How Manufacturers Are Tricking Us With Sneaky Sugars

You may be one of the many people today that are trying to reduce their sugar intake. I’ve noticed that it’s becoming increasingly hard to spot sugar in foods. No longer do we need to worry just about sugar, now we also have to worry about substitutes such as agave, rice malt syrup, panela, high-fructose corn syrup and coconut sugar. These other types of sugar are often used to try and mask the total amount of sugar that is in a food, and make a food appear healthier than it really is.

Think foods like bliss balls, muesli bars and cakes. They may include these trendy versions of sugar. We use these sugars sometimes in the hope that they may be healthier (they’re not really) and manufacturers have also picked up on this trick. They are using these sugar alternatives in the hope that buyers don’t realise that they’re ALL forms of sugar.

While some of these sugars will contain marginally more vitamins, the amount is virtually negligible and too much of these sugars will still lead to weight gain, elevated blood sugars and all of those other bad outcomes like heart disease and fatty liver.

Sneaky sugars to look out for:

  • Barley malt syrup
  • Birch syrup
  • Golden syrup
  • Brown rice syrup
  • Coconut sugar
  • Honey
  • Malt extract
  • Treacle
  • Maple syrup
  • Rice malt syrup
  • Blackstrap molasses
  • Date sugar
  • Cane juice
  • Cane sugar extract
  • Agave
  • Coffee crystals
  • Demerara sugar
  • Palm sugar
  • Molasses
  • Panela
  • Rapadura
  • Raw sugar

And the trickery doesn’t stop there!

In addition to using other versions of sugar, manufacturers are also using more than one type. This means that they can use a smaller amount of each, so that each ingredient individually appears lower down on the ingredients list as proportionally it makes up less of the food. For example, if a muesli bar used 50% sugar, it would appear as the first ingredient on the list and we would know straight away it wasn’t healthy. But if a muesli bar uses a combination of honey, coconut sugar and agave, those ingredients may be 5th and 6th and 8th on the list, making it much harder for us to pick it up!

The bottom line… be careful! If a product has sugar (or any other fancy sugar substitute) in the first three ingredients it’s not a healthy choice. If it doesn’t have sugar in the first three ingredients, keep reading and check if they are popping up further down!

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