Food

Sugar

Updated 29 May 2008

Introduction

Sugar is everywhere in our food. How much is OK to include in your diet - and is it really bad for you?

It will come as no surprise that your favourite chocolate bar or biscuit is full of sugar but you might be surprised to discover your tomato sauce and chutney contains a hit of sugar too. We checked out the sugar content of 23 popular sauces, marinades and chutneys.

And you can test your knowledge with our quick sugar quiz.

Sugar in food

There are two types of sugar: intrinsic sugars found inside fruit and vegetables (mainly fructose) and milk (lactose); and added free sugars (mainly sucrose, which is glucose plus fructose). It's the free sugars that've been added to food by manufacturers you need to reduce.

So it's not just as simple as cutting back on the sugar you add to your tea and coffee. You also need to be careful of the sugar you can't see in processed foods.

Free sugars such as sucrose, glucose and corn syrup may be listed separately in the ingredients list. But if you look at the nutrition information panel, the total will be given under "sugars".

We checked out supermarket shelves and discovered that sauces, chutneys and marinades are sometimes high in sugar.

What we found

Kiwis love tomato sauce. We eat it with sausages, chips, pies ... and some people eat it with eggs. But you may be surprised that most brands are more than 20 percent sugar - that's the equivalent of about one teaspoon of sugar in each tablespoon (17g) of sauce.
You also need to check the nutrition information on products with the same name but different packaging. Wattie's Tomato Sauce in a can has 21.3 percent sugar; if you buy it in a squeeze bottle it has 31 percent sugar.
Some brands of BBQ sauce have more sugar than other brands. Gregg's Classic BBQ sauce has 33.8 percent sugar. A better bet is Wattie's BBQ sauce - it has 24.4 percent sugar.
Sugar is the main ingredient in some brands of sweet chilli sauce. Both Golden Sun and Trident brands contain more than 40 percent sugar.
You also need to check marinades. Kikkoman Sweet Chilli Ginger & Soy Marinade has nearly three teaspoons of sugar in one tablespoon of marinade. Other marinades have less than half that amount.
Most brands of chutney are more than 20 percent sugar, which is around one teaspoon or more per tablespoon.
Mayonnaise doesn't have a lot of sugar but some brands are better than others. Best Foods Real Mayonnaise only has one percent, compared to Eta Mayonnaise which has 13.3 percent.
Not surprisingly with mustards, you need to watch the honey mustards. Masterfoods Squeezy Honey Mustard was more than 25 percent sugar.

See Products compared for the full table of product comparisons.

Always read the labels - even when you're deciding between similar products of the same brand.

Products compared

We looked at the sugar content of 23 marinades, sauces and chutneys.

Guide to the table

Our survey was based on label information. Products are ranked within categories according to their percentage of sugar - lowest at top.

Sugar and your health

Free sugars aren't linked to diabetes, heart disease, cancer or hyperactivity in children. However, experts agree that they can play a role in tooth decay. They also provide empty kilojoules, which may lead to weight gain.

Tooth decay

Bacteria in the plaque on your teeth use sugars as food. The bacteria then produce acids that can eat into tooth enamel. So any type of sugar can be a problem under the right conditions, as can starches and starchy foods. How much of a problem depends on how often you eat sugar and starches through the day, and how long they stay in your mouth.

Frequent snacking on sugary or starchy foods, and in particular ones that hang around in your mouth, like sticky, clingy biscuits, cakes and sweets, or foods you sip or suck for some time, can easily result in problems your dentist won't be happy about. Eating these foods as part of a meal is better than having them between meals.

Good oral hygiene is important: regular teeth cleaning with fluoride toothpaste, flossing, and check-ups are all essential to healthy teeth, no matter how much sugar you eat.

Weight gain

Maintaining a healthy weight is pretty straightforward. If you eat more energy than you use, the extra is stored as fat. It doesn't matter where those extra kilojoules come from - fat, protein, or carbohydrates (including sugar). Eat more than you need and you'll get fatter.

