The sugar industry is tricky and the processed food industry is trickier.  They know that if we get hooked on their foods that we will keep coming back for more……much the same as an alcoholic craves alcohol.  “How are these industries tricky,” you ask?  They include sugar in almost everything we eat.  Sure, we know that chocolate cake has sugar.  That’s a given.  When we choose to eat chocolate cake, we are choosing to eat sugar.  However, sugar can also be found in ketchup, crackers, bread, pasta sauce, soup, salad dressings, cereals, canned fruit, yogurt…………the list goes on and on.  Once we get a taste for sugar, we will want more and more.  We can read the facts that say sugar is bad for us.  We can look at the increasing number on the scale and it doesn’t stop us.  We want more and more sugar.

 

OK………so I’ll avoid sugar in processed foods.  How hard can that be?

Pretty close to impossible.  Sugar has so many names.  I recently saw a list that included about 68 different names for sugar.  The list includes maple syrup and honey which I use as  my sweetners. However, when we are talking about sugar addiction………..sugar is sugar.  It doesn’t matter if it’s natural or man-made.  In my mind there are two goals with sugar for my family. Use natural sweeteners to avoid chemicals and perhaps even more important is to reduce our overall sugar consumption.

I believe knowledge is power.  Educating yourself on all the names that are used for sugar is important.  I’ve talked quite a bit about how we should be reading labels, but if we don’t know what we are reading that won’t help much.  Knowing the various names for sugar will help us all to make a more informed decision about sugar.  Take a look at the infographic below and start learning these names.  When you have these all figured out continue on with the learning process.  These are some of the most common names.

 

Have you started looking at labels?  Are you surprised at all of the sugar in your packaged foods?  Are you surprised that packaged foods often include several different types of sugar?  Do you feel that you are or have ever been addicted to sugar?

Come back next time for some answers.  I’ll be talking about some things you can do to tackle your sugar addiction.

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