Sugar is naturally present in many foods and products, so why add it? The answer is obviously to make them more attractive even to the detriment of the health of those who consume them, one might say. Leaving aside the sugars naturally present in what we eat today, I would like to focus on the added ones. Those that should be limited to a minimum (if not avoided at all) and which unfortunately sometimes it's not so easy to recognize by reading the ingredients list.
Sugar added
Added sugar is usually a blend of simple sugars such as sucrose, glucose or fructose. Other types, such as galactose, lactose and maltose, are less common.
The most common names such as glucose, sugar, fructose are easily identifiable by scrolling through the list of ingredients of a food/product while others, less known, can easily escape or be mistaken for additives while in reality it is always sugar (although perhaps slightly different shape).
Is fructose better than glucose?
Glucose and fructose are the most common types of sugar from which many other sugars are derived and they differ substantially because glucose can be metabolized by almost all cells in the body, while fructose is metabolized almost entirely in the liver. Despite having a higher sweetening power and a lower glycemic index, fructose is not actually "healthier" than glucose and therefore should still be avoided or limited.
When approaching a low-carb diet or, even more so, a ketogenic diet, it is very important to know how to recognize the presence of sugar on the label , which is why below I have listed all 56 of the most common names with which you can find indicated sugar:
- Sugar
- Sucrose (50% glucose and 50% fructose, the common table sugar)
- Corn syrup (sucrose-like composition)
- Agave syrup (70-90% fructose and 10-30% glucose)
- Beetroot sugar
- Black treacle
- Brown sugar
- caramel syrup
- granulated cane syrup
- Brown sugar
- caramel
- carob syrup
- sugar for cakes (caster sugar is found in USA)
- coconut sugar
- confectionary sugar
- date syrup
- demerara sugar
- Florida Crystals (found in USA)
- fruit juice
- fruit juice concentrate
- golden sugar
- golden syrup (Golden Syrup, common in USA)
- grape sugar
- honey
- powdered sugar
- invert sugar
- Maple syrup
- molasses
- musk sugar
- panela sugar
- clearing
- raw sugar
- refined syrup
- sorghum syrup
- sucanat (an American brown sugar)
- treacle sugar
- Turbinado sugar
- yellow sugar
- barley malt
- brown rice syrup
- corn syrup
- corn syrup solids
- dextrin
- dextrose
- diastatic malt
- ethyl maltol
- glucose
- glucose solids
- lactose
- malt syrup
- maltodextrins
- maltose
- rice syrup
- Fructose
- Granulated fructose
- D-ribose
- galactose
