Food Tip: Avoiding Added Sweeteners

by Shereen Jegtvig

There are a couple of reasons why you might want to watch your refined sugar intake.  For one, refined sugars like table sugar, dextrose, or high fructose corn syrup don’t add any beneficial vitamins or minerals, just simple carbohydrates.  Although your body needs carbohydrates to function properly, eating foods with extra added sugar and quickly add too many calories that your body will easily store as fat.

Some foods are naturally higher in sugar, like fruits.  But fruits are good for you because they also contain fiber and lots of vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals.  The real enemy is added sugars and sweeteners that you find in sodas, snacks, and even processed foods. 

How do you find them?  You can look at the Nutrition Facts labels for sugar (under the carbohydrates).  When comparing products, be sure to choose the ones with the least sugar whenever possible.  You can also look on the ingredients list for words like sugar, fructose, dextrose, glucose, turbinado or even honey.  A little bit is fine, but if the sweeteners appear at the beginning of the list, there’s probably too much.

You can use our FoodEssentials list to hunt for sugars too.  You can arrange your foods by amount of sugar, like this:

Or by added sweeteners, like this:

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