Sugars in your diet can be naturally occurring or added. Naturally occurring sugars are found naturally in foods such as fruit (fructose and glucose) and milk (lactose). Added sugars are sugars and syrups put in foods during preparation or processing or at the table.
To figure out if a packaged food contains added sugars, and how much, check the Nutrition Facts panel. There you will see “added sugars” underneath the line for “total sugars.”
There are four calories in one gram, so if a product has 15 grams of sugar per serving, that’s 60 calories just from the sugar alone, not counting the other ingredients.
If there is no Nutrition Facts panel, look at the list of ingredients. Sugar has many other names. Besides those ending in “ose,” such as maltose or sucrose, other names for sugar include high fructose corn syrup, molasses, cane sugar, corn sweetener, raw sugar, syrup, honey or fruit juice concentrates. Learn more about reading food labels.
Limit your consumption of foods with high amounts of added sugars, such as sugary beverages. Just one 12-ounce can of regular soda contains 10 teaspoons of sugar, or 160 calories – and zero nutrition.
