How Sweet It Is (and I Didn’t Even Know It)!

kitchen

Ever since I started reading food labels, I’ve been amazed at how much sugar is in EVERYTHING we eat! The American Heart Association guidelines for sugar consumption are 25 gram for women and 37.5 for men (4g equals 1 teaspoon of sugar.)

Sounds pretty do-able, until you find that there’s sugar in bread, ketchup, yogurt, etc. With sugar hidden in just about everything under about 10 other names, it’s almost impossible not to blow through that limit. And if an adult is only allowed about 4 teaspoons a day, what are small children who are half our size allowed?

That’s why it’s so important to read the Ingredients list on food labels—make sure you know what you’re eating, and giving your children to eat! Know all the different names for “sugar”—molasses, honey, brown sugar, maple syrup, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, evaporated cane juice.

Here’s a few examples of how much sugar is in what we eat:

Ketchup: 4g of sugar per tbsp

NutraGrain Strawberry Cereal Bars: 13g per bar (3 tsp sugar)

Peanut Butter: 3g per 2 tbsp (1 serving) (12 tsp sugar)

Donuts (Dunkin Donuts, chocolate frosted): 10g (2+ tsp sugar)

M&M’s: 31g per serving (7+ tsp sugar)

Skittles: 47g per serving (11+ tsp sugar)

Chocolate milk (Nesquik): 8 oz serving, 29g of sugar (7+ tsp)

Bread (Nature’s Pride, Whole Wheat): 3g

Waffles (Eggo Low Fat): 3g per waffle

Snapple, Lemon Iced Tea, 16 oz bottle (2 servings) = 46g, (11+ tsp sugar)

Yogurt (Yoplait Fat Free Strawberry): 6 oz= 28g of sugar (7 tsp)