56 names for sugar the food industry uses to hide how much is in their products
Brown rice syrup, corn syrup, dextrose, agave nectar, ethyl maltol, fruit juice concentrate - no matter what the label says, it’s all added sugar. Some are worse for you than others, though
Sugar is not always conveniently labelled as “sugar” in a food product’s ingredients list. The food industry comes up with other names for sugar that don’t seem so bad - think “brown rice syrup” or “organic raw sugar” - to hide the real amount of added sugar in their products, says Dr Robert Lustig, Professor of paediatrics at the University of California and author of Sugar Has 56 Names: A Shopper’s Guide.
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Here are the names (Note: * = contains fructose, or what Lustig calls “alcohol without the buzz”. Fructose, he says, causes seven times as much cell damage as does glucose, because it binds to cellular proteins seven times faster; and it releases 100 times the number of oxygen radicals, which kills everything in sight.)
1. Agave nectar*
2. Barbados sugar*
3. Barley malt
4. Beet sugar*
5. Blackstrap molasses*