It’s not always easy to determine how much sugar foods contain, even by looking at their composition. Here’s what you need to know to decipher the labels.
Everyone knows it today: sugar is not good for your health. Certainly, like any carbohydrate, it provides essential energy to our body. But its excessive consumption leads to many problems (diabetes, obesity, etc.), in addition to addiction. Moreover, the WHO advises limiting our daily intake of added sugars to 25 g. This includes the sugar that we add ourselves – in coffee or yogurt, for example – but also those added by manufacturers. And this is where things get complicated…
In fact, it is common to find sugar in a number of preparations which should not contain it, such as cereals, crackers, sauces or ready meals, where it helps improve conservation. And that’s the trap.
To spot sugar, there is no other choice than to carefully examine food labels. But it is not enough to look at the share of carbohydrates and sugars per serving in the average nutritional values. Because this does not make it possible to differentiate the sugar naturally present in the ingredients used from that added by manufacturers. In fact, you have to look at the list of ingredients.
The order of the ingredients on the label is a first guide, since manufacturers must list them in order of quantity, and not in alphabetical order. Then, you have to keep in mind that, whatever its form, sugar is sugar. But on the labels it can have a whole bunch of names.
Generally, behind everything that ends in “ose” (fructose, glucose, dextrose, galactose, sucrose, maltose, sucrose, etc.) is sugar. We must also identify foods made from sugar: molasses, caramel, agave syrup, carob, cane, corn, maple… But sometimes, it is completely invisible, as in starch (including modified or genetically modified), dextrin, barley malt extract or even maltodextrin.
In addition, manufacturers use special information which can be misleading. Thus, some products display roughly “sugar-free”. This only means that they do not contain sucrose, that is to say “classic” sugar – that which is stored in the beet root and in the stem of the sugar cane, and which we then found in white or brown sugar. On the other hand, they can integrate others: fructose (from fruits), lactose (in milk), maltose (from the breakdown of starch contained in barley or corn), etc.
Same thing for articles “without sugars” which, if they do not contain “ose” substances, can contain complex carbohydrates such as starch – a “sugar-free” yogurt often contains them – or sweeteners. For its part, the mention “no added sugars” indicates that the product only contains sugars naturally present in the ingredients that compose them – this is the case for compotes or fruit juices. Finally, “low sugar” means the product has at least 30% lower sugar content than a similar non-reduced item. This does not mean that the product is not very sweet, but that it can constitute an interesting alternative to the consumption of another “classic” product.
Keep in mind that the shorter the ingredient list, the less processed the product. Avoid products with ingredients you don’t understand as much as possible, as these are usually additives – they often start with the letter E. For those who don’t have the patience to decipher labels or have a Too bad eyesight, there are free and independent applications to go faster. This is the case with Yuka: simply scan the barcode of the products for the app to give them a score out of 100 and indicate their quantity of sugar per 100 grams. Practical !