The Truth About Diabetic Foods
Boxes touting “healthful sugars” were everywhere. It was frustrating to see things like natural biscuits or organic toaster pastries. Like “organic” makes the additional sugars in our diets acceptable. Is this what folks believe is a “healthful sugar”? I noticed the word sugar isn’t listed by most of those products anyplace. I guess that is because consumers understand “glucose” is bad for them. But there’s a whole slew of different types of processed, concentrated sources of sugar, which really aren’t “healthy sugar”. Third, although some sugars could be healthier than other sugars, even in moderation, additional sugar is still added sugar, while it’s a “healthy sugar” or not. Don’t let some of those fitter sounding names of those “healthy sugars” fool you into thinking it to less harmful additional sugar.
Some phrases jump out at you. And don’t forget sugar is sugar. To begin with, ingredients are listed by quantity. Ingredients are listed in order of quantity by weight when you read the nutrition facts label. So there is more of the ingredient than any other ingredient. If the ingredient list says “oats, peanut butter, honey, cashews, cocoa butter, water, vanilla, salt” you know that there are far more cashews then cherry butter in the product, even if only by a tiny quantity. Obviously, the majority of men and women consider honeying a “healthful sugar”. But, it is possible that in the event that you combine the peanut butter and honey, they may outweigh the oats.
So read the entire listing, and read it. Learn the names for glucose – I’ve counted 107 now, but it is always evolving. Producers will use more than one type of sugar so these sugars could be listed further down the ingredients list. But, in the event that you combined all of the “healthy sugars” together, they might truly be the number one ingredient. This is sometimes the same amount of overall sugar as the first record but now, the list has moved up and honey has transferred down. At first glance, this may seem much healthier but it’s only a match with “healthy sugar”.