April 9, 2017
If you knew you were eating 22 teaspoons of table sugar per day, would you? But that’s exactly what MOST Americans are doing each and every day: consuming 2-3 times the recommended daily limit (6 teaspoons for women and 9 for men)… at the end of a year that translates to about 150 POUNDS of the white stuff!!!
There are more than 200 types of added sugars used in more than 75% of the most common products sold in supermarkets (even unexpected items like bread, salty snacks, and condiments.)
Just SOME of the side effects of consuming too much sugar are: Type 2 Diabetes, Heart Disease, fatty liver, kidney stones, depression, osteoporosis, tooth decay & periodontal disease (which often leads to all other types of disease), inflammation (which DEFINTELY leads to all other types of disease), and obesity (which ALSO DEFINTELY leads to all other types of disease.)
And here are 25 kinda SNEAKY names for the sweet stuff:
1. Anything that ends with “ose” (like dextrose, fructose, glucose, galactose, lactose, maltose, saccharose, sucrose, and xylose)
2. Barley malt
3. Beet sugar
4. Brown rice syrup
5. Cane sugar
6. Cane juice
7. Carob syrup
8. Corn sugar
9. Corn syrup solids
10. High-fructose corn syrup
11. Demerara sugar
12. Diatase
13. Dextrin
14. Diastatic malt
15. Evaporated cane juice
16. Fruit juice concentrate
17. Glucomalt
18. Invert Sugar
19. Maltodextrin
20. Raw sugar
21. Rice syrup
22. Sorghum
23. Sorghum syrup
24. Treacle
25. Turbinado Sugar
(FYI the 5 most commonly used sweeteners are corn syrup, sorghum, cane sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, and fruit juice concentrate.)
And although the MOST COMMON sources of sugar in the American diet are sweetened beverages, baked goods, dairy desserts, candy, and breakfast cereal, even a lot of “healthy foods” are simply LOADED with the stuff: the average cup of fruit-on-the- bottom yogurt has 30 or more grams (that’s 7-8 teaspoons) of added sugar (but instead of tearing off on another “follow the money” rant I’ll just end the discussion by saying all the probiotics in the world aren’t going to balance out the digestive inflammation caused by consuming that much sugar in a cup of yogurt…that’s a whole other blog though, right?!)
Photo courtesy of The American Heart Association
