{"id":18204,"date":"2021-10-27T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-27T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/?p=18204"},"modified":"2021-10-08T13:34:52","modified_gmt":"2021-10-08T17:34:52","slug":"what-does-added-sugar-on-a-food-label-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/2021\/10\/27\/what-does-added-sugar-on-a-food-label-mean\/","title":{"rendered":"What Does Added Sugar on a Food Label Mean?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Reed Mangels, PhD, RD<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For many years, if you wanted to know how much sugar was\nadded to a food, you could look at the ingredient list on the product\u2019s label\nand look at the Nutrition Facts label which would tell you the total amount of\nsugar in the food. This was problematic for several reasons. Some food\nmanufacturers would use lots of different sources of sugar in a product \u2013 for\nexample, high fructose corn syrup, sugar, molasses, and brown sugar all might be\nlisted as ingredients. Since ingredients are listed in descending order of how\nmuch of each is in a product, if there are lots of sources of sugar, none of\nthem might make it to the top of the list of ingredients. You might think the\nproduct mainly contains peanuts but if you added up all the sugar sources,\ntotal sugar might really be the most prominent ingredient. Secondly, back when\nthe label only listed total sugar, a product that had unsweetened dried fruit\nwould look like it had lots of sugar when really, that sugar was there\nnaturally in the form of fruit.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new Nutrition Facts Label, required on all foods as of\nJanuary 2021, tells the amount of added sugars that are in products. As the Food\nand Drug Administration says<\/a>, \u201cAdded sugars<\/strong> include sugars that are\nadded during the processing of foods (such as sucrose or dextrose), foods\npackaged as sweeteners (such as table sugar), sugars from syrups and honey, and\nsugars from concentrated fruit or vegetable juices. They do not include\nnaturally occurring sugars that are found in [cow\u2019s] milk, fruits, and\nvegetables.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recommendations call for limiting added sugar to 10% or less\nof total calories per day. That\u2019s because these added sugars don\u2019t much if\nanything for us nutritionally \u2013 they mainly supply calories. If you need 1600\ncalories a day, 160 calories or less should be from added sugar. Since sugars\nhave 4 calories a gram, that means 40 grams or less of added sugar per day for\nsomeone who needs around 1600 calories a day.  There is no requirement for added sugars; the\n10% of calories is an upper limit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was recently looking at some popular vegan ice creams and\nnoted that they had 30 grams or more of added sugar in a serving. Knowing which\nfoods have a lot of added sugar and having a perspective on what is a\nreasonable amount of added sugar for you can help you choose foods and decide\nhow much of these foods you want to eat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Reed Mangels, PhD, RD For many years, if you wanted to know how much sugar was added to a food, you could look at the ingredient list on the product\u2019s label and look at the Nutrition Facts label which would tell you the total amount of sugar in the food. This was problematic for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18204"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18206,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18204\/revisions\/18206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}