1. Keep Your Eye on the Label
The obvious way to identify how much sugar a product has is by looking at the label--but you must look beyond "no sugar added" and "all-natural" claims. By law, companies must disclose how many grams of sugar a product has in each serving. Only meals that contain less than 1/2 a gram of sugar per serving may be labeled sugar-free. All-natural fruit juices and organic products often appear to be healthy, but they may contain large amounts of hidden sugars.
2. Look for Additives
If you see glucose, fructose, sucrose, barley malt, malt syrup, corn syrup, molasses, honey, dextrose, sorghum, lactose, maltose or maltodextrin listed as an ingredient, then you've found sugar, even if it says zero grams. In an ingredient list, items that are more prevalent fall first. With any of these in the first three or four ingredients, you know you have a major problem. Sweeteners usually fall shortly after flour and grains. High-fructose corn syrup often falls third in many common foods, sodas and fruit juices.
3. Identify Deceiving Products
Diet shakes, protein bars, soy milk and low-fat dairy products often load up on sugar to replace lost flavor from fat. Otherwise healthy products that contain fruit juice from concentrate or dried fruit contain loads of hidden sugars. Since these foods seem healthy, it's easy to overlook the amount of both added and naturally occurring sugar.
4. Choose Healthy Foods
Avoid obsessively buying sugar-free food and checking the grams of sugar in every product by choosing healthy foods in the first place. You know pudding has sugar, even the sugar-free brands. You also know pudding isn't the healthiest snack you can buy. If you stick to fresh vegetables as snacks, you won't have to worry about eating hidden (or blatant) sugar. As you learn which carbohydrates are healthy and which vegetables help you lose weight, choosing the proper snacks starts to come naturally. Just give it some time for a sugar-free diet to seem natural.
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