Here are some things you may not know about added sugar, including the way your favourite products may mislead you, and where the sweet stuff might be lurking.

1. It’s hiding where you least expect it

We know there’s plenty of sugar lurking in sweet drinks, desserts and confectionery. But it’s also hiding out in places you wouldn’t expect, such as children’s and baby food, savoury foods and ‘health’ foods.

It’s easy to get caught up in the marketing hype of claims such as ‘all natural’ and ‘made with real fruit’, but the sugar content of these products means they’re far from healthy.

Even savoury foods including pasta sauce, ready meals and flavoured chips that don’t taste sweet can contain added sugars. And don’t be fooled by ‘health’ foods: even products claiming to be ‘all natural’, ‘organic’ or ‘gluten free’ can be full of added sugars.

Case in point: Kiddylicious Strawberry Fruit Wiggles. They’re so bad we awarded them a Shonky in the 2021 ÌÇÐÄVlog Shonky Awards.Ìý

Judging by the package, many parents would think them a good option for their children.ÌýAfter all, they have no artificial additives and are gluten-free. They’re even suitable for kids (make that babies) as young as 12 months, according to the label.Ìý

They’re described on the pack as “made with real fruit”, but more than two thirds (69%) of each one of these wriggly little jellies is sugar. And although the product doesn’t contain added refined sugar, it’s still mostly made up ofÌýconcentrated fruit sugars that are devoid of the fibre and nutrients found in real fruit.Ìý

2. Fruit products are still considered to be ‘added sugar’

“Everyone knows that fruit is good for you, so putting descriptions on a food packet that liken a product to real fruit has the potential to be misleading,” says ÌÇÐÄVlog food and nutrition expert Rachel Clemons.

“What we’re finding is that manufacturers are disguising their added sugars as fruit content. For many consumers, the words ‘fruit juice’, ‘fruit puree’ and even ‘fruit concentrate’ don’t necessarily ring added sugar alarm bells. They think of fruit as being healthy. Which it is, until it’s processed and its sugars extracted in the form of purées, concentrates and juice to use as sweeteners in commercialÌýproducts. This is when it becomes ‘added sugar’.”

3. Sugar goes by many names on packaging

Sugar is sugar, right? But it’s called many different things on an ingredients list: cane sugar, brown sugar, glucose, brown rice syrup, or any one of the 60-plus names that manufacturers use for added sugars.

And since added sugars can be scattered throughout the ingredients list under several different names rather than grouped together, it can be hard to tell that added sugar is one of the main ingredients.

Intrinsic vs added sugars

You’d think that the nutrition information panel would offer some clarity when you’re standing in the supermarket aisle, but it doesn’t distinguish between intrinsic and added sugars. Intrinsic sugars are naturally occurring sugars found in dairy and intact/whole fruits and vegetables. Added sugars are all sugars that are harmful to health, including highly processed fruit ingredients such as pastes and concentrates, added during processing or cooking.

So it’s easy to misread the nutrition information for foods such as plain yoghurt that are high in natural sugars (lactose), and assume that they’re unhealthy.

4. We’re eating too much of it

OK, so you probably already know this, but we’re all still eating way too much added sugar.Ìý

In fact, more than half of all Australians consume more added sugar than the amount recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), with kids and teenagers eating the most: almost three-quarters of 9–18 year-olds exceed the recommendations. Teenage boys eat a whopping 22 teaspoons of added sugar per day, with some eating as much as 38 teaspoons per day. That’s a lot of soft drinks and junk!

The reality is that we’re doing ourselves harm: added sugar is linked to a range of potentially damaging health outcomes: weight gain, dental cavities, type-2 diabetes and possibly even depression.

That’s why it’s so important for people to tell easily how much added sugar is in the food they’re eating.

5. Australia doesn’t have regulations around added sugar labelling

Other countries have wised up to the fact that added sugar labelling makes a difference to people’s health, but Australia is lagging behind. Even the US – home of all that is super-sized – introduced regulations that food labels must display the amount of added sugar in a product.

The American Heart Association estimates that the added sugars label could potentially prevent nearly one million cases of cardiovascular disease and type-2 diabetes in the US over the next 20 years, as well as lowering healthcare costs.

Here at ÌÇÐÄVlog, we’ve long lobbied for clear and meaningful added sugar labelling on foods, so that consumers can make informed decisions about the products they buy. Our work goes on.

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Artificial sweeteners seem like an easy way to have your cake without looking like you’ve eaten it too.Ìý

But sweeteners have a problematic history, and the science is still out on whether they cause certain negative health effects. (Spoiler alert: experts are pretty certain they don’t cause cancer.)Ìý

How much sugar is OK?

