Hey everybody! It's been about a month since you heard from me last. I'm sorry I haven't kept to my promise of bi-weekly posts. I've been busy creating a presentation to talk about your great success with the Summer Lovin' Health Challenge! I'm in San Antonio, TX right now doing just that!
For this blog post, I want to highlight some facts in added sugars in our food. We've talked about this before, but I just read a great article from Tufts University Health and Nutrition Newsletter, and I'd love to share it with you. I also encourage you to follow them on Facebook, and even consider signing up for their monthly newsletter if you would like to receive current, research-based information.
From Tufts University Health and Nutrition Newsletter:
Contrary to what you might have heard, sugar is sugar.
Added sugars come in many forms, including corn syrup, honey, molasses, maple syrup, brown sugar, agave syrup, fruit juice concentrates, and evaporated cane juice. Most forms of sugars are chemically similar, so switching from one kind of sugar to another won't make a huge difference in terms of your health. The key is to cut back on sweet treats in general. About 75 percent of packaged foods sold in the U.S. contain added sugars. If a sweetener is listed as one of the first three ingredients in a packaged food, it likely contains a significant amount of added sugar.
Almost half of added sugars that Americans consume come from sugar-sweetened beverages, AKA, soft drinks, fruit drinks, coffee, tea, and sports and energy drinks. Other major sources of added sugars include candy, ice cream, cookies, granola bars, some flavored yogurts, cake, and doughnuts. A significant amount of added sugars also come from less obvious sources, such as pasta sauces, salad dressings, ketchup, barbecue sauces, breakfast cereals, breads, baked beans, and many other packaged foods.
Spotting Added Sugars in Packaged Foods Added sugars go by many names in the ingredient lists on nutrition labels, but the body metabolizes them all in essentially the same way. Check ingredient lists for:
Sugar (white granulated sugar, brown sugar, beet sugar, raw sugar, sugar cane juice)
Other common names for sugars: (cane juice, caramel, corn sweetener, fruit juice/fruit juice concentrate, honey, molasses
Nectar (agave nectar, peach nectar, fruit nectar)
Syrup (corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, carob syrup, maple syrup, malt syrup)
Words ending in "-ose" (including sucrose, dextrose, glucose, fructose, maltose, lactose, galactose, saccharose, or mannose)
Foreign or unusual names for sugars (demerara, muscovado, panela/raspadora, panocha/penuche, sweet sorghum, treacle)
The American Heart Association recommends women and children limit intake of added sugars to 6 teaspoons or less a day, and men aim for less than 9 teaspoons. But food labels list sugar in grams! To figure out roughly how many teaspoons of sugar are in a packaged food, divide the number of grams by 4.
Resource: https://www.nutritionletter.tufts.edu/eletter/profile/1/32368.htmlET=tuftshealthletter:e32368:2143084a:&st=email&s=p_WeeklyUpdate092318