A healthy diet isn't just about eating the right amount of kilojoules, though. It's also about getting all the vitamins, minerals and fibre you need. Heavy consumers of sugar, who may eat sugary foods instead of more nutritious ones, could end up missing out on some of the nutrients they need for a healthy diet.

Blood sugar & GI

Eating sugary foods used to be blamed for sending people's blood sugar levels soaring and then plunging - surges which some nutritionists think could have long-term effects on health.

But while some foods can send blood sugar levels bouncing, it seems the answer to which foods do this isn't as simple as just those with the most sugar.

The glycaemic index (GI) of foods is a way of measuring how they affect levels of sugar in the blood, giving each food a comparative score out of 100. It compares the effect of eating an amount of each food that contains 50 grams of carbohydrate with eating the same amount of pure glucose (GI = 100).

Foods with a low GI (55 or less) make blood glucose levels rise and fall more gently, while high-GI foods (70 or more) are broken down more quickly and cause blood sugars to surge and crash. Perhaps surprisingly, table sugar scores a moderate 61.

Syndrome X

It sounds like a pilot for a sci-fi series, but in fact it's a name coined to describe a cluster of abnormalities associated with insulin resistance, high blood pressure, obesity (centred around the stomach), low HDL-cholesterol (that's the good kind) and high blood triglycerides - all of which increase the risk of diabetes and heart disease.

A link has been suggested between syndrome X and large quantities of fructose - a type of sugar used much more extensively in processed foods in the US than here, but which also makes up one half of a molecule of ordinary sugar (sucrose). The science is far from clear. There are animal studies that support the idea, but a very limited number of human studies. Some experts say there's not enough fructose in NZ diets to have any noticeable effect, but it's early days and more research is needed. There's no suggestion that eating fruit (which provides fructose in association with dietary fibre) is a risk.

How much sugar?

An expert committee from theWorld Health Organization (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has recommended that added sugars should provide a maximum of 10 percent of our total energy.

Our Ministry of Health takes a more moderate position. It recommends sucrose and other free sugars should provide no more than 15 percent of total energy.

So how much does the Ministry of Health's 15 percent translate to?

For an average 80 kg man it's about 104g or 26 teaspoons a day
For an average 65 kg woman it's about 68g or 17 teaspoons a day.

On average, Kiwis eat around the 20 percent level. But averages mask high intakes by some people and a lower intake by others.

You don't need to cut out sugar completely. But it makes sense to limit your intake of sugary foods that don't provide much in the way of nutritional value.

Tip: You can work out the number of teaspoons in foods by dividing the grams of sugars given on the label by four (4 g is the amount of sugar in a standard level teaspoon).

Artificial sweeteners

Increasingly, we're turning to "diet", "lite" and "sugar-free" food and drink that use artificial sweeteners instead of sugar. Artificial sweeteners provide sweetness without the extra kilojoules that sugar contains. But there are some claims that artificial sweeteners are worse for us than sugar.

One of the most controversial artificial sweeteners is aspartame. Last year advocacy groups campaigned to have this removed from foods, claiming it was "deadly poison".

Safety concerns

The New Zealand Food Safety Authority, the New Zealand Dietetic Association and the New Zealand Nutrition Foundation are concerned that consumers will worry unnecessarily about the safety of aspartame because of the recent media controversy surrounding it. Aspartame has been repeatedly approved for use by food and health regulators throughout the world. It goes against most of the research evidence to imply it's unsafe.

People with the rare condition phenylketonuria should avoid aspartame. Having phenylketonuria means you are unable to break down phenylalanine, a component of aspartame. All babies are screened for this at birth. For this reason, all products containing aspartame have a warning label.

Nine sweeteners are permitted in the Food Standards Code. These are acesulphame-K, aspartame, cyclamate, saccharin, sucralose, alitame, neotame, thaumatin, and aspartame-acesulphame-K.

All nine are regarded as safe - although the Code restricts the number of foods they can be used in, to make sure that no one will end up consuming too much of them.

Daily intakes

Food regulators have set an acceptable daily intake (ADI) for artificial sweeteners. This is the amount you could safely consume, per kilogram of your body weight, every day over your lifetime. Consuming more than the ADI over a short period isn't necessarily a health risk as ADIs have safety margins and are based on a lifetime exposure.