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that free sugars (known as ‘added sugars’ in Australia) make up less than 10% of your total energy intake. For an average adult consuming 8700kJ per day, that’s about 51g, or 13 teaspoons. Children generally have lower energy requirements, so should eat less than this.

Australians have trouble sticking to these recommendations. The average Aussie consumes 60g of sugar each day – around 14 teaspoons. Teenage boys have the highest intake, averaging 22 teaspoons per day, with some eating a whopping 38 teaspoons.

Most sugar comes from energy-dense, nutrient-poor ‘discretionary’ foods and drinks – aka ‘sometimes foods’. Aside from crowding nutritious foods out of our diets, sugar is linked to a range of potential negative health outcomes: weight gain, dental cavities, type 2 diabetes and possibly even depression.

Sugar in drinks our biggest source

Since just over half our added sugar intake comes from drinks, reducing our consumption of these is a good place to start.

“The reason for starting with drinks is that the body doesn’t register any fullness (satiety) from drinks that contain sugar, so people don’t eat less of something else when they consume them. For comparison, if you eat an extra slice of bread, you’re likely to eat a little less of something else,” says nutrition expert Dr Rosemary Stanton.

But before you reach for a diet soft drink instead of your usual sugary one, bear in mind that artificially sweetened drinks are still not great for your teeth. Whatever they’re sweetened with, soft drinks are still very acidic and can erode tooth enamel.

What are artificial sweeteners?

Artificial sweeteners, also known as non-nutritive sweeteners, are chemical additives that are sweeter than sugar but contain zero kilojoules/calories.Ìý

The most commonly used artificial sweeteners in Australia are Acesulphame K (additive number 950), Alitame (956), Aspartamine (951, e.g. Equal), Cyclamate (952), Neotame (961), Saccharin (954, e.g. Sweetex) and Sucralose (955, e.g. Splenda).Ìý

Other types of sweeteners include nutritive sweeteners which contain less energy than sugar but are not kilojoule-free (e.g. Fructose, Xylitol and Maltodextin) and natural sweeteners like Stevia, which is derived from a plant and contains no energy.

Are artificial sweeteners bad for you?

Concerns around artificial sweeteners tend to focus on whether they can cause cancer, weight gain, obesity, type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular problems.Ìý

But government food regulators have repeatedly found artificial sweeteners to be safe, and the Cancer Council says there’s no clear evidence that artificial sweeteners cause cancer in humans.Ìý

A concluded there is no strong evidence linking artificial sweeteners to any positive or negative health outcomes – although the authors did note that there’s not enough evidence to rule out potential harm from long-term use, and further studies are needed.

Cancer and artificial sweeteners – what does the research say?

Since the first artificial sweetener, saccharin, was discovered in 1879, artificial sweeteners have been dogged by controversy. Aspartame in particular has been the subject of many studies, a conspiracy theory or two, and a particularly pervasive hoax. (Google ‘Nancy Markle’ if you’re up for an interesting read.) It’s been accused of causing a range of health effects, ranging from nausea and dizziness to cancer and multiple sclerosis.

While some studies have linked artificial sweeteners and cancer, many more studies have found them to be safe. Aspartame, for example, is one of the most exhaustively studied sweeteners, with more than 100 studies supporting its safety. Several studies claiming links with negative health effects have since been found to have significant flaws. However, negative press is difficult to shake, and artificial sweeteners have developed a bad name in some circles.

The dose makes the poison

Safety studies of artificial sweeteners generally involve administering massive doses to animals – doses far higher than people would consume.

From there, regulators set the acceptable daily intake (ADI) levels: the estimated maximum a person can safely consume every single day for an entire lifetime without appreciable risks to health. ADIs are about 100 times less than the smallest amount that might cause health concerns, and even people with the highest daily sweetener consumption generally don’t hit the ADI.

In Australia, the ADI for aspartame is 40mg per kilogram of body weight per day. A 375mL can of diet soft drink contains around 200mg aspartame, so a 75kg adult would need to drink almost 15 cans or 5.6L per day to exceed the ADI – a fairly unlikely scenario.

Research bias

If you’re tempted to get all science-y on artificial sweeteners and do your own digging, take what you read with a grain of salt. Part of the reason scientists can’t agree may have to do with who’s paying their bills.

“Reviews funded by artificial sweetener companies are about 17 times more likely to have results reporting that artificial sweetener use is associated with lower weight, or weight loss,” says Professor Lisa Bero from the University of Sydney, who co-authored a 2016 paper on research bias.

Research funded by competing industries (such as the sugar industry, which has a vested interest in people not using artificial sweeteners) is likely to draw unfavourable conclusions about artificial sweeteners, so you even need to be wary of research that’s anti-sweetener.

Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ), the Australian food regulator, rigorously examines raw data from safety studies before approving anything for use. It also considers other research and consults government agencies and the public. FSANZ keeps an eye on what its international counterparts are doing, and says it will amend the ADI if new information comes to light.

