SUGAR FREE AT THE GROCERY STORE

Chicago's Navy Pier food vendor area. Taken by PKSenagore August 2017. All rights reserved.

HIDDEN SWEETNESS Earned Runs is highlighting this ACTIVE.com article, “20 Foods with the Most Added Sugar” by Jackie Veling to share the useful information it contains for several reasons. 
 
First, to help runners, walkers, and fitness enthusiasts decrease the amount of un-natural sugar they may unknowingly be adding to their diet in processed food.  Some products we expect and want to be sweet. We buy them, well aware of the sugar content, and thus accept responsibility for the effects on our health.
 
Second to energize the consumer in you. If these items aren’t purchased and sales fall, companies must eventually get the message to offer new products that don’t contain, or at least are lower in, added sweeteners.  “Sugar” may be otherwise disguised as honey, fructose, molasses, and corn syrup, as the article indicates. 
 
Third, to suggest that as a group we spread the word on social media.  If a check of a frequently purchased product’s ingredient list shows an added un-natural sugar, without that addition seeming to be necessary, snap a picture and share the information. An example might be a fruit drink or juice, number 3 in the slideshow article.  Normally fruit juice is naturally sweet and it would be surprising to see that it’s been added.  Especially if the product package says its “100% pure” or “not from concentrate” as Veling’s article indicates.
 
In my experience awareness of the hidden addition of sugar, in any of its forms, comes when a product has a different taste, as if it’s been reformulated but that information isn’t on the packaging. It was wheat bread (#4 in the slideshow) that surprised me last year. It seemed to have a new oddly sweet flavor, which may have been due to the presence of high fructose corn syrup. 
 
Veling offers thoughtful suggestions in the article about lower-sugar alternatives to foods that might be your favorites. More help in figuring out product sugar content is on the way, in the form of revamped nutrition labels, expected to be on foods beginning in July 2018, which will list “added sugars” (see earlier 2016 BLOG post).
 
Until then, be a smart consumer, especially if you want to benefit the most from all the hard work you’re doing to become and stay fit and healthy.
 
RUN HAPPY!
  
https://www.active.com/food-and-nutrition/articles/20-foods-with-the-most-added-sugar