The trouble is it's very hard to know how much artificial sweetener you're taking in. Most product labels will tell you which sweetener they contain (either by naming it or giving the additive code number), but they won't tell you how much is in the product.

Quiz answers

Question 1

Q. If a food says it has 'no added sugar', it means:

Answer: Who knows?
Why? Until recently there was a clear definition of 'no added sugar' in the Food Standards Code, but in the new version of the Code it's been removed. Now we have to rely on the Fair Trading Act, which says manufacturers aren't allowed to mislead consumers. Most manufacturers are probably still following the old definition, which is "no sugar or sugary ingredients were added in making it", but it may be a case of 'buyer beware'. Hopefully new guidelines for manufacturers that are currently under discussion will clarify the situation.

Question 2

Q. There are more kilojoules in sugar than in other nutrients like fat or alcohol.

Answer: False
Why? Alcohol (29 kJ) and fat (37 kJ) have more kilojoules per gram than sugar, which is a carbohydrate and has 17 kJ per gram.

Question 3

Q. How many teaspoons of sugar are in a can of soft drink?

Answer: 10
Why? A can of COKE has around 40 grams of sugar - ten 4 g teaspoons.

Question 4

Q. Refined sugars are worse for you than sugars like raw sugar or honey?

Answer: False
Why? Sugar is sugar is sugar. Don't assume that because something sounds 'natural' it's better for you. All types of sugar have the same amount of kilojoules (although honey's about 20% water, so gram for gram it has fewer kilojoules). But none of these sweeteners is a significant source of minerals or vitamins.

Question 5

Q. Tinned peaches in syrup have more sugar than tinned peaches in juice.

Answer: True
Why? Peaches in juice have about 8% sugar compared to 12% for the peaches in syrup. That's a saving of about one teaspoon of sugar in a half-cup serve.

Question 6

Q. Most of the kilojoules in beer come from sugar.

Answer: False
Why? Most of the kilojoules in beer come from the alcohol. There's very little sugar in it - generally about 0.1%.

Question 7

Q. A serve of 'light' pie with 'light' ice cream must have less sugar than regular.

Answer: False
Why? If you check a 'light' product's label the fine print should tell you what the product is light in - it doesn't have to be light in everything. Light ice cream and desserts may be light in fat and kilojoules, but not necessarily light in sugar.

Question 8

Q. Which of these drinks has the highest percentage of sugar?

Answer: Soft drink, though energy drink is close behind.
Why? On average soft drinks are about 12% sugar, an average energy drink is around 11%, flavoured milk about 9% and a sports drink about 6%. However, when you take into account the size of the bottle or can the picture changes - energy drinks generally come in a small 250 or 300 mL can (about 7 teaspoons of sugar), while a larger 375 mL can of average soft drink gives you about 11 teaspoons, and a 300 mL carton of flavoured milk 6.5. Sports drinks only seem to come in a large 600 mL bottle, so if you drink the lot, that smaller percentage translates into a heftier 9 teaspoons of sugar. Only the milk really pulls its nutritional weight - it also delivers vitamins and minerals, most importantly calcium.

Question 9

Q. Strawberry 100% fruit spread has a lot less sugar than strawberry jam.

Answer: Sometimes.
Why? Some 100% fruit spreads have a lot less total sugar than the same brand of jam (almost half); some have similar levels. The sucrose that would have been used in the jam has been replaced by fruit sugars (fructose) in varying degrees. It pays to check the labels before you buy.

Question 10

Q. Kids' breakfast cereals average over two teaspoons of sugar per serve.

Answer: True.
Why? When we last looked at cereals we found more than half the cereals aimed at kids were at least one third sugar. That's two and a half teaspoons in a 30g serve. Some had a lot more. Kids' cereals do offer the benefits of added vitamins and minerals, but the majority are so processed they're fibre-flimsy - many have less than one gram of fibre per serve. Kids don't need as much fibre as adults, but adding a teaspoon of sugar to a less processed cereal like Weet-bix or porridge is a better option.