Today, the average American consumes more sugary foods than ever before, equaling about 22 teaspoons – a little less than 1/2 cup – of added sugar each day. That's 20 percent more than we ate in 1970 and adds up to 350 calories a day from sugar alone. For cancer prevention, those added calories are bad news.
If you are like the average American, you may be eating sugar without realizing it because it's hidden in many purchased foods. Brownies are an obvious source of the sweet stuff, but what about your pasta sauce? For anyone who wants to limit sugar intake for a healthy weight – as American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) AICR recommends for lower cancer risk – find out how you can identify added sugars hiding behind a different name.
The Sugar-Cancer Connection
Evidence suggests that sugar by itself does not lead to cancer or "feed" cancer cells, but sugar calories can add up quickly. And extra calories can lead to overweight and weight gain, which do lead to an increased risk for several cancers. Today a third of the country's adult population is classified as obese and child obesity rates are on the rise.
Scientists now know that fat tissue is a metabolically active tissue. Fat cells produce high levels of some hormones and proteins called cytokines that may trigger chronic inflammation, which is linked to increased risk of cancer and other chronic diseases. AICR's expert report found convincing evidence linking body fatness with colon, postmenopausal breast, endometrial, esophageal, kidney and pancreatic cancers.
In an effort to avoid food and drinks that promote weight gain, AICR recommends avoiding sugary drinks and limiting energy-dense foods, which typically contain high amounts of sugar. However, this may be easier said than done.
The Label Sweets
The best way to limit your sugar intake from packaged foods, as AICR recommends for lower cancer/obesity risk, is to read ingredient and nutrition labels. But when added sugar can hide behind at least 100 different names, this task is far from easy.
The ingredients on the label of a food product are listed in descending order with the largest amount first. If a sugar is among the first ingredients listed, or there are many different types of sugar listed, the product most likely has a lot of added sugar.
There are plenty of naturally-occurring sugars, such as the fructose found in fruits or the lactose in milk. Those sugars are considered to be part of a healthful diet and won't be found in the ingredient list. If you do see sugar (or one of its other names) in the ingredient list, you can be sure it was added to the food; this is the type of sugar you want to limit in your diet.
4 Sugar-Cutting Tips
1. Find the Grams per Serving: Compare different brands to see if amounts of sugar listed on the Nutrition Facts label differ significantly for equal serving sizes. One teaspoon of sugar equals 4 grams, so in foods where sugar is added you can estimate how much added sugar is in the product. (In foods such as fruits and yogurt sugar is naturally occurring.) For example, since dairy products naturally contain lactose, try comparing the plain variety against the flavored to see how much of the total sugars are added. The American Heart Association recommends women consume no more than 6 teaspoons of added sugars a day (25 grams) and men consume no more than 9 teaspoons (37 grams). That corresponds to about 100 calories for women and 150 for men. (A teaspoon of sugar is 16 calories.)
2. Firsts on the Label: If added sugars are listed as the top ingredient(s) in a food or if several different kinds of sugar are in the list, this is likely a food loaded with sugar.
3. Reduce Your Sugary Drinks: Drinks are perhaps the biggest source of added sugar in the American diet. Consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages has doubled since the 1970s. A 20-ounce soda contains about 17 teaspoons of sugar (250 calories). If you drink sugar-sweetened beverages every day, try replacing with sparkling water, mineral water, or green tea.
4. Manage Your Sweet Tooth: When you do eat sugary foods, keep the amounts small. Consider satisfying your sweet tooth more often with naturally sweet fruits instead. You'll be getting vitamins, fiber and phytochemicals that may also help reduce your risk for cancer.
Here is a list of some of the possible code words for “sugar” which may appear on a label. Hint: the words “syrup”, “sweetener”, and anything ending in “ose” can usually be assumed to be “sugar”. If the label says “no added sugars”, it should not contain any of the following, although the food could contain naturally-occurring sugars (such as lactose in milk).
Added SUGARS in processed foods can be found under the following names:
1. Agave Syrup
2. Amasake
3. Any name ending in "ose" or "ol" or "syrup"
4. Barbados Sugar
5. Barley Malt
6. Blackstrap Molasses
7. Black Sugar
8. Brown Sugar - the refined sugar coated with molasses or colored with
caramel
9. Cane Juice
10. Cane Juice Crystals
11. Cane Sugar
12. Caramel
13. Caramel Coloring
14. Castor Sugar
15. Confectioner’s Sugar
16. Corn Sweetener
17. Corn Syrup - a manufactured syrup of corn starch, containing varying proportions of glucose, maltose, and dextrose
18. Corn Syrup Solids
19. Crystallized Cane Juice
20. D-mannose
21. Date Sugar
22. Demerara
23. Demerara Sugar
24. Dehydrated Cane Juice
25. Dehydrated Cane Juice Crystals
26. Dextran
27. Dextrin
28. Dextrine
29. Dextrose (glucose) - a simple sugar made of only one molecule
30. Disaccharides
31. Evaporated Cane Juice
32. Evaporated Cane Juice Sugar
33. Florida crystals (a trademarked name)
34. Free Flowing Brown Sugars
35. Fructose - a simple sugar refined from fruit
36. Fruit Juice Concentrate
37. Galactose
38. Galatactose
39. Glucose
40. Glucose Syrup
41. Golden Syrup
42. Grape Sugar
43. Grape Sweetener
44. High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) - highly concentrated syrup of predominantly fructose
45. Honey
46. Hydrolysed Starch
47. Hydrogenated Glucose Syrup
48. Hydrogenated Starch Hydrolysates (HSH)
49. Invert Sugar
50. Isomalt
51. Levulose
52. Lactitol
53. Lactose - a simple sugar from milk
54. Malt
55. Malt Extract
56. Malt Syrup
57. Maltodextrin - a manufactured sugar from maltose and dextrose
58. Maltose - a simple sugar made from starch, usually grains
59. Mannitol
60. Maple Syrup
61. Molasses
62. Monosaccharide
63. Muscovado
64. Organic Dehydrated Cane Juice
65. Panocha
66. Polysaccharide
67. Powdered Sugar
68. Raw Cane Crystals
69. Raw Honey
70. Raw Sugar - a less refined sugar with a small amount of molasses remaining
71. Refiner's Syrup
72. Ribose
73. Rice Extract
74. Rice Malt
75. Rice Syrup
76. Saccharide
77. Saccharose
78. Sorghum
79. Sorghum Syrup
80. Sorbitol
81. Sucanat
82. Succanat
83. Sucrose
84. Sucralose
85. Sugar (sucrose) - the refined crystallized sugar; a combination of glucose and fructose
86. Sugar (granulated)
87. Sweetener
88. Syrup
89. Table Sugar
90. Treacle
91. Turbinado
92. Turbinado Sugar
93. Unbleached Crystallized Evaporated Cane Juice
94. Unbleached Evaporated Sugar Cane Juice Crystals
95. Unbleached Sugar Cane
96. Unrefined Cane Juice Crystals
97. Washed Cane Juice Crystals
98. White Grape Juice - a highly purified fructose solution; virtually no other nutrients are present
99. Yellow Sugar
100. Xylitol OR Xylose
Remember, your body doesn't care what the label says, it's all just "sugar"!
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