Reading food labels can be quite a challenge sometimes.  The different names for ingredients are varied and sometimes unrecognisable.  This blog article is one of a series which you can use to help identify ingredients of interest – this week we’ll look at sugars.

If an something appears in the first three items on the ingredient list it generally means that the product contains quite a lot of it.  Food manufacturers can hide ingredients, though, by adding multiple types of the same ingredient, all with different names.

Someone asked me recently for a list to help them identify sugars in processed foods, so here it is.

Sugar, sugar, sugar

• Agave nectar
• Agave syrup
• Barbados sugar
• Barley malt extract
• Barley malt syrup
• Beet sugar
• Blackstrap molasses
• Brown rice syrup
• Brown sugar
• Buttered syrup
• Cane juice
• Cane juice crystals
• Cane sugar
• Caramel
• Carob syrup
• Castor sugar
• Coconut palm sugar
• Coconut sugar
• Confectioner’s sugar
• Corn syrup
• Corn syrup solids
• Crystalline fructose
• Date sugar
• Demerara sugar
• Dextrin
• Dextrose
• Diastatic malt
• D-ribose
• Ethyl maltol
• Evaporated cane juice
• Florida crystals
• Fructose
• Fruit juice
• Fruit juice concentrate
• Galactose
• Glucose
• Glucose solids
• Golden sugar
• Golden syrup
• Grape sugar
• High fructose corn syrup (HFCS)
• Honey
• Icing sugar
• Invert sugar
• Lactose
• Malt syrup
• Maltodextrin
• Maltose
• Maple syrup
• Molasses
• Muscovado sugar
• Panela sugar
• Panocha
• Raw sugar
• Refiner’s syrup
• Rice syrup
• Sorghum syrup
• Sucanat
• Sucrose
• Sugar (granulated)
• Sweet sorghum
• Syrup
• Treacle
• Treacle sugar
• Turbinado sugar
• Yellow sugar

Remember, too much sugar isn’t good for us.  For more info on added or extrinsic sugars, have a look here.

See you next time, Sweeties!