Sugar In Disguise
Filed Under Nutrition · Tagged:
I Just wanted to give you the “skinny” on sugar if you are trying to cut back on your sweets.
Sugar is highly addictive and clearly one of the leading causes of obesity, not to mention a litany of other major health problems.
Sugar in the form of sucrose, dextrose, and high fructose corn syrup are processed into so many of our breads, cereals, peanut butter, ketchup, spaghetti sauce, or nearly every processed food you pull out of a box, bag or can.
In the late 1800’s, the average sugar consumption was 5 lbs. per person per year. In the last 20 years, sugar consumption in the US has increased from 26 lbs to 135 lbs. of sugar per person per year.
You’ll know you are addicted to sugar when you crave it. It is responsible for the highs and lows you may be experiencing. Fortunately, once you stop, the addiction and cravings will disappear.
If you think you are outsmarting your addiction by replacing the sugar with artificial sweeteners, think again. Aspartame, saccharin, sorbitol and sucrolose to name a few, may actually be worse than using real sugar, so you might want to consider eliminating them as well.
I am offering a list for you although I know most of my readers are pretty smart about these things. If the ingredients listed on a product say sweetener, syrup, or anything ending in “ose” it has sugar in it. Here are some common ones:
- Barley malt
- Beet sugar
- Brown surgar
- Cane sugar
- Cane syrup
- Cane syrup solids
- Confectioner’s sugar
- Corn Sweetener
- Corn syrup, or corn syrup solids
- Chrystalline fructose
- Date sugar
- Dehydrated Cane Juice
- Dextrose
- Dextrin
- Evaporated sugar cane
- Fructose
- Fruit Juice Concentrate
- Galactose
- Glucose
- Granulated sugar
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Honey
- Invert Sugar
- Lactose
- Liquid cane sugar
- Maltodextrin
- Malt syrup
- Maltose
- Maple syrup
- Molasses
- Powdered sugar
- Raw sugar
- Rice Syrup
- Saccharose
- Sorghum or sorghum syrup
- Sucrose
- Sugar cane syrup
- Syrup
- Table sugar
- Treacle
- Turbinado Sugar
- Unrefined sugar
- White sugar
- Xylose
These are the common artificial sweeteners:
- Sucrolose (Splenda)
- Saccharin (Sweet n Low)
- Aspartame (Equal)
Eliminating sweets from your nutrition most likely will not happen overnight. On a planned occasion, yes, I think it’s all right to have something sweet.
Begin by becoming AWARE of the foods you buy… read the labels. Take steps to eat wholesome foods rather than processed foods.
If you have a sweet craving, grab some fruit. If you’re thinking… “but fruit has ‘fructose’, isn’t that just another form of sugar?”
Here’s my answer:
Most fruits have about 6-7 grams of fructose, perhaps more in a banana, less in berries. The amount of fiber, vitamins and water far outweigh the small amount of fructose. You are not going to get fat by eating fruit!
Be well, and please post your comments!
Lauren
Hi Lauren,
You are so right. I have lost my craving for sweets, and now I don’t even like sweet cereal. I also have lost my desire for any soft drinks or sweet drinks. My drink of choice is water. I still drink a little orange juice – which is high in sugar, but I only drink half a cup. I have replaced it with the low sodium V8 which is very low in calories.
The same goes for salt. I cut down on salt many years ago, and now I never cook with salt and I ask the restaurants not to salt my food. Salt makes you hold water – which adds to weight and causes many other problems.
I have learned to enjoy the natural flavor of foods without sugar or salt. And… it doesn’t take that long to change a person’s taste. A few weeks or a month without sugar and everything will taste too sweet.
Thanks for your emails and for your great information.
Harriet Meyerson