Can artificial sweeteners help you lose weight?

It’s hard to say. One found that switching to low-calorie sweeteners results in modest weight loss and may help people manage their weight.Ìý

But a found that people who regularly consume sweeteners (both stevia and artificial sweeteners) may have a higher risk of weight gain, obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular events.

´¡Ìý that found there’s no strong evidence that artificial sweeteners have any effect on weight loss.Ìý

So while there’s still no consensus on the link between artificial sweeteners and weight loss, one may explain how artificial sweeteners could possibly lead to weight gain. ItÌýfound that sucralose significantly increased fruit flies’ calorie intake from other sources. The study concluded that artificial sweeteners could lead to glucose intolerance by interfering with gut bacteria, and that artificial sweeteners contribute to weight gain by causing people to eat more.

“We found that inside the brain’s reward centres, sweet sensation is integrated with energy content. When sweetness versus energy is out of balance for a period of time, the brain recalibrates and increases total calories consumed,” says Professor Greg Neely from the University of Sydney.

Artificial sweeteners and blood sugar

Unlike sugar, artificial sweeteners do not raise blood sugars in the short term. A 2018 study reviewing 29 research articles found that artificial sweeteners had no effect on blood sugars in the minutes and hours directly after consumption. Ìý

But new research is emerging that suggests regular consumption of artificial sweeteners may have negative effects on blood sugar regulation in the long term.

A 2020 study by a group of Yale researchers found that consuming the artificial sweetener sucralose and a carbohydrate at the same time alters the way the brain responds to glucose and can result in high blood sugar, a condition that increases the risk of diabetes. This effect was not present when the sweetener was consumed on its own. While further studies are needed, the researchers say their findings indicate that consumption of sucralose with a carbohydrate may disrupt the gut-brain system that controls glucose metabolism.

Other researchers have also suggested that artificial sweeteners may disrupt the body’s natural systems for regulating blood sugars, resulting in negative long-term effects.

A number of studies have found a link between the consumption of artificially sweetened beverages and type two diabetes, although there isn’t enough evidence to conclude that artificial sweeteners cause diabetes.

What are the side effects of artificial sweeteners?

While message boards and comment sections are full of claims that artificial sweeteners cause a range of immediate side effects from dizziness to depression, there’s not a lot of evidence to back this up.Ìý

However, there is some evidence that the artificial sweetener Aspartame may cause or exacerbate migraines and headaches for some people.

Nutritive sweeteners including Isomalt and the sugar alcohols Lactilol, Mannitol, Maltitol, Xylitol and Sorbitol may also have a laxative effect and cause wind and diarrhoea, especially when large quantities are consumed.

Diet Coke a pain in the arm?

“I switched from drinking Coke to Diet Coke when weight gain became an issue,” says ÌÇÐÄVlog member Kim, “and spent about 20 years drinking more and more Diet Coke per day until I was consuming over four litres of the stuff daily. My initial weight loss reversed and I got fatter and fatter over the years.”

Kim says she does overeat, but that this tendency has increased over time – which could be a cause of the weight gain or possibly the result of so much artificial sweetener, or a combination of both.

When Kim took a two-week break from Diet Coke, the chronic nausea she’d experienced for years disappeared. It returned as soon as she took up the habit again, so she cut back to four cans a day.

“At that point I noticed the chronic bursitis in my shoulder/upper arm went away, a result which even steroid injections had failed to achieve,” she says.

“Since then my tolerance for Diet Coke has dwindled to the point where even a single glass of the stuff triggers a return of the bursitis. I am presuming the aspartame is the cause of these symptoms, but it’s just a guess based on literature promoting the belief that this stuff is toxic.”

Other ÌÇÐÄVlog members say they avoid artificial sweeteners at all costs, while some use non-sugar sweeteners to reduce sugar consumption or help manage health issues such as diabetes. Several members said negative press and recent research has left them suspicious of artificial sweeteners.

How to spot artificial sweeteners

If you’re not sold on artificial sweeteners, the best way to avoid them is by studying the ingredients list. Generally, anything labelled ‘diet’, ‘sugar-free’ or ‘low-calorie’ probably contains a non-sugar sweetener.

The most commonly used artificial sweeteners in Australia

These are the artificial sweeteners you’re most likely to encounter in your food in Australia, plus their additive numbers and some examples of products in which you’ll find them.Ìý

Alternatives to sugar and artificial sweeteners

Nutritive sweeteners

Nutritive sweeteners are based on different types of carbohydrates and are often listed as ‘modified carbohydrates’. Nutritive sweeteners contain far fewer kilojoules than sugar, but they’re not completely kilojoule-free.

