New US nutrition labels

MelodyandBarbells

The added sugar portion strikes me as some sort of compromise. Something about listing the sugar beyond what you'd find in a similar serving of 100% juice? That, by itself is a lot of sugar, no? I'm gonna keep this clean and not detail all the Big Juice conspiracy theories running through my head right now . Hopefully I've misunderstood something

lemurcat12

The problem is what is "added sugar"? They decided to define it to include concentrated fruit juice as an ingredient to the extent it has sugar in excess of what you'd expect from the same volume of non-concentrated fruit juice. (And yeah, I'm sure it's a compromise, everything is. Check out how lengthy the discussion of the rules changes and comments from the comment process and responses are.)

So basically, if you make some kind of product and use plain orange juice as a sweetener, you disclose the orange juice on the ingredient list and it doesn't add to the "added sugar" count. A good example of this is tomato sauce. The juice from the tomato doesn't count as added sugar. However, if you "cheat" by concentrating the juice to remove much of the water and make it extra sweet, so it would normally have 8 g of sugar for 2 cups but now has 8 g for .25 cup, then you disclose the "extra" sugar per volume (here, 6 of the 8 grams in every added .25 cup) as added sugar. So if you try to create extra sweet tomato sauce by concentrating the juice and adding it back as a sweetener, much of it gets disclosed as added sugar.

Has nothing to do with the disclosure on juice itself -- 100% orange juice has no added sugar, sweetened juice does, concentrated juice that you are expected to add water to has no added sugar, as defined.

MelodyandBarbells

lemurcat12 wrote: »

The problem is what is "added sugar"? They decided to define it to include concentrated fruit juice as an ingredient to the extent it has sugar in excess of what you'd expect from the same volume of non-concentrated fruit juice. (And yeah, I'm sure it's a compromise, everything is. Check out how lengthy the discussion of the rules changes and comments from the comment process and responses are.)

So basically, if you make some kind of product and use plain orange juice as a sweetener, you disclose the orange juice on the ingredient list and it doesn't add to the "added sugar" count. A good example of this is tomato sauce. The juice from the tomato doesn't count as added sugar. However, if you "cheat" by concentrating the juice to remove much of the water and make it extra sweet, so it would normally have 8 g of sugar for 2 cups but now has 8 g for .25 cup, then you disclose the "extra" sugar per volume (here, 6 of the 8 grams in every added .25 cup) as added sugar. So if you try to create extra sweet tomato sauce by concentrating the juice and adding it back as a sweetener, much of it gets disclosed as added sugar.

Has nothing to do with the disclosure on juice itself -- 100% orange juice has no added sugar, sweetened juice does, concentrated juice that you are expected to add water to has no added sugar, as defined.

It'd just be pretty strange to see a small bag of jelly beans or something with "no added sugars".

lemurcat12

How would that happen? Are you thinking that they'd sweeten them with condensed fruit juice to avoid the label? Even if that were possible (beats me if would be) most of it would count as added sugar.

MelodyandBarbells

lemurcat12 wrote: »

How would that happen? Are you thinking that they'd sweeten them with condensed fruit juice to avoid the label? Even if that were possible (beats me if would be) most of it would count as added sugar.

From my understanding of their definition of added sugars, you basically get some freebie sugar that is equal to the amount of sugar that would be expected in the same volume of 100% fruit juice, then you start calculating and have to declare the grams of sugar beyond that.

From the link in the OP:

4. How does the FDA define “added sugars”?

The definition of added sugars includes sugars that are either added during the processing of foods, or are packaged as such, and include sugars (free, mono- and disaccharides), sugars from syrups and honey, and sugars from concentrated fruit or vegetable juices that are in excess of what would be expected from the same volume of 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice of the same type. The definition excludes fruit or vegetable juice concentrated from 100 percent fruit juice that is sold to consumers (e.g. frozen 100 percent fruit juice concentrate) as well as some sugars found in fruit and vegetable juices, jellies, jams, preserves, and fruit spreads.

lemurcat12

JaneiR36 wrote: »

lemurcat12 wrote: »

How would that happen? Are you thinking that they'd sweeten them with condensed fruit juice to avoid the label? Even if that were possible (beats me if would be) most of it would count as added sugar.

From my understanding of their definition of added sugars, you basically get some freebie sugar that is equal to the amount of sugar that would be expected in the same volume of 100% fruit juice, then you start calculating and have to declare the grams of sugar beyond that.

That's not what it says. I tried to explain in my prior post what it meant.

"4. How does the FDA define “added sugars”?

The definition of added sugars includes sugars that are either added during the processing of foods, or are packaged as such, and include sugars (free, mono- and disaccharides), sugars from syrups and honey, and sugars from concentrated fruit or vegetable juices that are in excess of what would be expected from the same volume of 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice of the same type. The definition excludes fruit or vegetable juice concentrated from 100 percent fruit juice that is sold to consumers (e.g. frozen 100 percent fruit juice concentrate) as well as some sugars found in fruit and vegetable juices, jellies, jams, preserves, and fruit spreads.

In other words, they are talking about how to count sugar from added fruit and vegetable juices specifically.

For example, add tomato juice to tomato sauce and that's fine. Add concentrated tomato juice and you will have to log some of it as added sugar. If it has 4 g of sugar in 5 fl oz of tomato juice, normally, and you reduce it and add 1.25 fl oz with the same amount of sugar (when tomato juice would normally have only 1 g of sugar in 1.25 fl oz), then you would have to add 3 g of added sugar to the label. If you also added 2 g per serving of other sugars, you'd have 5 g of added sugar on the label.

MelodyandBarbells

lemurcat12 wrote: »

JaneiR36 wrote: »

lemurcat12 wrote: »

How would that happen? Are you thinking that they'd sweeten them with condensed fruit juice to avoid the label? Even if that were possible (beats me if would be) most of it would count as added sugar.

From my understanding of their definition of added sugars, you basically get some freebie sugar that is equal to the amount of sugar that would be expected in the same volume of 100% fruit juice, then you start calculating and have to declare the grams of sugar beyond that.

That's not what it says. I tried to explain in my prior post what it meant.

"4. How does the FDA define “added sugars”?

The definition of added sugars includes sugars that are either added during the processing of foods, or are packaged as such, and include sugars (free, mono- and disaccharides), sugars from syrups and honey, and sugars from concentrated fruit or vegetable juices that are in excess of what would be expected from the same volume of 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice of the same type. The definition excludes fruit or vegetable juice concentrated from 100 percent fruit juice that is sold to consumers (e.g. frozen 100 percent fruit juice concentrate) as well as some sugars found in fruit and vegetable juices, jellies, jams, preserves, and fruit spreads.

In other words, they are talking about how to count sugar from added fruit and vegetable juices specifically.

For example, add tomato juice to tomato sauce and that's fine. Add concentrated tomato juice and you will have to log some of it as added sugar. If it has 4 g of sugar in 5 fl oz of tomato juice, normally, and you reduce it and add 1.25 fl oz with the same amount of sugar (when tomato juice would normally have only 1 g of sugar in 1.25 fl oz), then you would have to add 3 g of added sugar to the label. If you also added 2 g per serving of other sugars, you'd have 5 g of added sugar on the label.

Ah. The "that are in excess of what would be expected"... portion only applies to "sugars from concentrated fruit and vegetable juices" and not the entire portion of the sentence before it.

That does make a bit more sense.