5 Sneaky Sources of Sugar You Need to Know!

Many of us are trying to reduce our added sugar by cutting down on desserts such as cakes and cookies, and we're also reducing the sugar in our coffee and tea, but we might be forgetting the sneaky sources of sugar. today we're talking about sneaky sources of sugar. These are sources of added sugar that have way more sugar than you would imagine them to have, and sometimes we don't even realize that they have sugar, and we might be eating quite a few of them. And because of that, we might be having a lot more added sugar than we think we're having.

The first source of sneaky sugar that we're going to talk about today is salad dressings. when it comes to added sugar, many of us think of added sugar as the sugar that's in anything that's sweet, and we don't really associate that with salad dressings unless it's a very sweet salad dressing. But here's the deal. A lot of stores- bought dressings have way more added sugar than you would imagine. we can't imagine putting three and a half teaspoons of sugar on our salad. That just sounds like way too much sugar, but there it is. It's in that salad dressing and many of us actually have way more salad dressing than what's listed as a serving size, so you could actually be getting a lot more, so it becomes very important to read the labels.

The nutrition label is really key. There are two elements that you should be looking at. One is where it says sugars. If you're in a country where you have to list added sugars, it will actually say added sugars. So have a look at that and then also look at the ingredient list. you could not tell that by just looking at the front of the label. The front label is pretty, it's there to entice the consumer. It doesn't really tell you the reality of what's in the product, so always take a look at the labels to make sure you're buying a product that doesn't have a lot of added sugar in it. you might be wondering, 14 grams of added sugar, how much is that? Is that a lot? How much is the limit?

The World Health Organization has a maximum limit of 25 grams per day for health purposes, and the American Heart Association says that women should stay below 25 grams of added sugar a day and men should stay below 36 grams of added sugar. if you are having 14 grams of added sugar in a salad, it is a big chunk of your maximum limit. So definitely check the labels. Now you might be thinking, well, I could make homemade salad dressing.

Yes, that is definitely a great choice. It doesn't actually take that long and you have a lot more control when you're making your own salad dressings. But a point of caution here, a lot of recipes we see online for salad dressings have way too much sugar. Maple syrup, and honey is added. It's nice to have a little bit of sweetness to your salad dressing to balance out the acidity of the vinegar or the lime, but some of these recipes have way more sugar than they need to have. So just keep that in mind that even something like honey or maple syrup is still considered an added sugar. This is not coming from a whole food source such as fruit or vegetables.

The second source of sneaky sugar is dried fruit. The thing is, a lot of dried fruit has added sugar. we'll give you an example. Dried cranberries. Dried cranberries taste amazing, but they have quite a bit of added sugar unless you buy the unsweetened variety. But it is actually really hard to find unsweetened cranberries. we even had a hard time finding them online. we found out that unsweetened dried cranberries have about two grams of sugar per 40 gram serving. That is a sugar that's naturally found in cranberries, but the cranberries you find in the supermarket tend to be the sweetened kind, and they have roughly 26 grams of sugar per 40 grams serving. That is a lot. if you're someone who's very fond of trail mix and you use a lot of cranberries in your trail mix, that's a lot of added sugar.

The thing with dried fruit is it's very important to read the labels because a lot of dried fruit actually has added sugar. And the other thing I wanted to say about dried fruit, even if it doesn't have added sugar - as an example, raisins, they don't typically add sugar to them, but dried fruit tends to be very easy to overdo. as an example, if you were to have a small box of raisins, you know those really tiny boxes of raisins that you give to kids to take to school? we used to take them to school every day. Those have about 60 raisins. That is 60 grapes. There's no way we could eat 60 grapes in a sitting, but we could easily have those 60 raisins, that small box of raisins in a sitting. So even if dried fruit doesn't have added sugar in it, it is quite easy to overdo. our suggestion is to stick to fresh fruit whenever possible.

Number three is ketchup and other condiments. So many of us don't really think of our condiments as being a source of added sugar, but they really can be. And even if they don't taste that sweet, they can actually have quite a bit of added sugar. So as an example, barbecue sauce. Barbecue sauce, depending on the brand, the amount of added sugar can vary quite a bit. We found some brands that had hardly any, maybe two or three grams of sugar, and then there was one brand that had 20 grams of sugar per serving. it becomes very important to read the labels of any condiments.

Number four is fruit yogurt, and this is something that has a bit of a health halo. People think fruit yogurt is a healthy choice because fruit is healthy, and yogurt, it has probiotics. But the problem is a lot of manufacturers add quite a bit of added sugar to make their products taste better, and the fruit is more like jam. It is actually quite heavy on the sugar, so it becomes important to read the labels because each brand varies quite a bit. a lot of brands have about eight to 10 grams of added sugar. Not a huge amount, but it is still quite a bit, especially if you are trying to stay below the 25-gram limit. And our suggestion, if you are going to have yogurt and you do want to have fruit, make it fresh fruit, have some plain yogurt, add a little bit of fresh fruit on top, and it tastes quite good.

Number five is bottled healthy beverages such as kefir, kombucha, iced tea. a lot of these beverages have that health halo, and we think that they're a healthy choice. They can be, but it depends on how much added sugar the manufacturer has added. something like water kefir. It is a beverage that is slightly carbonated. We don't know if you've ever tried it before, but it has quite an interesting flavor. we've actually made kefir at home. The water kefir we've made at home has quite a tart taste. It's not very sweet. It just has a very slight hint of sweetness that comes from the sugar leftover after fermentation, but it is quite tart. But when we buy kefir from the store, it tends to be quite sweet because they're not fermenting it the same amount of time that we are fermenting it.

 manufacturers at the end of the day, are trying to make products that people will enjoy, and that means products that taste sweeter. So read the label because each brand is so different. Some brands don't have much added sugar. That's definitely a great choice, but when a brand is adding a lot more sugar than there needs to be that's no longer a great choice if you are trying to stay below the limit, which was 25 grams of added sugar. when in doubt our suggestion, read the labels and compare brands because you will see that there is such a big variety in the amount of sugar that's added to products.

Some will have hardly anything, and then others will have outrageous amounts of sugar. And iced tea is something that actually tends to have quite a bit of added sugar, even if it's from the health store. There was one brand that we looked at, it had 40 grams of added sugar in a bottle, but on the back of the bottle it said that you should have half a bottle. So that way your serving would just have 20 grams of added sugar. But here's the thing. Many of us are having the full bottle. We're not having half the bottle. And even at half the bottle, 20 grams is quite a bit.

That's actually five teaspoons of sugar. we don't think we would ever add five teaspoons of sugar to our iced tea if i was to make it at home, but in a store-bought beverage, it's very easy to have that. So read the labels. Now there are many, many other sources of sneaky sugar, such as pasta sauce, granola, things that have a lot more sugar than you would think that they have. our suggestion is to check these labels at the grocery store, not when you get home, because once you're home, that product is in your home, you're going to have it.