What is sugar?
Sugar is carbohydrates, composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Sugars come in two types: naturally occurring sugars and added sugars.
- Naturally occurring sugars are found naturally in foods such as fruit (fructose) and milk (lactose).
- Added sugars include any sugars or caloric sweeteners that are added to foods or beverages during processing or preparation (such as putting sugar in your coffee or adding sugar to your cereal). Added sugars (or added sweeteners) can include natural sugars such as white sugar, brown sugar and honey as well as other caloric sweeteners that are chemically manufactured (such as high fructose corn syrup).
You can use sugars to help enhance your diet. Adding a limited amount of sugar to improve the taste of foods (especially for children) that provide important nutrients, such as whole-grain cereal, low-fat milk or yogurt, is better than eating nutrient-poor, highly sweetened foods.
Did you know there are 57 names for sugar? Here is a list to help you next time you are reading the ingredients list on your nutrition label.
- Agave Nectar
- Barley malt
- Barbados sugar
- Beet sugar
- Brown sugar
- Buttered syrup
- Cane juice
- Cane sugar
- Caramel
- Corn syrup
- Corn syrup solids
- Confectioner’s sugar
- Carob syrup
- Castor sugar
- Date sugar
- Dehydrated cane juice
- Demerara sugar
- Dextran
- Dextrose
- Diastatic malt
- Diatase
- Ethyl maltol
- Free Flowing Brown Sugars
- Fructose
- Fruit juice
- Fruit juice concentrate
- Galactose
- Glucose
- Glucose solids
- Golden sugar
- Golden syrup
- Grape sugar
- HFCS (High Frustose Corn Syrup… Very Bad!)
- Honey
- Icing sugar
- Invert sugar
- Lactose
- Malt
- Maltodextrin
- Maltose
- Malt syrup
- Mannitol
- Maple syrup
- Molasses
- Muscovado
- Panocha
- Powdered Sugar
- Raw sugar
- Refiner’s syrup
- Rice syrup
- Sorbitol
- Sorghum syrup
- Sucrose
- Sugar (granulated)
- Treacle
- Turbinado sugar
- Yellow sugar
Bonus (Fake Sugars): Splenda, Aspartame, and a few others but I will write about this later.
Sarah Jacqueline 