are fructose, lactose and maltose. Fructose is sugar derived from fruit and vegetables; lactose is milk sugar; and maltose is sugar that comes from grain.
Some of the less apparent sugar names include carbitol, concentrated fruit juice, corn sweetener, diglycerides, disaccharides, evaporated cane juice, erythritol, fructo-oligo-saccharides, galactose, glucitol, gluco-amine, hexitol, inversol, isomalt, maltodextrin, malted barley, malts, mannitol, nectars, pentose, ribose rice syrup, rice malt, rice syrup solids, sorbitol, sorghum, sucanat, sucanet, and xylitol.
Summer Fruit Fun!
Now that summer is truly here, the summer fruits are coming into season. We have all the summer fruits – peaches, plums, apricots, grapes, watermelon and more. Fruits are full of goodness – fibre, natural sugars, anti-oxidants, vitamins and minerals. This week I made a combination of watermelon, pink grapefruit and grapes – it was so refreshing! I realised this mixture was giving me vitamin C, lycopene (an anti-oxidant from red fruits), fibre, beta-carotene, calcium, potassium, iron, pectin, plus it stimulates digestion and promotes good bowel movement.
Do you ever crave sugar? Search for something sweet? Then end up eating chocolate, cake, or cookies? One of the best things about fruit is that it satisfies those sweet cravings. Fruit can be used in place of junk-sugars when you automatically reach for something sweet. Fruit is really Hashem’s candy – it’s wholesome, and it’s real fast food – it doesn’t need any cooking!
