Anyone who reads the labels of his purchases will quickly notice that sugar is ubiquitous. Often surprising in products that you absolutely do not expect.
Everyone is a sugar addict
Those who want to eat less sugar or (natural) sweeteners for health reasons or to lose a few kilos will eliminate a number of well-known sweet sources from their diet or reduce their portion. Sweets and cookies, pastries, jams and gingerbread, soft drinks, (frozen) ready-made meals must immediately be believed because everyone knows that they contain quite a bit of sugar. But there are also a lot of sugars in products that you would not expect at first glance.
A number of common foods that we eat every day do indeed contain (quite a lot of) sugar or sugar derivatives. We often do not recognize such foods with hidden natural sweeteners as a source of sweets because sugar is a taste to which we are accustomed. Because of our food culture, we have all become sweet tooths to a greater or lesser extent. We naturally like a sweet taste. That is why in the food industry sugar or sweetener is added to a product to blur a (too) acidic or bitter touch. Often sugar is also used to mask less qualitative or less flavorful ingredients. But such an added pinch of sugar here and a hidden pinch of sweet there quickly ensure that you get a lot without you knowing it.Maximum 50 grams of sugar per day
It is indeed a fact. Even though we have the best intentions, we often eat much more sugar than we think. A cookie with coffee is a sweet sin, but so is a dot ketchup - albeit to a lesser extent - and we are not aware of that. According to the advice of the Superior Health Council, we can eat a maximum of 50 grams of sugar per day (preferably 25 grams) and that is a limit that is reached fairly quickly in an ordinary diet. In many cases, that limit is well exceeded, even if the person in question thinks that he /she eats healthy and fairly sugar-free. This is mainly due to products that contain hidden sugars.Be sure to be careful with products that mention that they 'contain less fat'. Often ,'less creamy' is compensated by adding extra sugar or another sweetener. Conversely, it also applies: (industrial) products that contain less sugar are often upholstered with extra fats to keep the taste attractive. Always check the nutritional value and sugar content on the label or packaging. And remember that hidden sweets are not only present as 'sugar'. Anything that ends in -ose or -syrup is usually a form of sugar and then of course there are also honey and molasses.
Also, don't be fooled by the terms "low sugar" or "natural sugars." A low-sugar product may still contain 5% sugars, and natural sugars are made from fruit concentrate, but these are also sugars.
Important sources of hidden sugars
- Bread and Sereals.
Even to our daily bread, a pinch of sugar is added. White bread contains an average of 4.5% sugar. Brown and wholemeal bread do slightly better with 2.9 and 1.5 grams respectively. Milk, raisin and sugar bread obviously contain a lot more sugar, but that's no surprise.
Also breakfast cereals (muesli but especially cruesli), whether or not whole grain or with fruit, can contain quite a bit of hidden sweetness. Also the bars based on that. - Charcuterie
Also to charcuterie (ham, salami, sausage ...) and sausages, a sweet substance is often added, especially as an additional preservative. It usually concerns a small amount of glucose syrup or dextrose and that can be read from the label. - Tomato ketchup is made on the basis of tomatoes and is therefore healthy in itself. Unlike mayonnaise, (curry) ketchup contains little fat and therefore few calories, but it is a sugar bomb. So you should not eat too much of it, unless you buy a sugar-free version.
100 grams of ketchup provides only 100 to 150 kcal but it contains no less than 20 to 30 grams of sugar.
Sugar is even added to mayonnaise. An average of 2.5 grams per 100 grams of mayonnaise, which is much less, but it says a lot about our taste preferences.
Many sauces - if not most - that are sold ready-made contain sugar. This is the case for many sauces based on mayonnaise (such as cocktail sauce and tartar sauce) but also for pasta sauces, wok sauces, tomato sauces, sweet and sour sauce, balsamic (syrup) and salad dressings. - Fruit juice Purchased
Fruit juice contains on average about 10% sugar. And even if the packaging says "no added sugars" or if you drink freshly squeezed fruit juice, keep in mind that the fruit juice contains fructose. Fructose or fruit sugar is a simple natural sugar that is found in fruit.
If you eat the same fruit fresh by hand (in unpressed form) then you also absorb the fiber of the fruit. These ensure that the fructose is less quickly absorbed by your body. In the pressed juice, those fibers are lost.
Also be careful with the 'healthy smoothies'. Some contain more sugar than a can of soda. - Canned soup or condensed soup powder from sachets
Soup from brig or can or concentrated soup powder to which you need to add water contains a lot of salt, but a little sugar is also added to adjust the taste to our sugar preference. - Toasts, crackers, nuts and chips
Light toasts and crackers also contain some sugar, but so do chips. Even the oven-baked chips that contain much less fat than the regular version and therefore also look much healthier, get an extra portion of sugar added to compensate for the taste. Oven-baked chips contain about 7 to 8% sugar. - Canned vegetables
Everyone knows that vegetables are healthy. Canned vegetables or jars contain slightly fewer vitamins than the fresh variety, but offer a great alternative to fresh provided that no sugar or too much salt are added. After an investigation by the Dutch food watchdog Foodwatch (*) that gave a number of canned food producers a bad report, a number of those producers decided in June 2017 to no longer add sugar to canned summer vegetables (peas, green beans, carrots and corn) and to reduce the amount of salt by a quarter. This was done in consultation with the most important supermarket chains in the Netherlands. The cabbages are not yet covered by that agreement because the taste of the consumer is still too much attuned to sweet. Red cabbage with apples contains the most added sugar (e.g. HAK) with around 12% and this also applies to a number of Belgian brands (e.g. Bonduelle). Foodwatch is a Dutch non-profit organization that wants to inform the consumer and keeps a close eye on the food industry. But not only canned vegetables are extra sweetened, also frozen vegetables often have to believe in it. So it is best to also check the sugar content of frozen vegetables. Dried fruit or canned fruit can also contain a lot of sugar, but that is not so surprising. 8. Flat cheese or (drinking) yogurt with (fruit) taste Flat cheese and especially yogurt is often bursting with sugar, especially the light version. A bottle of yakult (normal) contains no less than 14% sugar.
Don't just say sugar to sweet
There are about 48 natural sweeteners that (mostly) consist of sugar. Anything that ends in -ose or -syrup is usually a form of sugar but there are plenty of other hidden forms. All terms used for sugar can be found on the sugar pass of the Dutch Consumers' Association.Recently, the Dutch Nutrition Center also launched an app with which you can measure the amount of fat and sugar of a product by scanning the barcode. With that 'Do I Choose Healthy?' app you can immediately read how healthy a product is. This way you can look for the best choice in the supermarket and compare products.
