ADDED INGREDIENTS

HIDDEN SECRETS OF ADDED SUGARS

By Hunter Harrell

America’s relationship with sugar is toxic. It’s full of empty promises – all calories and no nutritional value.

“The choice is yours,” said CustomCare Nutrition founder Kirsten Chesney. “You can eat well and pay the farmer, or you can eat unhealthy and pay the drug companies.”

Chesney received her master’s degree in nutrition and functional medicine, then opened her own business offering a variety of services, including meal planning and grocery tours, in Flagstaff Arizona before moving to Durango in 2020.

Chesney said many foods, including fruits and vegetables, naturally contain sugar, like the fructose in fruit that we eat. However, there’s a difference between natural sugars and added sugars. Natural sugars contain calories and nutrients, while added sugars contain all the calories without the nutritional value. Unfortunately, sugars are added to many of the items on the grocery store shelves.

Sugar is often used for giving baked goods flavor, texture and color. Sugar feeds yeast to make bread dough rise. While making jams and jellies, sugar is added as a preservative. It is also used to balance acidity of foods containing vinegar and tomatoes. It’s also very common in beverages, like soda, juice and energy drinks.

“Food is made to be sold rather than to be nutritious,” Chesney said. “It’s easy and cheap to put high-fructose corn syrup in a product rather than cane sugar.”

RECOMMENDED CONSUMPTION

The U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that individuals over the age of two limit their added sugar consumption to less than 10% of their calories per day, and that children two and under consume no added sugars.

However, adults consume an average of 22 teaspoons of sugar per day, according to the American Heart Association. That is nearly three times the stricter daily recommendation from AHA of 6 teaspoons for women and 9 teaspoons for men.

CONSEQUENCES

Is short-term satisfaction worth the long-term effects? Sugar is stealthy. But there are subtle ways to monitor whether you’re consuming too much.

“Common symptoms are headaches, fatigue and brain fog,” Chesney said. “Feeling shaky or dizzy is also a sign.”

If a person eats sugar in excess of the body’s need for energy, it raises the blood sugar, and over time, it can increase insulin resistance. Though the effects start small, consuming too much sugar can lead to chronic disease, such as obesity, heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

REDUCING CONSUMPTION

Luckily, there are several helpful strategies for reducing consumption of added sugars or cutting it out all together. One way to track the amount of added sugar in your diet is to read nutrition labels.

As of 2021, all food manufacturers are required to list the total amount of natural and added sugar on the Nutrition Facts label. Before this change, grocery shoppers had to scan the ingredients information for sugar disguised with other names. So, reading and understanding these labels is important and easier than ever.

“The serving size is easy to ignore,” Chesney said. “Let’s say you had a box of Ritz crackers. If the serving size is 14 crackers, and you eat half the box, you have doubled or tripled the serving size.”

How do you know if you’re on the right track? Chesney said to aim for typical natural sugars rather than added sugars, and less than 10 grams of total sugars per serving.

“If you are going to have something with high sugar, and it is a piece of fruit, then pair it with something with high fiber,” Chesney said. “It slows the rate of digestion, which causes a more gradual rise in blood sugar.”

Foods that have low-fat claims may also be disguised as healthy alternatives, when the products are actually sugar-laden.

“Avoid items that say low fat as a health claim on it,” Chesney said. “Fat is flavorful. To replace that flavor, low-fat food items usually have a lot more added sugars.”

For more information and tips from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics on reading nutrtion labels, see page 17.

Sugar by any other name is just as sweet:

anhydrous dextrose brown rice syrup cane juice/syrup corn syrup crystal dextrose dextrose fructose fruit nectar glucose high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) honey maple syrup invert sugar liquid fructose malt syrup molasses sucrose evaporated corn sweetener