Examples include sugar alcohols such as xylitol (additive number 967), sorbitol (420), mannitol (421) and erythritol (968). They’re difficult to digest, so impact blood sugar less than normal sugar, but eating too much can cause flatulence and diarrhoea. They don’t react with oral bacteria to form plaque and cavities, so they’re more tooth-friendly than sugar.

Natural sweeteners

‘Natural’ sweeteners such as stevia and monk fruit (luo han guo) are gaining ground, likely in response to suspicion of ‘artificial’ sweeteners. Stevia is 250 to 300 times sweeter than sugar, but doesn’t have negative effects on blood sugar levels, and may even help control them.

But even though they come from natural sources, they’re still potentially problematic – and often aren’t as natural as they appear. “Stevia is added to food as purified steviol glycosides – so it’s not entirely ‘natural’,” says Stanton.

Neely says he wouldn’t be surprised if ‘natural’ sweeteners have similar affects on appetite as artificial sweeteners. Sweetness signals that an energy hit is on the way; when that energy doesn’t arrive, we seek out those ‘missing’ kilojoules elsewhere. “It doesn’t matter if a plant made it accidentally or if a factory made it on purpose,” he says – a sweetener is a sweetener.

‘Healthier’ sugar alternatives

If you’ve ever searched for healthy baking recipes online or checked the ingredients lists in the health food aisle, you’ve likely come across natural sugar alternatives. Products like honey, brown rice syrup, maple syrup, coconut sugar and molasses are often touted as being better for your health. According to Stanton, they have no nutritional advantages over regular sugar, although they may have slightly differing amounts of glucose and fructose. “They do not retain any of the nutritional virtues of the original product,” she says.

“They are basically just ‘sugar’ and have been extracted and sold in concentrated form.”

Although they may sound healthier, these products are still considered ‘added sugar,’ so keep an eye out for them on food labels and don’t go overboard when using them for home cooking.Ìý

How to quit sugar and other sweeteners

While sugar replacements reduce kilojoules, they don’t actually address people’s preferences for sweet foods. “I consider one of the major reasons for not going from sugar to artificial sweeteners is that they will continue to feed the desire for sweet tastes,” says Rosemary Stanton.

“One example that I often use is when people stop taking sugar in their tea (or coffee), they lose the liking for sweet tea (or coffee). Indeed, if you give someone a cup of sweetened tea when they no longer take sugar, they usually dislike the taste so much that they can’t drink it. However, if they had instead switched to artificial sweetener, their liking for sweet tea would not have abated in this way.”

Tips to curb your sweet addiction

Sweeteners generally replace sugar in discretionary foods which have little nutritional value. Reducing discretionary foods, regardless of what they’re sweetened with, leaves more room in your diet for nutritious foods.

If you reduce your need for sweetness, you reduce your intake of both sugar and artificial sweeteners. It’s boring advice, especially compared with fads that promise fast results, but the best approach is to stick to whole foods, as unprocessed as possible, and have everything in moderation.

Try a two-pronged approach: replace sugary foods and drinks with unsweetened substitutes, and slowly cut down on the amount of sugar you use.

Stanton suggests:

• “For those who like fizzy drinks, use sparkling mineral water with mint and a couple of slices of lime or lemon.”
• “With tea and coffee, if you take two teaspoons, go for one and a half, then decrease to one, then half, and you generally find your tastebuds adjust.”
• “For other foods with sweeteners, for example confectionery, I’d recommend not buying these as a regular thing. Have some fruit instead – blueberries or strawberries are a good alternative for lollies. Or have a few nuts. Lots of studies show that when people eat nuts, they usually eat less of other foods as nuts are particularly filling.”

Other things to remember

• Just because it’s a ‘diet’ product doesn’t mean you can eat twice as much of it!
• Nutrition information panels can be helpful, but they only list total sugar, not added sugar.
• Sugar can be listed under 43 different names. Don’t get caught out by healthier-sounding sugars like panela and turbinado.
• Focusing on one dietary component like sugar can mean we make poor choices when it comes to other dietary components. It’s important to look at your whole diet.

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Many Australians are over-consuming added sugar, but may not even realise it. It’s clear that this situation needs to change.

The problem with food labels

Currently there’s no clear way of knowing how much sugar has been added to a food by looking at the label.

You can check the ingredients list to see if a product contains added sugar – the higher up the list, the more sugar the product contains. But added sugars can be disguised more than 60 different names and distributed throughout the ingredient list, so they’re not always straightforward to identify and even harder to quantify.

You can also look to the amount of total sugar in a product on the Nutrition Information Panel (NIP). However, this total doesn’t differentiate sugars that have been added by the manufacturer (including glucose, honey and fruit juice concentrates) from those that are intrinsic to the food or one of its ingredients (such as lactose in milk). SeeÌýWhat are added sugarsÌýfor more.

