Killing You Sweetly
Be honest – what do you do if, while reading a food label, you see an ingredient like Butylated Hydroxytoluene? Most of us skip right over it. Why? We can’t pronounce it, we don’t know what it is, and we kind of dismiss it as “not being really harmful or 'they' wouldn’t put it in there.”
Would your feelings change once I explain that Butylated Hydroxytoluene (BHT) is a product that is not only in cereal but also used in jet fuel and embalming fluid?
Why, you wonder, would food manufacturers add toxins to food? Well, they know you trust them, they know you’re not going to research the ingredients, and they add a lot of sugar to develop that craving and addiction in you that makes you want that product at all costs. Forgive me but I can’t call it food.
Rule of thumb: If there are more than six ingredients in the product, run! If there are ingredients that force you to s-l-o-w-l-y pronounce them (and start over at least twice), run faster! If an ingredient is competing with the alphabet for length, run for dear life!
This brings me to sugar. Many of us are now more conscious of our sugar intake and we dutifully read our food labels. Unfortunately, many are still consuming a lot more sugar than we realize.
Here’s a test. The following is a list of ingredients from a brand of crackers. How many types of sugar can you find in the list?
Chocolate Chip Bars Granola (whole grain oats, brown sugar, crisp rice (rice flour, sugar, salt, malted barley extract), whole grain rolled wheat, soybean oil, dried coconut, whole wheat flour, sodium bicarbonate, soy lecithin, caramel color, nonfat dry milk), corn syrup, semisweet chocolate chips, brown rice crisp, sunflower oil, oligofructose, polydextrose, corn syrup solids, glycerin. Contains 2 percent or less of water, invert sugar, salt, molasses, sucralose, natural and artificial flavor, BHT, citric acid
Answer (sugars are in red):
Chocolate Chip Bars
Granola (whole grain oats, brown sugar, crisp rice (rice flour, sugar, salt, malted barley extract), whole grain rolled wheat, soybean oil, dried coconut, whole wheat flour, sodium bicarbonate, soy lecithin, caramel color, nonfat dry milk), corn syrup, semisweet chocolate chips, brown rice crisp, sunflower oil, oligofructose, polydextrose, corn syrup solids, glycerin. Contains 2 percent or less of water, invert sugar, salt, molasses, sucralose (aka. Splenda), natural and artificial flavor, BHT, citric acid
As you can see, labels can advise you that there are 10 grams of sugar in your cracker, when in actuality, there can be 5 grams of "sugar", plus 5 grams of "malt syrup," 5 grams of "invert sugar" and 5 grams of "glucose", plus others. Sugar names, if you notice, are dispersed throughout the list because most of us stop reading by ingredient number five, anyway.
How many names of sugar do you know?
Some sugars are disguised with long, scientific sounding titles or given attractive, artistic substitutes. Regardless of the name, the thing that’s flowing into your cells by way of your blood is still sugar. Here’s the list:
Agave nectar
Agave syrup
Barbados sugar
Barley malt
Beet sugar
Blackstrap molasses
Brown sugar
Buttered syrup
Cane juice
Cane juice crystals
Cane juice solids
Cane sugar
Caramel
Carob syrup
Castor sugar
Confectioners’s sugar
Corn syrup
Corn syrup solids
Crystalline fructose
Date sugar
Dehydrated fruit juice
Demarara sugar
Dextran
Dextrin
Dextrose
Diastatic malt
Diastase
Ethyl maltol
Evaporated cane juice
Florida crystals
Fructose
Fruit juice
Fruit juice concentrate
Fruit juice crystals
Galactose
Glucose
Glucose solids
Golden syrup
Grape sugar
High fructose corn syrup
Honey
Icing sugar
Invert sugar
Lactose
Malt syrup
Maltodextrin
Maltose
Maple syrup
Molasses
Muscovado
Organic raw sugar
Panocha
Raw sugar
Refiner's syrup
Rice syrup
Sorghum syrup
Sucrose
Treacle
Turbinado
Yellow sugar
If you have not been doing so, make an effort to lower your sugar intake. Begin to wean yourself, after a while. Yes, it will be difficult for some but the end result - improved health - will far outweigh the discomfort.