While you’d expect cookies and candy bars to be packed with sugar, sometimes it’s seemingly innocent items you should be watching out for. From coffees to pasta sauces, here are 24 everyday, but unexpectedly sugary foods. Compiled by loveFOOD's nutritionist Angela Dowden, our list looks at the total sugar levels including both naturally occurring sugars (such as from fruit and milk) and those added by the manufacturer. Read on to discover the worst offenders…
Tea is a sugar and calorie-free beverage, but once it's sweetened, flavoured and chilled, it becomes just another soft drink. While a 4.9% sugar content doesn’t sound like a lot, it adds up to a whopping 27g (6.75 tsps) in a 547ml (18.5 fl oz) bottle of this mango and hibiscus flavour chilled tea – that’s three more grams than in a Twix bar.
Teriyaki may be salty on the palate (and one of these clocks up one-third of your Daily Value of sodium per bowl), but that means it's often high in sugar too, to appear balanced to the taste buds. Marie Callender's sweet pineapple teriyaki bowl contains a surprising 14g (3.5 tsps) per serving of added sugars, notching up 17g (4.25 tsps) of sugar in total.
Lower calorie doesn't mean lower sugar. Another "savoury" dish that can have lots of sugar is sweet and sour. While the percentage of sugar here might not sound awful, it adds up to 15g (close on 4 tsps) per meal. The manufacturer doesn’t say how much is added, rather than naturally-occurring from the vegetables in this dish, but it's worth noting that apple juice concentrate and brown sugar – both added sugar sources – feature on the ingredients list.
This Starbucks coffee, which is meant to be served chilled, has 6.2% sugar per 405ml (13.7fl oz) bottle. The total is a huge 25g (6.25 tsps) and more sugar than the 24g (6 tsps) you'll find in a 12 fl oz can of Coca Cola Life.
This bread, made with unbleached white flour, has both honey and sugar in the recipe, making it nearly 8% sugar. That equates to 0.5 tsp of sugar per slice, so a two slice sandwich contains a whole teaspoon of sugar before you add any fillings. There’s less than 1g of fibre per slice too, so the bread will raise your blood glucose levels rapidly, which could leave you hungry again soon. A protein-based filling such as chicken can offset this.
One corn dog supplies a surprising 6g of sugar – that’s a heaped teaspoon, or just a shade more than in a couple of Starburst Chews. It’s mostly contained in the batter of the corn dog. Each corn dog has 470mg of blood pressure-raising sodium too, which is 20% of the FDA's Daily Value.
The maple syrup you pour over isn't the only source of sugar you need to worry about with waffles. A couple of these Eggo blueberry waffles already contain 6g, or a heaped teaspoon of sugar before you add toppings.
Not all tomato pasta sauces contain added sugar, but some do, so look out for it in the ingredients list. Two-thirds of the total sugar in this Ragú chunky sauce comes naturally from the tomatoes but a level teaspoon per half a cup serving is added by the manufacturer (note: a half cup is a small serving of 128g and you're likely to consume more than this).
Brioche is the fashionable bun to clamp around your burger – super soft and great for absorbing juices. But there's a reason they taste sweet – you'll often find they contain 10% sugar. Each St Pierre brioche burger bun has 5g, well over a teaspoon of sugar, which is more than in one cinnamon Graham cracker.
One-tenth of the blueberry version of this yogurt with gut-friendly cultures is made up of sugar. To be fair, some of this is the natural lactose sugar found in milk, which hasn’t been linked with obesity or tooth decay. For an even healthier option however, choose plain Activia and add your own fresh fruit.
Even though we know smoothies contain sugar the amount can be shocking – this healthy-sounding smoothie has 53g (13.25 tsps) in a 450ml (15.2fl oz) bottle. In the US this doesn't officially count as added sugar, but experts say it's as bad for teeth and weight. “Free sugars”, released from plant cell walls in juices and smoothies, harm teeth and pile extra calories into our diet.