But neither of these labelling elements helps people to easily determine what and how much added sugar is in their food. With so many terms disguising added sugar, and total sugar information sending mixed health messages, it’s evident that current labels are failing consumers.

ÌÇÐÄVlog calls for better labelling

We need clear and meaningful added sugar labelling so that we can follow advice to limit added sugar consumption and maintain a healthy diet. There are three main changes we want to see:

1. Show the number of teaspoons of sugar in sugar-sweetened drinks. Soft drinks and other sugar-sweetened beverages are the number one contributor to our added sugar intake. Some teenagers are consuming 38 teaspoons of added sugar a day, equivalent to the sugar in four cans of Coke. Identifying the amount of teaspoons of sugar on these products would clearly indicate just how much sugar they contain.Ìý
2. Make it easy to spot added sugar in the ingredients list. Food companies use over 60 different words for added sugar, including muscovado, rapadura or barley malt extract. We want all added sugar ingredients to be grouped together in the ingredient list so that people can clearly identify them.Ìý
3. Include added sugar in the nutrition information panel. Currently the nutrition information panel (NIP) only displays total sugars, which includes both intrinsic and added sugar. Intrinsic sugars are found in nutrient-rich foods such as milk, fruit and vegies. These foods are recommended by our dietary guidelines and are part of a healthy and balanced diet. The advice is to reduce the intake of added sugar, which is the sugar added to a product by the food manufacturer. This is why we want the amount of added sugar to be identified separately on the NIP.Ìý

How to avoid added sugars

The majority of the sugar we eat comes from processed foods. So labelled or not, the most effective way to curb your added sugar intake (and at the same time improve the nutritional quality of your diet) is to eat a wide variety of fresh fruit, vegetables and other whole foods and minimise the amount of processed foods you eat.

Sugar savings from simple food swaps

Labels that clearly identify the amount of added sugars in food would enable Australians to make informed choices about which products to buy, and help them reduce the amount of added sugar they’re consuming. To demonstrate, we’ve determined the added sugars hiding in some commonly eaten items, identified lower sugar alternatives and calculated the added sugar savings to be had if you swapped what you eat.

If the following six product swaps were made daily, consumers could save a massiveÌý38 kilograms of unnecessary sugar a year. Even if the swaps were made on a less frequent basis, consumers could save almost 15 kilograms a year. However, these savings can only be achieved with true and meaningful sugar labelling.

Added sugar FAQs

Sugary ‘health’ foodsÌý

While on the hunt for a healthy snack at the supermarket, many people would reasonably head to the health food aisle. You know the one – the aisle with all the products claiming to be ‘gluten free’, ‘natural’ or ‘organic’.

What you might not expect to find are so-called healthy products laden with sugar. But we found substantial amounts of added sugar in products presented as good-for-you – in the health food aisle and elsewhere – and in some cases it took some serious sleuthing to determine that this was the case.

• Clif Chocolate Chip Bar, located with other sports and protein supplements, provides ‘nutrition for sustained energy’, but is also 32% sugar in a number of guises including brown rice syrup, cane syrup and barley malt extract.Ìý
• Go Natural Twisters Fruit Snack, which we found in the health food aisle, claims to be gluten and additive free. The brand name implies that they’re ‘natural’, but they’re 67% sugars in the form of concentrated apple puree and juice as well as concentrated strawberry juice.Ìý
• Uncle Tobys Plus, Peach, Sultanas and Oat Clusters may be “high in wholegrain” and provide “20% of your daily protein”, but there’s no getting away from the fact that its ingredients include multiple added sugars (sugar, invert sugar, malt extract, glucose solids, golden syrup, and honey to name a few), which make up the bulk of its 23% total sugars.Ìý
• Weight Watchers Coconut Delight bars are an approved snack under the Weight Watchers weight loss program, but are 37% sugar with invert sugar, barley malt extract and honey all contributing to this total.Ìý

A look inside the packÌý

We analysed the ingredients list and nutrition information panel of some of the foods we found in the health food aisle to show just how much added sugar – compared with other ingredients – they contain.

Go Natural Berry Frugo’s

On the pack: “Goodness tastes better”, “All natural”, “Source of calcium”, “Gluten free”, “No artificial colours, flavours or preservatives”.Ìý

In the pack:

Golden Days Apricot DelightÌý

On the pack: “Natural choice”, “Made with real fruit”, “Gluten free”, “Dairy free”, “No artificial colours”, “No artificial flavours”.Ìý

In the pack:

Lowan Cocoa BombsÌý

On the pack: “Gluten free”, “Low fat”, “No artificial flavours”.Ìý

In the pack:

The post Added sugar in food appeared first on ÌÇÐÄVlog.

