by Amy B. Beausang, PharmD, RPh, Certified Health Coach
I’ve already posted a bit about how I feel about sugar and it’s affects (See part 1). But I didn’t comment on how sneaky it is. Sugar exists in numerous, numerous forms. Often with names that look NOTHING like s-u-g-a-r. This stuff exists not just in cubes or packets of white crystals.
If you’re really trying to keep sugar out of your food—which is one of the smartest and most efficient ways to control weight, improve mood, boost immunity, and just increase your overall health and happiness—take a few minutes to scan this list of sugars in disguise.
And here are 4 tips to help you become your own Sugar Sleuth
- Read the BACK of your food product labels! Don’t believe the marketing speak on the front.
- Be especially wary of fat-free, low-cal, low-fat products as these are notoriously high in sugar!!! Hey–they gotta add something to make it taste decent once all the good stuff was taken out.
- Be diligent about checking the back labels on yogurt, ketchup, salad dressing, spaghetti sauce, any kind of bread (even “whole wheat” or “multigrain”), cereal, bottled teas, juices, and “green” drinks, granola, breakfast bars, energy bars, marinades and sauces in general.
- If you see a strange ingredient ending in “-ose”, it’s probably a sugar
Sugars in disguise
- Agave (agave nectar)
- Apple juice concentrate
- Barley malt barley malt syrup
- Beet sugar
- Brown rice syrup
- Brown sugar
- Buttered syrup
- Cane juice or cane crystals
- Cane sugar
- Caramel
- Carob sugar
- Castor sugar
- Coconut sugar or coconut palm sugar
- Coconut nectar
- Confectioner’s sugar (aka powdered sugar)
- Corn syrup or corn syrup solids
- Date sugar
- Dehydrated cane juice
- Demerara sugar
- Dextrin
- Dextrose
- Diastatic malt
- Ethyl maltol
- Evaporated cane juice (evaporated cane sugar or syrup)
- Fructose
- Fruit juice concentrate
- Fruit juice crystals
- Fruit puree
- Galactose
- Glucose, glucose solids or glucose syrup
- Golden sugar / golden syrup
- Granulated sugar
- Grape sugar
- High fructose corn syrup (HFCS)
- Honey
- Icing sugar
- Invert sugar
- Lactose
- Malt or malt syrup
- Maltodextrin
- Maltose
- Maple sugar
- Maple syrup
- Molasses
- Muscovado
- Nectar
- Panocha
- Raw sugar
- Refiner’s syrup
- Rice syrup
- Sorbitol
- Sorghum
- Sucanat
- Sucrose
- Sugar
- Treacle
- Turbinado sugar
- Yellow sugar