The small print tells you these peach pieces are in “heavy” syrup, which might just as well read ”heavy-handed with the sugar”. The syrup contains the sweet stuff in three guises – high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup and sugar – and a 1 cup serving has 21g of sugar in total. Some of it will be naturally occurring in the peaches of course. However, 21g of sugar is a good deal more than the 16g in a McDonald’s apple pie.
Dressings can be an unexpected sugar trap – sugar is the second ingredient (after water) in this product, and a 2 tbsp serving of the dressing provides 5g of sugar, or over a teaspoon. That’s a lot to be putting on your salad when a homemade vinaigrette made from vinegar, oil and a little salt and pepper is virtually sugar free.
The baked banana bread variety of these breakfast soft-baked cookies are nearly one-fifth sugar, with a serving providing 9g (over 2 tsps). BelVita claim they’ve done the research and can show that the grains used, and the way they're baked, ensures their energy is released slowly over four hours But you'd get a similar effect, without all that added sugar, by having poached eggs on wholegrain toast and a banana.
We all know that granola contains sugar, but the amount may still come as a surprise. A bowl of the clusters weighs much heavier than the same volume of a flake cereal, and a 60g serving of this Bear Naked variety provides 12g (3 tsps) of added sugar. That’s almost as much as the 13g in a Dunkin’ Donuts cinnamon doughnut.
Popcorn is wholegrain and a decent fibre source, so generally has the edge over potato and maize-based savoury snacks. But the sweet and salt flavour of this popular brand contains 1 tsp of sugar in each cup: the recommended serving of two cups (whoever keeps to that?) has a little more sugar than two Chips Ahoy! Original cookies.
Pop Tarts have never been at the healthy end of breakfast choices, but who knew that at 15g of sugar each, a Strawberry Frosted Pop Tart actually has a little more sugar than one Twinkie? A small upside: one Pop Tart does contain 3g of fibre, which is a bit more than in a slice of whole-wheat bread.
When the first ingredient is organic brown rice syrup and there’s also cane sugar and cane syrup further down the list, you instantly get the picture that this is an energy bar with a lot of added sugar. That may be fine if you’re trekking up a mountain, but not for an afternoon slump at your desk. The 21g sugar (over 5 tsps) per bar is equivalent to nearly 18 Oreo minis.
Sugar and syrups appear several times in the ingredients list of this cereal, along with dried apple, which is a concentrated source of sugars too. The total added sugar is 11g (nearly 3 tsps) per 42g bowl, which is more than a fifth of the FDA’s recommended limit of no more than 50g of added sugar per day. And watch out – most people serve themselves more.
Half of the 12g of sugar in this trail mix comes from added sugar. So that’s one heaped teaspoon of sugar in a small 35g serving. The culprit? The chocolate bits sprinkled throughout. Trail mix with chocolate is much more candy than the energising fruit-and-nut health food we like to think it is.
Protein bars can be sugary too. A Gatorade Whey Protein bar boasts 20g (24%) protein...but it also has more sugar than protein with 28g (6.5 tsps) of manufacturer-added sugar per bar. That's over half the US daily recommended limit. That maybe OK if you're a serious athlete who needs the fuel and calories (350 of them), but otherwise this is not a healthy option.
Orange sauce might be used to make a “savoury” dish but it’s not too far off being one-half pure sugar. A serving of just 2 tbsps of the Panda Express variety has a whopping 17g of sugar. By comparison that’s more than in a quarter cup scoop of Ben & Jerry’s Vanilla Caramel Fudge.
That creamer you add to your coffee can sometimes be mainly sugar – the French vanilla flavour of Coffee-mate (powdered version) contains a whopping 58.3% of the sweet stuff. In the recommended 12g (4 tsps) serving that means you'll be getting 7g added sugar, or 14% of the Daily Value (DV) per drink.
It's getting easier to know how much added sugar there is in a food. Until now, labels only listed "sugars" with no indication of how much was added sugar, and how much naturally occurring (eg from fruit and dairy). But new US labelling regulations require that added sugar content is listed in the Nutrition Facts panel, along with the % Daily Value. Manufacturers with more than $10 million in annual sales must begin using the new label by January 2020. Smaller companies have until January 2021.