Maintaining a diet that is as low in sugar as possible has various health benefits. Unfortunately, sugary foods are not always easy to identify when shopping, as added sugar sometimes appears under other names in the ingredient list.
This makes it clear that even for products that supposedly have no added sugar, the nutritional labeling should be checked carefully when purchasing if you want to consume as little sugar as possible from food.
Sugar as dates or maple syrup
Nutritionist Kristin Kirkpatrick, who works at the Cleveland Clinic in the USA, reports in a recent press release that sugar can also be added to foods in the form of dates or maple syrup, for example.
The problem is not that dates or maple syrup are unhealthy, but that when assessing the effects of foods consumed on blood sugar and insulin levels, you have to pay attention to whether something increases blood sugar or insulin levels or not, says the expert.
Negative health effects
According to Kirkpatrick, when people consume too much sugar, it can lead to weight gain while significantly increasing the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and other health problems.
How do you spot hidden sugar?
Sugar can be contained in foods under different names: For example, it is possible that ingredients such as fructose, sucrose, dextrose, fruit juice concentrate, beet sugar or rice syrup are listed on the label of a product instead of sugar, explains the nutritionist.
In general, when it comes to sugar, it should be noted that not all foods containing sugar are necessarily harmful to health. There are also sugary foods like fruit that also contain fiber, which makes a big difference to your health, Kirkpatrick adds.
Fiber has a balancing effect
“If you choose a sugary source, is it also fortified with fiber? The more fiber, the less impact it has on our insulin and blood sugar,” explains Kirkpatrick.
Stiftung Warentest has also already reported in an article that extra sugar is often added to finished products. Many fruit yoghurts, sauces and breakfast cereals contain added sugar and lemonades in particular often contain extremely high amounts of sugar.
Added sugar is often difficult to detect
Even though the total sugar content per 100 grams or milliliter has had to be stated on the packaging of finished products since 2016, it is not clear to many people how much of this is added sweetness, reports Stiftung Warentest.
But that is important because naturally occurring sugar, such as in milk or fruit, is usually not really a problem because these foods do not contain that much sugar and the fiber they contain is filling at the same time and these foods also contain additional healthy nutrients such as vitamins.
Detect added sugar
Stiftung Warentest also explains in an article how all the sweetening ingredients that have been added can be identified from the packaging information. However, the word sugar itself only refers to beet and cane sugar.
However, other types such as glucose syrup, thick juices and honey must be listed separately. The order in which these types of sugar are mentioned on the label depends on their weight percentage, explains Stiftung Warentest.
In the nutritional table, sugar is counted among carbohydrates because it is a subgroup. According to the experts at Stiftung Warentest, the term sugar includes not only the typical household sugar but also glucose, fructose and lactose. The nutritional table also includes sugar, which occurs naturally in ingredients such as berries.
This means that it can sometimes be problematic to detect added sugar in food, especially in finished products. This can cause the diet to contain too much sugar, which in turn promotes weight problems and serious illnesses. (as)
