Calculating Added Sugar

rloedemann

Hi All! Is there a way to set up MyFitnessPal to calculate Added sugar specifically?

AnnPT77

No, not at this time.

Are you insulin resistant or diabetic, or similar? If not, I found that reducing the obvious sources of added sugar in my eating (candy, baked goods, sweetened beverages, etc.), plus making it a point to hit my fat/protein minimums (within calorie goal) - and otherwise get good overall nutrition - tended to put added sugar in it's place, well within the percentage of calories health authorities are recommending these days. Focusing on getting the good things into my eating helped me more than focusing on getting the supposedly bad ones out. YMMV.

LoganBennett715

Calculating Sugar in your diet is a very difficult task. I am lucky that I don't have any of these problems and hope that I don't get it in distant future.

hguilfoy

The American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology attribute Added (not naturally occurring) Sugars as one of the 7 traditional risk factors linked to heart disease.

In May 2016 the USDA required labeling of added sugar content on all packaged foods and beverages. https://www.cardiosmart.org/news/2019/5/new-sugar-labels-to-prevent-1-million-cases-of-heart-disease-and-diabetes

As you can see tracking ADDED SUGARS is as important as tracking all sugars. Currently there is not even a way to update a database entry with ADDED SUGAR.

With this in mind, when can we expect to be able to track this information in MFP?

Gisel2015

@hguilfoy
"With this in mind, when can we expect to be able to track this information in MFP? "

NEVER!!!!

COGypsy

Sorry bud, you’re just talking to other users here. MFP staff don’t read the boards other than Texh Support and Feature Suggestions. We have no way of knowing what developers might or might not be working on.

That said, when this is suggested on the Feature Suggestions board, the indication from staff is that this isn’t coming anytime soon. It’s been requested literally for years.

The official workaround promoted by MFP staff is to create a meal that you track all of your fruits and vegetables in. Then you effectively “bundle” the natural sugars and everything outside of that box is added sugar that you can add up and see where you’re at.

yirara

Are there countries where added sugar is available on nutritional labels next to sugar (general)? At least I've not seen this in Europe anywhere. Sugar is sugar here.

AnnPT77

yirara wrote: »

Are there countries where added sugar is available on nutritional labels next to sugar (general)? At least I've not seen this in Europe anywhere. Sugar is sugar here.

Yes, as PP said, it's required on food labels in the US. PP is wrong, though: The law requiring it was passed in 2016, but it didn't take effect until 2020-21 (different compliance dates for different products).

It was controversial among technical types in the US, too, for basically the reason you mention: Sugar is sugar. If people need to avoid high sugar, the big deal is total sugars.

However, in common ways of eating, a high fraction of the total sugar comes from added sugars because of food choices. Some consumers want to reduce their sugar intake by focusing on added sugar, which is rational IMO, so I guess ultimately it was seen as helpful to put on labels.

I dug into the reasons behind this at one point. For example, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends less than 10% of daily calories come from added sugars, with less than 5% offering additional benefits.

WHO's reasons, though, seem to be more common sense: It's not that added sugar is different sugar. It's that so many foods are juiced up with added sugars in some countries. Eating high amounts of sugar usually means a person is either getting too many calories (alongside adequate nutrition) or too little nutrition (alongside reasonable calories). Those are the issues, plus dental cavities. Eating too much inherent sugar (such as in fruit) can have those same effects, it's just that those foods are less likely to be as sugar-dense and nutrient-sparse as foods with added sugar, plus may be somewhat harder to over-eat (more filling, for example).

yirara

Thanks a lot for your explanation and digging into this. I do wonder whether labeling food with added sugar in addition to total sugar might not even cause more foul play. Add food high in sugar, possible in a concentrated way, and then advertise as low in added sugar.

Alatariel75

I have a question (I'm not in the USA and we don't have added sugar on our labels here). Honey, which is basically pure sugar, would have no "added sugar" on the label, because it is all naturally occurring, yes? But a product with honey added as a sweetner would have it as "added sugar" on the label?

If that's the case, would people think that when they buy honey, it has no added sugar, so would add it to stuff because it has "no added sugar"?

