Sugar... added vs natural

williamiralee
williamiralee Posts: 1 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Is there a way to distinguish between natural sugar and added sugars in my Fitness pal

Replies

  • Carlos_421
    Carlos_421 Posts: 5,132 Member
    MFP has no way to track them separately, especially since the nutritional info on most labels doesn't specify how much sugar is intrinsic vs added.

    For what it's worth though, if you're tracking your caloric intake, it makes no difference. Sugar is sugar to the body. There is no chemical difference. It's all glucose, fructose and sucrose (which is just glucose and fructose).

    The common recommendation to limit added sugar is a way to get people who aren't tracking their calories to lower their caloric intake because limiting added sugar will generally lead to eating fewer calories.
  • RelCanonical
    RelCanonical Posts: 3,882 Member
    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    MFP has no way to track them separately, especially since the nutritional info on most labels doesn't specify how much sugar is intrinsic vs added.

    For what it's worth though, if you're tracking your caloric intake, it makes no difference. Sugar is sugar to the body. There is no chemical difference. It's all glucose, fructose and sucrose (which is just glucose and fructose).

    The common recommendation to limit added sugar is a way to get people who aren't tracking their calories to lower their caloric intake because limiting added sugar will generally lead to eating fewer calories.

    To add on, they also recommended limited added sugar because items with added sugar were crowding out foods that are micronutrient-dense and full of fiber (i.e. fruit). People decided it was the sugar that was evil, but their (health organizations) intention was to say the lack of micronutrients was the evil part.
  • Carlos_421
    Carlos_421 Posts: 5,132 Member
    RelCanonical wrote: »
    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    MFP has no way to track them separately, especially since the nutritional info on most labels doesn't specify how much sugar is intrinsic vs added.

    For what it's worth though, if you're tracking your caloric intake, it makes no difference. Sugar is sugar to the body. There is no chemical difference. It's all glucose, fructose and sucrose (which is just glucose and fructose).

    The common recommendation to limit added sugar is a way to get people who aren't tracking their calories to lower their caloric intake because limiting added sugar will generally lead to eating fewer calories.

    To add on, they also recommended limited added sugar because items with added sugar were crowding out foods that are micronutrient-dense and full of fiber (i.e. fruit). People decided it was the sugar that was evil, but their (health organizations) intention was to say the lack of micronutrients was the evil part.

    Yup
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,885 Member
    williamiralee wrote: »
    Is there a way to distinguish between natural sugar and added sugars in my Fitness pal

    The app won't, but very often it's apparent if you look at the foods it's from. Some foods may be more difficult to tell.

    I always just looked at mine and saw no surprises and don't really eat any of the hard to tell foods, so that was good enough.

Categories