Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Know Your Ingredients....Sugars

So..we all like sugar. For many of us, naturally sweet foods such as fruits somehow are not sweet enough. It s possible that super sweetened processed foods have become the "norm" for our spoikled taste buds. Here may be a reason why. Be a food detective and scan the list of ingredients on packaged food.....anything from cold cereals to ketchup to bottled salad dressings. It may surprise you to see that besides sugar, brown sugar and corn syrup, many of the listed ingredients end in "ose". Anything ending with the suffix "ose" is a sugar. There is sucrose (table sugar), maltose, dextrose, lactose (milk sugar), glucose, fructose (fruit sugar) and galactose. There is also molasses, dried beet juice (a disingenuous attempt to disguise white sugar made sugar beets), dried cane juice (another disingenuous attempt to disguise cane sugar). It is possible that over 50% of the ingredients in many packaged foods are sugars. You may also find that 'modified corn starch' and high fructose corn syrup' is in just about everything...really. Modified corn starch is not exactly a sugar but is metabolized somewhat similarly. I want to know why I need so much sugar and corn syrup in my ketchup!!!!

1 comment:

  1. i'm totally on board with you here. i try to avoid HFCS and look for real cane sugar or other actually natural sweeteners that don't require tremendous amounts of processing. that dextrose is SNEAKY though, isn't it? it's in practically everything! this is why i try to cook from scratch and avoid packaged goods altogether.
    FYI, heinz has launched an organic ketchup with regular sugar, which is at least not quite as scary. trader joe's version is also made with real sugar.

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