After the first few weeks my sugar cravings disappeared, my skin cleared and my energy increased. But my dramatic approach was both impractical and unnecessary, so I eventually reintroduced natural sugars into my diet. Ìý

Fast forward to earlier this year and excess sugar began dominating my diet once again. I needed to introduce some long-term boundaries to keep my health on track.

This time I knew that natural sugars weren’t my problem, so I decided to try quitting added sugars for a week.

Here’s what I found: added sugars are in more supermarket foods than you probably realise.

It’s harder than you think to avoid added sugar

I went into this week confident that, with the exception of the confectionery aisle, I wouldn’t have to make many alterations to my usual purchases.

But I was surprised to discover many of the ingredients I was used to seeing in my grocery items, like barley malt, dextrose, malt extract and fruit juice concentrate, were added sugars. It was even more unsettling not knowing exactly how much of these added sugars I’d been consuming up until now.

Spotting added sugars in the supermarket

Since it can be difficult to tell if a product contains added sugar, I set off for my weekly shop armed with a printout listing the more than 60 names for sugar.

My intense scrutiny of ingredients lists earned me some strange looks, and doubled the time it took to complete my weekly shop, but here’s what I learned.

(Note: Ingredients are listed in order of ingoing weight, so if sugar appears toward the beginning of the ingredients list, it is one of the main ingredients in the product.)

1. Fruit juice concentrate is often hiding in kids’ and baby foods

I found fruit juice concentrate, a form of added sugar, in a staggering variety of kids’ foods – from a frozen Bolognese pasta bake to a snack bar.

The concentrate was often wedged between whole fruits in the ingredients list, making it easy to miss. For example, Calci Fruit Banana, Fig, Apple and Milk baby food from Rafferty’s Garden contained banana, fig and milk, but there was no apple in it. Instead, added sugar – under the guise of ‘apple juice concentrate’ – made up 9% of the product.

2. Savoury foods aren’t safe

When it came to choosing chips and crackers, I had to swap many of my favourite flavours – like salt and vinegar and barbecue – for plain salt when I found sugar in the ingredients list.

But things got more difficult when it came to buying pre-made spice pastes and sauces. While I knew I’d have to steer clear of obviously sweet flavours like honey chicken, I also found added sugar in more savoury options. I ditched my usual laksa paste, Five Tastes’ Mild Laksa, when I saw the second ingredient was sugar, and I was unable to find an added-sugar-free alternative to replace it with.

Frozen dinners were also surprisingly sweet – one meal even had added sugars in the roast potatoes.

3. ‘Healthy’ foods can be high in added sugars

While sweet snack bars were the worst offendersÌýin the health food aisle, I also found lots of added sugar hidden in seemingly healthy organic and gluten-free products.

Health star ratings don’t distinguish natural from added sugars, so looking for a higher health star rating didn’t necessarily help me identify a product lower in added sugars. For example, the Mango, Papaya and Macadamia gluten free muesli from Freedom Foods’ Crafted Blends range had a 4-star health rating, but added sugars appeared scattered throughout the ingredients list eight times under six different names (cane sugar, golden syrup, sugar, brown rice syrup, glucose and apple juice concentrate).

When the sources of sugar are split up like this, it masks the fact that added sugar (in its many forms) is one of the main ingredients.

4. The drinks aisle is dangerous

With the exception ofÌýartificially sweetenedÌýdrinks, the only drinks I found that were free from added sugar were water or plain milk. Luckily my two favourite beverages, tea and coffee, are naturally sugar free.

5. Stick to the five core food groups

As a general rule, the closer a product is to its natural state, the less likely it is to contain added sugars.

Choosing whole or minimally processed foods from the five core food groups outlined in the Australian Dietary Guidelines, like whole fruit, vegetables and legumes, cheese and natural yoghurt, meat and fish and wholegrain foods, made it much easier to avoid added sugars.

Tips for avoiding added sugar at home

Now that my added-sugar-free week is over I’ll be reintroducing the odd treat, but many of the alternative foods and drinks I introduced have found a permanent place in my weekly diet.

Here are some of my favourites:

What are added sugars?

According to Steve Flint of Diabetes Victoria, “‘Added sugars’ is a broad term for the sugar added by manufacturers during processing to improve the taste and texture of foods, or by the consumer at home, such as adding a teaspoon of table sugar to a cup of tea or coffee.Ìý

The ‘free sugars’ which are naturally present in honey and fruit juices are also referred to as added sugars, because they tend to be digested quickly and act similarly to added sugars.â€�

Why avoid added sugars?

While quitting sugar cold turkey helped break my bad habits in the past, cutting out sugar completely isn’t beneficial to health.

According to nutrition expert Dr Rosemary Stanton, there’s no evidence that the naturally occurring ‘intrinsic sugars’ found in fruit, vegetables and milk, have any ill effects on health.

