How to spot hidden sugars

We all know that too much sugar is bad for your health, but detecting sugar in the products we buy and eat isn’t always obvious.

Consumers often find reading nutrition labels confusing. And what compounds the problem is that our food labels indicate total sugar, and we cannot distinguish between naturally occurring sugar in unsweetened milk and yoghurt versus added sugar in breakfast cereals. But don’t let seemingly dense dietary information make you careless about food purchases. With a little discernment, you can translate information on food packaging into meaningful, positive behaviour change! Here’s how to be smarter about identifying sugar in your diet.

Sugar and its many aliases

Check the ingredients list on products before you buy them, and watch out for these items, which all basically equate to sugar: white sugar, brown sugar, raw sugar, corn syrup, corn syrup solids, high fructose corn syrup, malt syrup, maple syrup, fructose sweetener, liquid fructose, honey, molasses, dextrose and dextrin.

If some form of sugar is in the first three ingredients listed on the product, rather give it a miss. To play it safe, try cut down on highly processed foods and buy as many whole foods as possible.

Drinks – too often a sugar trap!

One of the biggest culprits for overconsumption is sugary drinks and fruit juice. Sugary drinks are energy-dense (high in kilojoules) but low in nutrition. "Fruit is high in sugar, but whole, fresh fruit also contains fibre too. This is why eating whole fruit makes you feel fuller, which means you're less likely to consume too much of it. However, this is not true for fruit juice, energy drinks and other sweetened drinks," says Terry Harris, a dietitian at Discovery Vitality.

National Nutrition Week 2017 encouraged all South Africans to rethink our drinks and choose water. Here's a simple but revealing guide, courtesy of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of South Africa, to give you an idea of just how much sugar there is in common beverages.