How hidden sugars are hijacking your good health
May 17, 2012
She says it wasn't easy.
"Foods that I commonly consume I had to trade off for other items," she said, "things like yogurt, even some granola bars that I would normally have. I had to watch and make different choices that day."
That's because so many foods that aren't sweets — processed foods like ketchup, pasta sauce, cereal and yogurt — have added sugar.
"Some of the healthier items that you think you're eating still can have a lot of added sugar," LaRoche said.
"Just because something says 'low-fat' doesn't mean its low sugar," dietitian Jessica LaRoche says in an interview with KSL News.
- A barbecue sauce with four and a half teaspoons of sugar per two tablespoon serving
- A fruit yogurt with eight teaspoons of sugar in a sixteen ounce container
- A raspberry salad dressing with more than a teaspoon of sugar per serving and no real raspberries
- A box of cereal often found in the health food aisle with four teaspoons per cup
All that extra sugar adds up.
The American Heart Association estimates Americans eat 71 pounds of sugar a year — many times more the recommended daily allowance. One USDA report puts the number at 140 pounds. The USDA estimates most of that comes from soft drinks and sweets, but one-fourth comes from prepared foods.
High sugar intake has been linked to obesity, diabetes and heart disease, LaRoche says.
A not-so-sweet past
Before she was a dietitian, LaRoche was a Navy cryptologist with a sweet tooth and less-then-model eating habits.
"I just ate whatever I want whenever I wanted." And it showed, she says, when she had blood tests, in things like cholesterol levels.
Then she took up running and changed her diet. Her cholesterol and triglycerides dropped. Her blood pressure and heart rate went down as well.
"I'm sure a lot has to do with upping the exercise. I don't think you can really separate out diet and exercise. They go together," LaRoche said.
Her healthier lifestyle lead to a second career in nutrition. She encourages people to eat more whole foods and watch extra sugar.
That means reading labels.
Understanding nutrition labels
Nutrition facts on packaged foods lists total sugar, both added and natural. Fruit and dairy have natural sugars. So all apple sauces, with and without added sugar, will show some sugar content.
Ingredients include only added sugars, listed in descending order of amount.
It gets tricky, though, because sugar comes in many forms — sugar, invert sugar, fruit juice concentrates, corn sweetener, corn syrup, molasses, cane juice, cane syrup and agave, among others.
Then there are the "ose" sugars, like dextrose, fructose, glucose and fructose. Because total sugar content may be divided among many different sweeteners, those ingredients may appear farther down on the list.
So, labels tells you how much total sugar you're eating but not always how much added sugar. For LaRoche and everyone else, that makes trying to follow the American Heart Association's sugar guidelines that much more complicated.
Do you have to be a cryptologist to figure it all out?
LaRoche laughed at that question. "Even they can't figure it out," she said.