However, there is strong evidence linking overconsumption of added sugars to obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. This is why the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends we limit these sugars to a maximum of 5 to 10 teaspoons per day, or the equivalent of 10% of our total daily energy intake.

Why is added sugar so much worse for our health than intrinsic sugar?

Well, according to Stanton, intrinsic sugars come with associated beneficial nutrients, while added sugars don’t.

“The natural sugars in fruit come packaged with vitamins, minerals and most importantly, dietary fibre, which acts as a natural obstacle to overeating,” she says. “The sugars added to foods have no vitamins, minerals or dietary fibre.”

As an example, Stanton suggests it would be difficult to sit down and eat five apples, because fruit takes takes time to chew and its dietary fibre makes us feel full.

“But if you extracted the sugar from those apples, you could swallow it as juice in just a few seconds, making it easy to over-consume kilojoules without taking in the nutrients found in whole foods.”

Dietitian and Nutritionist Dr Alan Barclay warns that added sugars, along with refined starches like those found in rice crackers and chips, are also bad for our teeth. “Overconsumption of these foods alters the bacteria in our mouths, creating an environment that encourages tooth decay and cavities,” he says.

Confusion around which products contain added sugar

With over Ìýto limit energy from added sugars to less than 10% of energy intake, reducing added sugars is a good health goal for most of us.

But, as I discovered, knowing which packaged foods have added sugars and which don’t is no easy feat.

The nutrition information panel (NIP) displays a food’s total sugar content, but doesn’t state how much of that comes from sugars that occur naturally in the food, and how much is added. For example, a jar of pasta sauce contains natural sugar from the tomatoes that make up the majority of the product, but it might also contain added sugar to make the sauce sweeter. The only way to know if all the sugar listed in the NIP is from the tomatoes or if some has been added is to read through all the ingredients.

You then also need to be aware that added sugars can go by over 60 different names (including some sneaky ones like turbinado, rapadura and panela), and that they can be scattered throughout the ingredients list.

To help overcome this confusion, other developed countries like the US have introduced labelling laws that require the quantity of added sugars to be listed separately to total sugars. This makes it possible to quickly compare products and determine which one contains the least added sugars.

Unfortunately, Australia doesn’t yet have these laws, although the government is currently consulting on improvements to sugar labelling.

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On this page:

• How natural is stevia?
• Stevia and obesity
• Naturally occurring sugars
• Are there healthier alternatives to cane sugar?

Sugar seems to have eclipsed traditional dietary enemies, fat and carbs, as the substance to blame for global obesity. This, combined with the rising rate of diabetes, is driving consumer demand for sugar-free and reduced-sugar products.

Artificial or “intense sweeteners” such as aspartame, sucralose and saccharin, have been around for decades, but despite the fact there’s no evidence to suggest they’re harmful, consumer distrust of synthetic substances and fear of their various possible side-effects have led to an appetite for ‘natural’ sweeteners.

Stevia is marketed as a “natural” sugar substitute and is now on supermarket shelves in many different forms. The leaves of this South American shrub have traditionally been used as a food sweetener and added to tea.

Stevia is about 300 times sweeter than sucrose (white sugar) and is a non-nutritive sweetener (NNS), which means it has almost no kilojoules and, because of its low carb content, has a negligible effect on blood sugar levels.

Widely used in Japan for more than 30 years, stevia had a controversial start in the US, where it was originally approved only as a dietary supplement due to uncertainty around its safety. Finally approved as a food additive in the US and Australia in 2008, it received European Commission approval in 2011.

Appetite for ‘natural’ sweeteners

In Australia, the stevia market accounts for about 30 per cent of the low-kilojoule sweetener market, mainly in tablet, powdered, granulated and liquid form. But based on overseas trends, we can expect to see a proliferation of stevia-sweetened dairy and chocolate products, ice creams, jams, chewing gums and drinks here in the near future.

The main advantage of stevia over sugar is its tiny kilojoule load. Stevia-based sweetener Natvia is 4kJ, whereas sugar has 80kJ per teaspoon (5g), so adding it to your cuppa or home cooking can help shave kilojoules off your daily intake. It’s also more tooth-friendly than sugar and its negligible effects on blood sugar levels make it a good choice for diabetics who want a sweet treat.

How natural is stevia?

In Australia, steviol glycosides — extracted from the stevia rebaudiana plant — are approved for use by Food Standards Australia New Zealand () as an intense sweetener under the food additive number 960.

Under the FSANZ code, there are no guidelines concerning use of the word “natural” for marketing food additives. But Dr Alan Barclay, spokesperson for the (DAA), says the idea that stevia extracts are completely natural is misleading. “People are not buying pure stevia leaves straight off the plant – they are buying a highly purified extract that is usually blended with sugar alcohols and oligosaccharides such as dextrins.”

