We’ve always been wary of products that scream their health claims at us…
That’s why the term “no added sugar” is a tad scary! What does it even mean?!
In a Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) survey, 28 per cent of people thought the term “no added sugar” meant there was no sugar in the product at all. We hate to break it to you but that’s not entirely correct…
According to FSANZ, “no added sugar” refers only to monosaccharides and disaccharides. So placing scientific terms aside, this simply means no simple sugars like glucose and fructose or table sugar itself can be added to the product. However, naturally occurring sugar such as those in fruit are a-okay by the standard. Trouble is, some of those “natural” sugars contain more fructose than table sugar!
In fact, a recent study looked into 3,000 products labelled “no added sugar” and found that 48 per cent of the products still contain “excessive amounts” of sugar. Crikey, that’s a lot!
To investigate this further, we hit the shops to find our own “no added sugars” products and analyse just how much sneaky sugar is actually hiding in them…
Orange juice.
We’ve always been open about our stance on juice – and that is, we leave it on the shelf because it’s packed with sugar. But as many juices are considered “pure” (AKA pure sugar), they can not-so-proudly wear the name badge “no added sugar”. BUT, this one we found contained a whopping 4 teaspoons of sugar per glass. So ah, two-thirds of your daily sugar intake in one cup!
Muesli bars.
The worst offender we found was this “no added sugar muesli bar, which contained 4.4 teaspoons of sugar in one teeny tiny bar. The culprit? Dates! Yep, dried fruit is one of the worst sugary suspects and muesli bars are often stuck together with them. Nasty!
Baby food.
Hmm, what’s really in baby food? Usually, just pureed fruit, AKA sugar! In fact, Heinz came under fire last year because of its misleading claims about “nutritional” baby food that was actually full of sugar – a case we fully supported. One “no added sugar” version we found contained a whopping 3.6 teaspoons of sugar per serve. Worse still, this product is meant for a 4-month-old child who would have a daily sugar limit of next to none!
Yep, it’s scary stuff. Don’t be duped by the packaging and “clever” marketing ploys anymore and instead, read the nutritional information and work out the sugar content of your fave products for yourself! Jump on board the 8-Week Program and we’ll show you how to do just that.
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