Amazed how much sugar is in things

eat less processed food...

But yeah, fruit and veg have sugar too...personally, if you're not eating cake and washing it down with multiple 40 ounce Big Gulps per day, I wouldn't worry too much about it.

If the issue is fruit, I wouldn't worry about it unless you are failing to meet other goals (like protein) or not hitting your calorie target.

If it's packaged stuff, you have to figure out if it matters to you and read labels, not just how many grams of sugar there are. People flip out about sugar in dairy, but if it's plain dairy that sugar is from the milk only, not added. If it's flavored yogurt, it of course generally has added sugar, but a lot of the sugar is still from fruit and lactose and a little more may not matter to you if you like it better and are more likely to eat it.

For another example, I make my own pasta sauce (tastes better that way IMO), but a serving of mine that I made a week or so ago--and had NO added sugar but did have tomatoes and lots of veggies--had 7 grams of sugar/serving (I'm trying to figure out how it could have only 2--I guess not a tomato and veg based sauce?). So the idea that there's lots of added sugar in a jarred pasta sauce is often not true. There's probably a little, of course, just as in many recipes it will be included--so if you care about this you need to read the labels--but it can be harder to sort out what's added and what's from added fruits and veggies and how much that matters.

For something like dressing it's easy and avoids the issue if you just make your own, of course.

Yes, processed foods and drinks are the worst. I admit, I like to drink soda and that stuff is awful. But, there are better options out there.

One thing I've thought about doing is fruit water. Slicing up fruits, herbs, and some veggies into water. Now that it's closer to summer in the USA, more fresh fruits and herbs will be available. That way you still get a flavored drink, but without all the crap.


Here's some good examples

read the labels on everything, reduce processed foods, reduce/eliminate juices or dilute them with water, if you want flavored yogurt buy plain and flavor it yourself with fruit or whatever you like. There are a lot of ways if you are willing to make it a priority.

mamapeach910 wrote: »

How can a pasta sauce only have 2 grams of sugar when the tomatoes would have their own sugars?

What brand was that?

To the OP, it's unfortunate the labels don't differentiate between natural and added sugars for your purposes, since you obviously want to cut back on added sugars. Try to read ingredient labels and judge where sugar appears on them as indicative of how much has been added. Remember that fruits and vegetables and dairy contain natural sugars of their own.

Yeah, that's really the best we can do. By law, they are required to list ingredients in order based on weight, so there is more of the ingredients listed first on the label. However, often they split the added sugar into a few different sugar names so they can legally move the sugars later in the ingredient list...so you might think there isn't much sugar in it but there really is.

The only thing I can add is that you can't just look for "sugar". They will sometimes use terms like cane sweetener, corn syrup, dextrose, fructose (and any other word ending in "ose"), fruit juice concentrate, malt syrup, etc. Our labeling system really is screwed up.

mamapeach910 wrote: »

How can a pasta sauce only have 2 grams of sugar when the tomatoes would have their own sugars?

What brand was that?

To the OP, it's unfortunate the labels don't differentiate between natural and added sugars for your purposes, since you obviously want to cut back on added sugars. Try to read ingredient labels and judge where sugar appears on them as indicative of how much has been added. Remember that fruits and vegetables and dairy contain natural sugars of their own.

It would be nice. And I suspect with the new government guidelines that day is coming.