Steviol glycosides do not taste like white sugar and have a bitter aftertaste that falls somewhere between liquorice and treacle. As a result, stevia cannot supply more than 50 per cent of the sweetness in a manufactured food or drink and still be palatable.

For this reason, steviol glycosides are often mixed with other substances to provide bulk, or improve taste and texture. This means the low kilojoule and low-GI benefits of stevia can end up being compromised by other added ingredients, including sugar, sugar alcohols, maltodextrin, unspecified “flavourings”, lactose, croscarmellose sodium, sorbic acid, cellulose powder and silicone dioxide.

Pepsi Next states it is “sweetened naturally with stevia with 30 per cent less sugar”. However, a quick look at the ingredients list reveals that after carbonated water, sugar is the second-highest ingredient. One can contains 27.8g total sugars (more than five teaspoons) and 445kJ. It does have 30 per cent less sugar than regular Pepsi, but being ‘naturally sweetened’ doesn’t make it a healthy drink.

Natvia

Compared with sweetener products from brands such as Equal and Hermesetas, which have flavours and other additives,ÌýNatvia has only two ingredients, steviol glycosides and erythritol. The marketing blurb says its stevia is “100 percent natural” and mixed with “naturally occurring nectar, known as erythritol”. Erythritol is a sugar alcohol — a type of carbohydrate found in fruits and vegetables.

“Although erythritol does occur naturally, to obtain the amounts required it is actually produced by the food industry in manufacturing plants,” says DAA’s Alan Barclay.

Natural or not, the good news is that there is currently no evidence to suggest stevia is unsafe. The World Health Organization has determined a recommended daily upper limit of 4mg per kilogram of body weight per day – an amount most people would be hard-pressed to consume.

Stevia and obesity

Stevia has been hailed as “a key ingredient in the fight against obesity” but, as Di Harvey from points out, kilojoule-free sweeteners have been around for a long time yet have had little impact on obesity. She adds that low-kilojoule sweeteners also tend to be added to heavily processed foods that are high in kilojoules, refined carbohydrates and sodium, which should be minimised anyway.

While it’s true that sugar is high in kilojoules and devoid of nutrients, evidence suggests our overall dietary patterns are more important in terms of weight loss than simply the amount of sugar we consume. Ultimately, Barclay says the evidence around the weight-loss advantages of low kilojoule sweeteners isn’t compelling.

A systematic review in 2012 determined there is insufficient evidence that NNS used in drinks and foods reduce the consumption of added sugars and carbohydrate intakes, or that they benefit appetite, energy balance, body weight or cardiovascular disease risk factors.

“Rather than fixating on and excluding an individual food, such as sugar, people should focus on eating less of all foods to reduce overall kilojoule intake and eat more whole foods in their natural form,” says Barclay.

Naturally occurring sugars

In the ongoing debate about the pros and cons of sugar, there’s some confusion about the difference between sugars that are added to foods and drinks, and those that naturally occur in whole foods.

Even fresh fruit has been caught up in the “all sugar is evil” whirlwind. The anti-fructose movement says that because fructose is metabolised differently from other sugars, it leads to weight gain. Avoiding fructose, they say, will inevitably lead to weight loss. White sugar contains 50 per cent fructose and 50 per cent glucose, so products with added sugar contain fructose.

Fruit also contains fructose, and anti-sugar campaigner has recommended eating a maximum of two pieces of fruit per day, arguing “there’s nothing in fruit that you can’t get in a vegetable but with significantly less sugar”.

Dr Alan Barclay counters that “it’s crazy to suggest people should limit their fruit intake when Australians eat, on average, only one piece of fruit per day – half the recommended minimum daily intake”.

“Fruit not only has fibre but also potassium, which counteracts salt intake from other foods. You might gain weight if you ate more than seven or eight pieces of fruit per day, but that would be due to the extra kilojoules rather than the fructose itself,” he says.

Dairy products can also appear to have high levels of sugar, but Barclay points out that the naturally occurring sugar lactose is low GI and helps with calcium absorption. The issue with dairy products is that the nutrition panel only shows the total sugars, so it’s hard to tell what proportion, if any, of the sugars are added. However, 100mL of milk has about 6g of lactose and natural yoghurt has about 5g – any additional sugars may come from fruit or added sugar.

Make sure you check the ingredients. Foods such as yoghurt may also boast they have no added sugar, when in fact they’re sweetened with puree or concentrated juices that jack up the kilojoules.

Are there healthier alternatives to cane sugar?

Perceived as healthier than white sugar, honey, brown sugar, maple syrup and agave syrup (derived from a Mexican succulent) usually contain small amounts of vitamins and minerals, as well as some antioxidants. However, despite small variations, these sweeteners still have a similar nutritional and kilojoule profile to sugar, so if you choose these as a substitute you’ll still be receiving a similar kilojoule hit.

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