AnnPT77

yirara wrote: »

Thanks a lot for your explanation and digging into this. I do wonder whether labeling food with added sugar in addition to total sugar might not even cause more foul play. Add food high in sugar, possible in a concentrated way, and then advertise as low in added sugar.

It's been a while since I looked at this, but I don't think that would work because of how added sugar is defined. For example, concentrated fruit juice added to a food product is an added sugar. I think the only exception is something like bottled orange juice made from concentrate but with enough water added to get it back to normal sugar levels . . . and I may even be wrong about that being an exception.

I was curious at one point, so looked into this stuff . . . but for my own eating purposes, I don't much care, so it doesn't stick in my mind. I've long read ingredients labels, I know all the supposedly sneaky names for sugars (which I don't find sneaky), and I don't like super sweet things much across the board anyway. Sure, I have a few sweet treats now and then, but I'm more tempted by savory/salty things, cheese, etc. I've never been one for soda/pop, grocery store baked goods, donuts, etc., even when obese.

Alatariel75

OK, further to my question above - here's an example:

Pure white sugar - no "added sugar"



Hershey's kisses, with sugar being the only sweetener in the ingredients - 17g "added sugar"



So I have to wonder how helpful this added sugar labelling really is. If you used the recipe creator to make a recipe which used a large amount of pure sugar (which has no "added sugar" in the nutrition, remember), your recipe would have no "added sugar" when you logged it.

And sure, people may go "well, I added sugar, that's added sugar" but there's honey, maple syrup, molasses, agave, etc etc etc all pure sugar but able to say "no added sugar!" per the existing labelling rules.

I feel like there's some big flaws in the whole labelling system.

AnnPT77

Alatariel75 wrote: »

I have a question (I'm not in the USA and we don't have added sugar on our labels here). Honey, which is basically pure sugar, would have no "added sugar" on the label, because it is all naturally occurring, yes? But a product with honey added as a sweetner would have it as "added sugar" on the label?

If that's the case, would people think that when they buy honey, it has no added sugar, so would add it to stuff because it has "no added sugar"?

Mostly from memory, so maybe poor recall: I think honey - just pure honey in a jar - is not labeled as containing added sugar, but does have a label footnote about how it contributes to dietary sugar. It does have high total sugar on the label, of course. If the jar included added sucrose or HFCS, it would show added sugar to that extent. People are supposed to know that pure honey is almost entirely sugar, and there has to be a way to distinguish "honey spreads" or whatever that do have sugars added to the honey.

Sure, some people are stupid, and might think honey isn't sugar, even though the total sugar is on the nutrition label very clearly.

There are people here in the US - I heard a lecture from a chiropractor who said this, for example - that sugar is bad and we shouldn't eat it at all, and artificial sweeteners are bad, too, but honey is good . . . I guess because it's all natural, or something? You can't fix stupid.

If a food product (cookies, say) contains honey, the honey's sugar would be added to the added sugar quantity on the nutrition label, yes.

But again, that's from memory.

Anyone who actually cares can easily, easily find this all explained clearly in complete detail on US government web sites. It's very easy to find, all public. There's no point in hypothesizing or speculating about nefarious exceptions. Some may not like the regs, or how the regs are promulgated, but the final regs are all very clear and public.

Alatariel75

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Alatariel75 wrote: »

I have a question (I'm not in the USA and we don't have added sugar on our labels here). Honey, which is basically pure sugar, would have no "added sugar" on the label, because it is all naturally occurring, yes? But a product with honey added as a sweetner would have it as "added sugar" on the label?

If that's the case, would people think that when they buy honey, it has no added sugar, so would add it to stuff because it has "no added sugar"?

Mostly from memory, so maybe poor recall: I think honey - just pure honey in a jar - is not labeled as containing added sugar, but does have a label footnote about how it contributes to dietary sugar. It does have high total sugar on the label, of course. If the jar included added sucrose or HFCS, it would show added sugar to that extent. People are supposed to know that pure honey is almost entirely sugar, and there has to be a way to distinguish "honey spreads" or whatever that do have sugars added to the honey.

Sure, some people are stupid, and might think honey isn't sugar, even though the total sugar is on the nutrition label very clearly.

