Hidden Sugar - Reading Labels
Sugar, also known as carbohydrates, occur naturally in foods. On nutrition facts labels, all sugars are lumped together. Complex carbs, fiber and simple sugars are all counted the same.
This sugar cleanse is focusing on ADDED sugars. For example, your plain yogurt has natural sugar, from lactose, in it that you will see under carbohydrate in the nutrition facts but the ingredients won’t have sugar listed, just milk and the yogurt culture. On the other hand a sweetened yogurt does have added sugar that you will see listed in the ingredients.
Read labels and be sugar smart!
Types of Sugar
There are so many types of sugar and sugar substitutes these days! It’s impossible to go through each of them but the 2 main ones to pay attention to are:
- Cane Sugar – from sugar cane or sugar beet.
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Alternative Sugars: many of them are carcinogenic (cancer-causing). I recommend avoiding all of them!
Read labels
Be sure to read the ingredient labels during this challenge! Sugar is added in unexpected places like:
- Cereal
- Bread
- Lunch meat
- Bacon
- Sausage
- Yogurt
- Juice
- Food bars
- Bottled water
- Salad dressing
- Ketchup
- Mustard
- Pickles
- Etc.
