Paige Harris Welcome to day two of the Sugar Secrets Series: The Many Names of Sugar.
Yesterday we talked about the differences between refined and unrefined sugars, but today we’re going to break that down even further and talk about names for sugar.
There’s an old cliché that floats around in the linguistic space saying that the Inuit have over 100 words for “snow” because of how prevalent it is in their lives. Unfortunately, in America we can substitute “sugar” for “snow.”
I asked you to guess how many names for sugar you thought there were. If you haven’t done that yet, do it now.
Okay are you ready?
There are at least 56 different names that food manufacturers use to trick consumers into thinking that there isn’t any sugar in their products. Click that link to see them all!
Don’t get too overwhelmed just yet! There are a few key phrases you can be on the look for to spot hidden sugars:
- Anything with the word “agave”
- Anything with the word “corn” (like high-fructose corn syrup)
- Any derivative with “rice” (like brown rice syrup)
- Something beginning with “cane” (like evaporated cane juice)
- ANY fruit or juice concentrate
- Any word that ends in “-ose” (like fructose, maltose, dextrose, or sucrose)
- Anything with “malt” (like maltodextrin or malt syrup)
- Any word beginning with “iso-” (like isoglucose)
- Anything with the word “syrup.” Be skeptical of anything except pure maple syrup — a lot of “pancake syrups” are really just fructose in disguise!
- Lastly, anything with the word “sugar” in it (like cane sugar, date sugar, coconut sugar, etc.)
Wow. Food manufacturers are really trying to pull one over on us!
Now you know the various names for sugar, but tomorrow we’ll talk about all of the places that sugar tends to hide. For example, did you know that most beef broths you can find in a grocery store contain added sugar?
More tomorrow!
