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A person is looking at an ingredients label, specifically sugar amounts.

Food manufacturers are nothing if not creative. The FDA’s food packaging rules require ingredients to be listed by weight. If food makers relied on only cane sugar or corn syrup to sweeten their products, the recognizable name for sugar would appear in the top three ingredients. And would-be buyers — especially parents — might be less willing to buy the food.

So food makers began to diversify. Instead of adding 100 grams of cane sugar to a food, they might add 10 grams of 10 different sugars. Keeping the weights down keeps the ingredients lower on the label. Creating 61 names for sugar confuses consumers and lowers the odds of recognition.

When sugars are hidden it’s difficult to make an educated choice. But Laura Schmidt, PhD, MSW, MPH, professor of health policy at the University of California, San Francisco, and her team at SugarScience.org, a university-based site dedicated to educating the public about the health hazards of sugar, are on a mission to track them down and make them known. The FDA’s new labeling (see “Sweet News About Food Labels“) should reduce this kind of shell game, but, until then, Schmidt wants you to know all 61 names for sugar.

  1. Agave nectar
  2. Barbados sugar
  3. Barley malt
  4. Barley malt syrup
  5. Beet sugar
  6. Brown sugar
  7. Buttered syrup
  8. Cane juice
  9. Cane juice crystals
  10. Cane sugar
  11. Caramel
  12. Carob syrup
  13. Castor sugar
  14. Coconut palm sugar
  15. Coconut sugar
  16. Confectioner’s sugar
  17. Corn sweetener
  18. Corn syrup
  19. Corn syrup solids
  20. Date sugar
  21. Dehydrated cane juice
  22. Demerara sugar
  23. Dextrin
  24. Dextrose
  25. Evaporated cane juice
  26. Free-flowing brown sugars
  27. Fructose
  28. Fruit juice
  29. Fruit juice concentrate
  30. Glucose

 

  1. Glucose solids
  2. Golden sugar
  3. Golden syrup
  4. Grape sugar
  5. HFCS (high-fructose corn syrup)
  6. Honey
  7. Icing sugar
  8. Invert sugar
  9. Malt syrup
  10. Maltodextrin
  11. Maltol
  12. Maltose
  13. Mannose
  14. Maple syrup
  15. Molasses
  16. Muscovado
  17. Palm sugar
  18. Panocha
  19. Powdered sugar
  20. Raw sugar
  21. Refiner’s syrup
  22. Rice syrup
  23. Saccharose
  24. Sorghum syrup
  25. Sucrose
  26. Sugar (granulated)
  27. Sweet sorghum
  28. Syrup
  29. Treacle
  30. Turbinado sugar
  31. Yellow sugar

 

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