Americans are eating about 22 teaspoons of added sugars a day! That works out to about 355 extra calories or the equivalent of drinking 2 sodas and eating 1 candy bar. Just to give you a comparison, a woman should be getting no more than 6 teaspoons a day (100 calories) and men no more than 9 teaspoons a day (150 calories) of added sugars.
This guideline applies to added sugars in foods and not to naturally occurring sugars in fruits, vegetables and dairy products.
So where are the added sugars coming from in the average diet? The number one source is soft drinks. Many convenience and prepared foods also contain sugar and careful reading of labels is necessary to know how much added sugar you are getting. The following list contains different forms of added sugar. If these appear in the label in the first 5 ingredients, that food is most likely high in added sugars. However, sometimes there will be small amounts of many types of sugars, so none of them end up being in the the first few ingredients of the label.
- Brown sugar
- Corn sweetener
- Corn syrup or corn syrup solids
- Dehydrated Cane Juice
- Dextrin
- Dextrose
- Fructose
- Fruit juice concentrate
- Glucose
- High-fructose corn syrup
- Honey
- Invert sugar
- Lactose
- Maltodextrin
- Malt syrup
- Maltose
- Maple syrup
- Molasses
- Raw sugar
- Rice Syrup
- Saccharose
- Sorghum or sorghum syrup
- Sucrose
- Syrup
- Treacle
- Turbinado Sugar
- Xylose
It’s not just candy, sodas, and baked goods that can be high in sugar. Some foods that may surprise you include some varieties of barbecue sauce, catsup, reduced calorie salad dressings, breakfast cereal, cereal and granola bars, pasta sauces, fruit canned in syrup, ice cream and frozen yogurt, sorbet, and flavored yogurt. Read the labels carefully and look for other similar products with less added sugar. The more whole foods in their original state you buy and consume, the less added sugar you will automatically be eating!
