So Much Sugar is Hidden in Our Food

A sugar tax on soft drinks – now available in the UK. At least when it comes to drinks, everyone knows that they contain a lot of sugar. With other foods from the supermarket, this is often not so obvious. We secretly take in more of it than we realize.

The daily overdose

A typical soda like Cola contains around a third of the sugar. That makes more than 30 sugar cubes in a small bottle. At least you can guess that, after all, it tastes just as sweet. But it is different with many other foods. What gives the impression of being healthy contains many hidden amounts of sugar.

This is particularly unhealthy for small children. The World Health Organization recommends around 25 grams per day. But with a glass of soda, the little ones quickly add up to 23.5 grams of sugar. In the long run, this can be quite harmful — greetings are due to obesity, tooth decay and diabetes.

Even supposedly healthy things like ketchup, which after all is made from tomatoes, are a secret sugar bomb. Nine sugar cubes are contained in 100 grams. The same applies to ready-made tomato sauce. It is much better to cook them yourself. Ready-made pizzas, pickled fruit and salad dressings also contain a surprising amount of added sugar.

Fruit yoghurts also supply the body with a good amount of sugar. A typical yoghurt contains 18 grams of sugar. This means that the daily dose for children is quickly reached.

Good and bad sugars

But sugar is not just sugar. Actually, all sugars are carbohydrates, so they are good sources of energy for our body. But there are important differences.

There are single, double and multiple sugars. The sugar cube is pure simple sugar, fructose is a typical double sugar. Polysaccharides are the building blocks that make up vegetables and grains.

The main difference is that simple sugars provide energy for the body very quickly. This can be useful during exertion such as sport. Most of the time, however, it is more sugar than our body needs at the moment – but where does the sugar go? Ultimately, it will probably be converted to fat and then unfortunately deposited on the stomach.

However, the more complex the sugar molecules are, i.e. the more they are connected to one another, the longer the body has to deal with them. He has to separate the individual connections and so the body gets a sugar molecule piece by piece that it can use to keep up.

In this way, the blood level rises only slowly, which is much healthier. At the same time, the body gets energy again and again over a longer period of time. For this reason, whole grain bread is recommended instead of white bread. It also keeps you full longer.

Fruits and vegetables also contain sugar molecules that are so large that our bodies are unable to process them. This is the so-called dietary fiber, which simply whizzes through our gastrointestinal tract, provides a little digestive momentum and which we simply get rid of again.