An article in The Upshot from the New York Times featured our research showing over 60% of the foods and beverages purchased in American grocery stores contain added sugar.
Some of those products are more obvious sugary foods, but not all. The list includes many sauces, soups, fruit juices and even meat products. You might think it’s easy to figure out whether the food manufacturer added sugar to your food, but it isn’t always so. While some foods include “sugar” in their ingredients, many use different words for products that are nutritionally similar. Most of us have heard of high-fructose corn syrup, a sugar made from processing corn. But there are also things like the “evaporated cane juice” in the yogurt, and “rice syrup” and “flo-malt,” which are less obvious and amount to the same thing.
This article featured research from the Sweetening of the Global Diet, particularly beverages: patterns, trends, and policy responses in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology. Read more from The Upshot here, and find out more about our added sugar research, including an easy way to identify ingredients that are added sugars here.