Congratulations! You’ve decided once and for all to ditch sugar in your diet.
There are three main sugar claims that you may find on food labels: sugar-free, no sugar added, and unsweetened. It’s a common misconception that they mean the same thing, but they’re vastly different. I’ll break it down here.
Sugar-free
When you see “sugar-free” on a product label, it means that the food contains less than half of a gram of sugar per serving size. This includes any type of sugar that could be found in the food. Obviously, the white stuff counts toward the total. So does maple syrup and honey. Naturally-occurring sugars count too, like lactose in milk or fructose in fruits.
Sugarless alternative sweeteners won’t contribute to the total sugar in a product. Those are allowed under a sugar-free label.
The term “sugar-free” is regulated, so if an item says it’s sugar-free, you can be pretty confident that it contains less than half a gram of sugar per serving, but watch your serving size!
No Sugar Added
“No sugar added” means that no sugar ingredients are added during the processing of foods, including sugars from syrups and honey, and sugars from concentrated fruit or vegetable juices.
That doesn’t mean you end up with a product containing zero grams of sugar. For example, a banana could bear a “no sugar added” label, but it actually contains around 14g of naturally occurring sugar.
Unsweetened
An unsweetened food is one that hasn’t been sweetened at all – no sugar, no artificial sweeteners, no natural sweeteners, no zero-calorie sweeteners, nothing that adds to the sweetness of the recipe.
Sneaky Sugar Labeling
That’s not all you want to look out for. “Sugar-free,” “unsweetened,” and “no sugar added” don’t tell the full story.
We tend to think that added sugar is mainly found in desserts like cookies and cakes, but it’s also found in many savory foods, such as bread and pasta sauce. And some foods promoted as “natural” or “healthy” are laden with added sugars, compounding the confusion. In fact, manufacturers add sugar to 74% of packaged foods sold in supermarkets.1 So, even if you skip dessert, you may still be consuming more added sugar than is recommended.
If you want real information about what’s in your food, the next stop should be your label. If your food has a label on it – you should read it! Better yet, eat food without labels by shopping the produce and meat counters in your grocery store and staying out of the packaged isles as best as you can. Click here for my DBM Strength Training eating plan.
The Sugar Science department at UCSF lists 61 Names for Sugar:
- Agave nectar
- Barbados sugar
- Barley malt
- Barley malt syrup
- Beet sugar
- Brown sugar
- Buttered syrup
- Cane juice
- Cane juice crystals
- Cane sugar
- Caramel
- Carob syrup
- Castor sugar
- Coconut palm sugar
- Coconut sugar
- Confectioner’s sugar
- Corn sweetener
- Corn syrup
- Corn syrup solids
- Date sugar
- Dehydrated cane juice
- Demerara sugar
- Dextrin
- Dextrose
- Evaporated cane juice
- Free-flowing brown sugars
- Fructose
- Fruit juice
- Fruit juice concentrate
- Glucose
- Glucose solids
- Golden sugar
- Golden syrup
- Grape sugar
- HFCS (High-Fructose Corn Syrup)
- Honey
- Icing sugar
- Invert sugar
- Malt syrup
- Maltodextrin
- Maltol
- Maltose
- Mannose
- Maple syrup
- Molasses
- Muscovado
- Palm sugar
- Panocha
- Powdered sugar
- Raw sugar
- Refiner’s syrup
- Rice syrup
- Saccharose
- Sorghum Syrup
- Sucrose
- Sugar (granulated)
- Sweet Sorghum
- Syrup
- Treacle
- Turbinado sugar
- Yellow sugar
In-part from Marksdailyapple.com
