Sweet Sabotage: Uncovering Hidden Added Sugars How to Decrease Your Sugar Consumption for Better Health

You count carbs and skip dessert, but reducing sugar from your diet isn’t as easy as it seems. It’s in nearly everything you eat. Even “healthy” foods can harbor a nasty secret: added sugars masquerading under names like ethyl maltol or galactose. Food Detective digs deep into the cupboard to uncover common sources of hidden sugars and help you cut back… You’re late for work, so you grab a healthy breakfast to go: a granola bar, low-fat yogurt and a juice drink. That meal you just gobbled isn’t as virtuous as you think. It has 59 grams (g) of added sugar – 34 g more than the daily recommended limit for women (25 g) by the American Heart Association (AHA). And it’s only 8 a.m. “Americans have no concept about how much sugar they eat every day,” says David Kessler, M.D., former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner and author of The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite (Rodale). “Everything we eat is [like] dessert,” he says. Most Americans consume an average of more than 130 pounds of sugar per year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and it’s making us sick and fat. About 70% of American adults are overweight, according to 2010 research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But obesity isn’t the only consequence of unbridled sugar consumption. It also puts you at higher risk for a variety of metabolic health disorders, including diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease. Trouble is, it’s hard to avoid added sugars, because “manufacturers dial [them] into foods,” Kessler says. It’s the No. 1 food additive, put into products to make them sweet, yes, but also to improve texture and even double as a preservative, according to the University of Utah. It’s in just about every manufactured food in the supermarket – energy bars, salad dressings, fruit juice, wheat bread, pizza, hot dogs, pasta sauce – even so-called healthy and diet dishes. Uncovering hidden sugars is challenging, but the Food Detective is here to help. Read on to get the scoop on sugar in your favorite foods. An Avalanche of Added Sugars The worst sources of added sugars are easy to spot. Soft drinks account for 33% of added sugars in our diets, according to the AHA. Candy makes up 16.1%; cakes, cookies and pies, 12.9%; and dairy desserts and milk products (ice cream, sweetened yogurt and flavored milk), 8.6%. Fruit drinks, often marketed as healthy beverages, are another sugar bomb. A popular tropical punch pouch has 25 grams (about 6 teaspoons) of added sugar in a 7-ounce serving. “Would you give your kids eight sugar cubes to eat at dinner?” asks Lorrene Ritchie, Ph.D., R.D., and director of research at University of California-Berkeley’s Atkins Center for Weight and Health. “Parents always tell me, ‘Absolutely not!’ ” But that’s what’s in a glass of grape drink. Less obvious are added sugars in foods that aren’t sweet – savory, low-fat or high-protein products. Walking the aisles of a supermarket, the Food Detective was shocked to find that ketchup has 4 grams per tablespoon; peanut butter, 3 grams in a 2-tablespoon serving – and “reduced-fat” peanut butter has 5 grams! Even a “diet” frozen lasagna contained 12 grams per entree. You’d think low-fat or fat-free foods would be safe. Shoppers flock to them, hoping to improve their heart health and drop pounds.You’d also expect them to have lower calories than their full-fat counterparts too. Wrong! The Food Detective found 26 grams of sugar in one popular 99% fat-free strawberry yogurt, accounting for more than two-thirds of the product’s 150 calories. That’s partly because manufacturers replace fat with extra sugar to make foods more palatable, Kessler says. “The problem is, if you lower one ingredient and increase another, it’s never healthy,” he says. “It’s a highly processed chemical concoction.” Spotting the sugar Figuring out the added sugar in packaged foods can take some detective work of your own. The government-mandated “Nutrition Facts” label on food packages provides the product’s total sugar grams – both natural and added. To find them, you have to read the nutrition label, where ingredients are listed in descending order, by amount. Even then you may not discover the amount of added sugar by just looking for the word “sugar.” It has about 70 names, including sucrose, high-fructose corn syrup and other names like diastatic malt, ethyl maltol, D-mannose, crystalline fructose and galactose – which sounds like it’s from another planet. For example, you’d expect a Hostess Twinkie to contain table sugar on its nutrition label. But among its 37 ingredients are four other sweeteners: corn syrup, high-fructose corn syrup, dextrose and glucose – 19 grams of sugars in all, packed into a 150-calorie snack. In general, “avoid foods with ingredients ending in ‘ose,’ ” says Donna Weihofen, R.D., M.S., and senior nutritionist at the University of Wisconsin Hospital & Clinics. Culprits include glucose, fructose, high-fructose corn syrup, oligofructose and polydextrose. The most common added sugar in manufactured foods is high-fructose corn syrup, a combination of 55% fructose and 45% glucose. It’s much sweeter than most other sugars, according to the AHA, and a top ingredient in many processed foods because it’s cheap. Also, be careful of ingredients ending in “tol” – such as maltitol or sorbitol. These additives, which appear on the nutrition label as “sugar alcohols,” are used to sweeten “no sugar added” diet foods such as ice cream, cookies or gum. These products “break down more slowly [and don’t create] a sugar rush, so diabetics are told they can use them,” Weihofen says. But it’s not a free ride – the amount your body absorbs still has calories, and eating too much can lead to digestive issues such as gas or diarrhea. How to Reduce Your Sugar Load With so many manufactured foods full of added sugars, how do you avoid them? Purchase more foods that aren’t processed, says John Swartzberg, M.D., clinical professor of public health at UC-Berkeley and editorial board chair of the Berkeley Wellness Letter. “If you eat foods that occur naturally, you’ll be OK,” he says. “Some sugar is OK,” especially if it comes from naturally occurring sugars – such as fructose in fresh fruit or lactose in milk – which have other nutritional benefits, like fiber, vitamins and minerals, says Weihofen. To find the foods with the least amount of added sugars, follow these rules: Walk around the sides and back of the market first – that’s where fruits, vegetables, dairy products and meats are usually stocked. Read food labels, and avoid products that list sugars among the top 5 ingredients. “Don’t be swayed by advertisers who say their drinks are ‘sweetened naturally’ with honey, evaporated cane juice or raw sugar,” Ritchie warns. They’re as full of empty calories as processed sugars and aren’t good for you. Healthy-sounding foods can still be loaded with sugar. For example, Kellogg’s Smart Start Strong Heart Toasted Oat cereal has 17 grams of sugar per 1-1/4-cup serving – about as much as the same amount of Cocoa Krispies. Watch out for “diet” products that simply reduce the serving size. A 100-calorie snack isn’t healthful if most of those calories come from added sugars. Avoid flavored “healthy” drinks, including chocolate milk. A serving of 1% chocolate milk has up to 31 grams, about the same as in a can of soda. “Want to give kids calcium?" Kessler says. "Give them plain milk.” To calculate the number of calories from sugar, multiply the grams by 4. The AHA’s limit of 25 sugar grams translates into 100 calories per day. How Much Do You Know About Sugar? Sugar and spice and everything nice... that's what little girls are made out of, right? Actually, too much of the sweet stuff could be giving you BIG problems, namely with the scale.