There are people here in the US - I heard a lecture from a chiropractor who said this, for example - that sugar is bad and we shouldn't eat it at all, and artificial sweeteners are bad, too, but honey is good . . . I guess because it's all natural, or something? You can't fix stupid.

If a food product (cookies, say) contains honey, the honey's sugar would be added to the added sugar quantity on the nutrition label, yes.

But again, that's from memory.

Anyone who actually cares can easily, easily find this all explained clearly in complete detail on US government web sites. It's very easy to find, all public. There's no point in hypothesizing or speculating about nefarious exceptions. Some may not like the regs, or how the regs are promulgated, but the final regs are all very clear and public.

I guess I'm just coming from a mindset where people who are educated don't need a label to tell them there's "added sugar" in a product (they would know about sugars and be able to read the label and ingredients), but the people who would blindly rely on the "added sugar is the evil sugar and it has to be labelled" maxim are very vulnerable to being misled.

Not saying they're stupid, but thread after thread on MFP show that people trust the label and the database and really don't think about it critically. I can 1000% see people going "I don't eat any added sugar! I put honey in my 11 cups of tea a day, and use it in my baking, but no added sugar!"

To me, the whole "added sugar" thing on labels is just lip service and isn't actually particularly helpful.

AnnPT77

Alatariel75 wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Alatariel75 wrote: »

I have a question (I'm not in the USA and we don't have added sugar on our labels here). Honey, which is basically pure sugar, would have no "added sugar" on the label, because it is all naturally occurring, yes? But a product with honey added as a sweetner would have it as "added sugar" on the label?

If that's the case, would people think that when they buy honey, it has no added sugar, so would add it to stuff because it has "no added sugar"?

Mostly from memory, so maybe poor recall: I think honey - just pure honey in a jar - is not labeled as containing added sugar, but does have a label footnote about how it contributes to dietary sugar. It does have high total sugar on the label, of course. If the jar included added sucrose or HFCS, it would show added sugar to that extent. People are supposed to know that pure honey is almost entirely sugar, and there has to be a way to distinguish "honey spreads" or whatever that do have sugars added to the honey.

Sure, some people are stupid, and might think honey isn't sugar, even though the total sugar is on the nutrition label very clearly.

There are people here in the US - I heard a lecture from a chiropractor who said this, for example - that sugar is bad and we shouldn't eat it at all, and artificial sweeteners are bad, too, but honey is good . . . I guess because it's all natural, or something? You can't fix stupid.

If a food product (cookies, say) contains honey, the honey's sugar would be added to the added sugar quantity on the nutrition label, yes.

But again, that's from memory.

Anyone who actually cares can easily, easily find this all explained clearly in complete detail on US government web sites. It's very easy to find, all public. There's no point in hypothesizing or speculating about nefarious exceptions. Some may not like the regs, or how the regs are promulgated, but the final regs are all very clear and public.

I guess I'm just coming from a mindset where people who are educated don't need a label to tell them there's "added sugar" in a product (they would know about sugars and be able to read the label and ingredients), but the people who would blindly rely on the "added sugar is the evil sugar and it has to be labelled" maxim are very vulnerable to being misled.

Not saying they're stupid, but thread after thread on MFP show that people trust the label and the database and really don't think about it critically. I can 1000% see people going "I don't eat any added sugar! I put honey in my 11 cups of tea a day, and use it in my baking, but no added sugar!"

To me, the whole "added sugar" thing on labels is just lip service and isn't actually particularly helpful.

I think it has some helpfulness for some people who have common sense, but it can mislead those who don't. Anything can mislead those who don't, or let people lie to themselves if they want to.

I don't think label deficiencies are the main reason many people eat too much sugar. I think many people eat too much sugar because it's tasty. Label-wise, IMO, it's never been hard to cut sugar intake to reasonable levels. Food-preference-wise, it can be hard.

Hard is hard.

Adventurista

Just an additional practice to consider.

Pure olive oil is more expensive than blended with other, less expensive oils. Same for some sugars plus sweetness. So pure honey or blended with less expensive sugars.

And, good example juices may have natural sweetness and original sugar but can be blended with other sugar forms that may be cheaper and/or sweeter or both such as beet sugar and/or extend shelf life such as high-fructose corn syrups.