How to Spot the Hidden Sugars Lurking in Healthy Foods

Julia FitzGerald BSc MBANT, Nutritional Therapist at Still Point House

01626 830536 www.korunutrition.co.uk

There are all sorts of reasons why diets fail. Sometimes they are emotional, sometimes medical. For many though, it’s simply because of mis-education. Pick up any newspaper or flick through the TV channels and you’ll receive weight loss advice whether you want it or not. Unfortunately substance and common sense are often sacrificed for style and sensationalism. The advice is simplified and reduced to sound bites and slogans which allow important details to get lost.

One of the key diet saboteurs is hidden sugars, particularly those found in apparently healthy foods. This isn’t about chocolate, soft drinks and donuts. It’s about fruit and smoothies, cereal and cereal bars, yoghurt and yoghurt coatings.

Fruit juices and smoothies contain a lot of sugar. Compare a carton of fruit juice or smoothie with a soft drink such as cola. Per 100ml these very different drinks actually contain a very similar amount of sugar – around 10g. This isn’t ‘added sugar’ it’s simply the sugar that naturally occurs in the fruit. Natural or not, it’s still calorific. Now if you’re only having one small glass a day with your breakfast then that sugar content isn’t going to tip the scales (and of course its providing vitamins and counting towards your five a day). However if you then decide to buy a bottled smoothie (250mls) with your lunch you’re clocking up around an extra 150 calories thanks to those natural fruit sugars.

Cereal bars are another big weight loss saboteur. They are typically marketed as a healthy snack choice – the sort of tag line is something along the lines of ‘this product can help weight loss as part of a calorie controlled diet’. If you think about this sentence for a moment it doesn’t take long to realise that it could actually be applied to any food, including your favourite chocolate bar.

There are healthy cereal bars out there, but you need to check the small print. A quick scan of the ingredients list of one of the most popular cereal bars reveals sugar, glucose syrup, cranberries, pineapple syrup, pineapple juice concentrate, fructose, dextrose and lactose – that’s eight sources of sugar in a single product! This is a common trick. The ingredients list has to be there by law, and usefully it lists items in order of quantity so if you see sugar or fat at the top of the list then that’s a good sign that the product is likely to be laden with calories. So, if manufacturers make their ingredients list look sufficiently long, dull, small and difficult to read then fewer people will bother to look.

If you’re a numbers person then the nutrition information table can also be useful, but remember there is no legal requirement to provide that information on the packaging if space is tight (it can usually be found on their websites though). The Food Standards Agency advises that more than 15g sugar per 100g is considered ‘a lot’. Most cereal bars are twice this. Another useful figure is to see how many grams of sugar are in the actual bar. Anything from 5g to 25g is typical. It’s worth remembering that a teaspoon of sugar weighs 5g. Suddenly that natural cereal bar starts to look a lot more dodgy when you realised it contains the equivalent of five teaspoons of sugar.

Yoghurt is another food that can increase the calorie count if you don’t look at the small print. Low fat and fruit flavoured options often come laden with sugar, so you are better to choose plain, live yoghurt and add some fresh berries or a little jam or honey if you require it sweeter (at least that way you are in control). Also don’t be fooled by yoghurt coatings which are mainly sugar and fat (check the ingredients list!), and thus have far more in common with chocolate than yoghurt.

Successful dieters can (and should) indulge in the occasional treat. The secret is to take a little time to read the food labels rather than trusting manufacturers to look after your waist line.

Get more info from: www.nhs.uk/livewell/goodfood/

Julia FitzGerald is available for individual consultations at Still Point House in Bovey Tracey on Wednesday afternoons. Please see www.korunutrition.co.uk or call 01626 830536 for further info.