The Hidden Sugars in Your Food
Filed Under: Susatainable Living on January 9, 2010
Most people know what sugar is, what monosodium glutamates (MSG) are, and at least understand that they aren’t generally good for us. Most of us try to avoid sugar and MSGs as often as we can. The question? What if what we’re using to replace it is just as bad? Or worse, it’s the same thing with a different name?
That’s what is happening in the food industry now. The next time you’re in the store and you see products that are low in sugar, read the nutrition and ingredients labels. You’ll likely find ingredients with names like:
Evaporated cane juice – 99.5% sucrose
Sucrose (“raw sugar”) – unprocessed sugar
Turbinado (“processed raw sugar”) – 99% sucrose
These are new names for sugar. To compare, white “processed” sugar is 99.9% sucrose.
Evaporated Cane Juice
Evaporated cane juice is just sugar (usually sucrose or “raw sugar”) that’s been liquified and then evaporated away to create a sweet juice from the evaporating water. It costs about three times as much to make as processed white sugar, but it allows the manufacturer to put the new name on the label, avoiding the word “sugar” altogether.
Sucrose
Sucrose is sugar that hasn’t been processed. At first, this sounds good, but this sugar is not fit for consumption due to it being literally fresh from the cane fields.
