It's everywhere. Sugar.
And it's the master of disguise. Known by many names.
This fact makes it a little bit tricky when trying to read the food labels. Food labels are meant to list their ingredients in order of quantity, so with the largest amount first (so, for example, nutella lists 'sugar' first - yikes). However, this doesn't work in a composite fashion. So, if you use loads of different types of sugar, you can list them all separately, in smaller quantities, and therefore much further down the ingredients list.
Here's an example of some of the other names used for 'sugar' on food labels:
Barley malt
Beet sugar
Caramel
Corn syrup
Corn syrup solids
Crystalline fructose
Dextrose
Fruit juice concentrate
Glucose
Glucose solids
Golden syrup
High fructose corn syrup
Invert sugar
Lactose
Malt syrup
Maltodextrin
Maltose
Mannitol
Molasses
Raw sugar
Sucrose
Long list!
While some of these are more 'natural' and can be less refined than others, for example, molasses, or barley malt, or indeed fruit juice concentrate, they are all sweeteners and have an impact on our blood sugars, as discussed previously.
Here's my quick guide to some alternatives you could consider......always focussing on going for the 'low sugar' options of 5g or less per 100g. Of course an occasional sugarly treat does no real harm, it's more the day to day, Monday afternoon, starting off the week nibbles we have to watch for.
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