Hidden Sugar – Is it in your favorite foods?

Hidden Sugar

Hidden Sugar – Is it in your favorite foods?

We’re eating more sugar than ever before without even knowing it. The sweet stuff is added to dozens of foods you might not suspect. Here’s a question for you: *How many teaspoons of added sugar does the average American get each day?

I’ll have the answer for you in a bit. While you’re thinking about it, remember we are consuming 30-percent more added sugar than we did 30 years ago. Wow! That’s a lot of extra calories!

It’s not always obvious where the added sugar is lurking. In fact, sometimes it’s quite surprising. We found some fruit-flavored yogurts with seven teaspoons of added sugar in one cup… and one teaspoon in each slice of some wheat breads. And what about peanut butter? Some brands have one teaspoon of added sugar in every two tablespoons!

Seattle dietitian, Brian Higginson, says you can spot the sweetener by looking closely at the food label.

“Essentially any word that ends with the letters ‘o-s-e’ is a type of carbohydrate, which would be a sugar,” he explains.

Another tip when you’re label-checking – every four grams of sugar is equal to one teaspoon. And that brings us back to that question – any guesses?

*The answer: Most of us get 20 teaspoons of added sugar every day!

The USDA says you should limit added sugar to half that amount – about 10 teaspoons a day. And while you’re at it, how about cutting back on the amount of sugar in your kids’ diets, too? On average, children ages two to three get 14 teaspoons a day… and four and five year-olds get about 17.

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