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Is Sugar Disguising Itself
in Your Food?
The Food & Drug Administration requires that all food products include
nutritional facts on their labels. This includes amounts of calories, fats,
carbohydrates, proteins etc. The FDA also requires that all ingredients found
in that product to be listed in order of greatest to smallest amount. It is
especially important to pay attention to this section of the label to know
exactly what you are putting in your body.
Food companies have come up with discreet ways to insert ingredients into
their products by calling it by a different, less common name. For example, a
food may claim to have “No Trans Fats,” yet if you look on the ingredient list,
you will see the words “hydrogenated” or “partially hydrogenated.” This is
code for TRANS FATS. This same phenomenon also pertains to sugar.
Most people know that eating large amounts of sugar is hard on the body.
However, what many might not realize is that products that often claim to be
“Sugar Free,” actually still contain sugar or sugar substitutes. This list
contains common names that sugar can be disguised as in the food you eat.
-SUGAR BY ALL ITS ALIASES-
Sugar by any other name will taste as sweet:
Barley Malt
Beet Sugar
Brown Sugar – Sucrose crystals coated with molasses
Buttered syrup
Cane Juice crystals
Cane Sugar
Caramel
Carob syrup
Corn Syrup
Corn Syrup solids
Date Sugar
Diastatic malt
Dextrin
Dextran
Dextrose – Obtained from starch, corn sugar, corn syrup (liquid dextrose), grape
sugar
DiastaseEthyl maltol
Fructose – Fruit sugar. Found in fruits, molasses and honey. It’s 11⁄2 times as sweet
as sucrose, but provides the same number of calories. Absorbed more slowly than
sucrose, so blood sugar doesn’t rise as quickly.
Fruit Juice Concentrate – May mean fruit stripped of all nutrients, flavors, and
colors to leave only refined fructose.
Galactose
Glucose – All sugars get converted to glucose in the blood. Found in fruits, some
vegetables, honey and corn syrup.
Glucose solids
Golden Sugar
Golden syrup
Grape sugarHoney – Made of mostly fructose, honey is more a concentrated carbohydrate than
sucrose.
High-Fructose corn Syrup
Honey
Invert Sugar – A combination of sucrose, glucose and fructose.
Lactose – Milk sugar, a combination of glucose and fructose.
Malt syrup
Malto-Dextrin
Maltose – Formed by the breakdown of starches.
Mannitol -A sugar alcohol absorbed more slowly than sucrose.
Molasses
Polydextrose
Raw Sugar
Refiner's syrup
Sorbitol – Sugar alcohol in fruits and berries. Provides the same number of calories
as sucrose but is only 60% as sweet.
Sorghum syrup
Starch – Found in potatoes, grains, and breads.
Sucrose – Known as table sugar, white sugar, granulated sugar, powdered or
confectioner’s sugar.
Sugar
Turbinado
Xylitol – A sweetener found in plants and used as a substitute for sugar; it is called a
nutritive sweetener because it provides calories, just like sugar.
Yellow Sugar
Important fact: *White Blood Cells are adversely affected by excessive sugar consumption
Karen :)
