Sugar. Glucose. Dextrose. Fructose, corn syrup, dextrin, galactose, glucose-fructose, concentrated fruit juice, high-fructose corn syrup, honey, amazake, invert sugar, hydrolysed starch, maltose, maltodextrin, evaporated cane juice, molasses, maltose, sorghum, turbinado, rapadura, sucrose, beet sugar, malitol, manitol, sorbitol and xylitol. These are the names that sugar and its derivatives go under on ingredient lists on packet foods, so it's little wonder many of us find it difficult to keep to the 90g daily limit the British Nutrition Foundation recommends.
The Food Standards Agency says that any food with more than 10 per cent sugar is a 'high-sugar' food. However, sugars hide in all sorts of unexpected places, especially foods aimed at dieters. Low-fat dessert products are often pumped with sugar to replace the flavours that fat would give them and make them more palatable. Low- or reduced-fat crisps and rice snacks often contain more sugar than the full-fat alternatives.
Cereal bars are another unexpected culprit - when you're weighing up whether to have a bar of chocolate or a 'health bar', remember that a Green & Blacks 70 per cent cocoa chocolate bar is 29 per cent sugar, while some cereal bars can be over 30 per cent, either due to added sugars or dried fruit, which is high in natural sugars.
Savoury foods are also a surprise source of sugar - takeaways and ready meals are a hidden source of those extra grams. The Chinese meal on this page provides more than half your recommended daily allowance of sugar, and if you topped it off with a low-fat dessert, you could have eaten 70g of sugar in one meal.
Breakfast cereals have been well documented for containing heaps of sugar, but often it's the ones you'd least expect: own-brand fruit muesli, for example, can contain as much as 32 per cent sugar.
If you want to keep track of the sugar in your diet, check labels - some bread rolls even contain added sugar.
The meal
Sweet and Sour Chicken
'Tender pieces of marinated chicken breast in a sweet and sour sauce with rice mixed with egg and peas' - these may be less than 3% fat, but contain 20% of your daily sugar allowance.
Cantonese Mini Spare Ribs
'Cooked in a sweet, sticky sauce', this Chinese-style microwaveable dinner is 13.4% sugar, firmly placing it in the Food Standard Agency's 'high-sugar' category.
Danone Shape Greek-style Bio Fruit Yoghurt
These low-fat bio yoghurts are high in sugar. The orange flavour has 20g per pot.
Sainsbury's Cantonese Banquet Box For Two
If you eat half of this (lemon chicken, egg-fried rice, prawn toasts, prawn wontons and spring rolls), as you are meant to, you get 50g of sugar in one main course.
Sharwood's Sweet Chilli & Red Pepper Cooking Sauce
The third ingredient on the label is sugar, so it's hardly surprising that a 140g serving gives you 16.7g of sugar.
Sainsbury's Cranberry Juice Drink
Note the subtle difference between 'juice' (ie, 100% fruit juice) and 'juice drink'. This product has 29g of sugar per 250ml serving.
The shopping basket
Snack-a-Jacks
These rice and corn cakes boast that they are 'less than 3% fat' - and they are. But the classic caramel flavour are 29% sugar. Nearly three times more sugar content than a Food Standards Agency high-sugar classified food.
Nestlé Cinnamon Grahams
The back of the pack carries an upbeat statement from a Nestlé nutritionist claiming, 'We're trying to make all our cereals even healthier'. But these biscuits are still 34% sugar.
Baton Rouge Burger Buns
Even bread products contain sugar. Each bun contains 3.7g.
Sainsbury's Breakfast Prunes in Fruit Juice
'Dried & Soaked for a Sweeter Flavour'. How sweet exactly? Each 125g pot contains 23g of sugar - a quarter of the recommended 90g daily maximum.
Sainsbury's Ready-to-Eat Dates
These are high in fibre - and the packet is proud of the fact. Less loudly trumpeted is the fact that these dates are more than 60% sugar, and so very high in calories: a 75g serving will hit you for 200.
WeightWatchers Blackcurrant Spread
Ordinary jam is typically 60% sugar. This low-calorie version still manages to be 26%. The Food Standards Agency classifies any food containing more than 10% as a high-sugar product.
Hovis Digestive Biscuits
There are, of course, sweeter more chocolatey biscuits you can buy. But they do not have the wholesome feel of these digestives, which are 18% sugar.
Sainsbury's Strawberry Trifles
Each pot contains 20g of sugar, nearly a quarter of your daily recommended limit. Yet the name of this low-fat range is 'Be Good To Yourself'.
Kellogg's Fruit 'n Fibre bars
'A tasty treat with added fibre ... with the goodness of high fibre bran, wholegrain oats, and succulent sultanas.' But the presence of so much fruit bumps up the sugar content to 39%.
Weight Watchers from Heinz Banoffee Desserts
These are aimed directly at dieters and contain just 152 calories per serving, relatively low for a sticky pudding. Yet they are 24% sugar.
www.foodstandards.gov.uk
www.nutrition.org.uk
