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11 Foods and Drinks That Have More Sugar Than You Think

If you’re not careful about reading the nutrition labels on your food, you may end up working against your own health and nutrition goals without even knowing it. One common pitfall is buying foods because of their face-level marketing that claims the item is “all-natural,” “whole-grain” and the like.

Underneath those claims, though, high amounts of added sugar may be disguised as something healthier or fancier on the ingredients label. I’m looking at you, agave nectar. Have you been eating more sugar than you thought? Find out if any of your favorite foods and drinks are actually surprisingly high in sugar. Plus, how much sugar you should consume in a day.

1. Yogurt

If you start your day off with yogurt, you may start your day off with upwards of 15 grams of sugar, depending on the kind of yogurt you eat. Some yogurts are very healthy, such as Fage Total 0{bf0515afdcaddba073662ceb89fbb62b6b1bf123143c0e06b788e1946e8c353f}, which doesn’t contain any added sugar at all.

However, many popular yogurts, especially low- or zero-fat varieties, contain shockingly high amounts of sugar — like Yoplait strawberry yogurt, which contains 19 grams of sugar per serving, 13 grams of which are added sugars.

2. Bread

ezekiel bread loaf — Ezekiel sprouted bread has zero grams of sugar per serving — much better than many breads that have more than 5 grams per slice.

Food for Life

By now, it’s no secret that most white breads contain added sugar, as do sweet varieties like cinnamon raisin and honey nut bread. Most people think they’re safe from added sugar by choosing wheat or multigrain bread, but many of these varieties still contain substantial added sugar.

A truly healthy bread shouldn’t contain more than 2 or 3 grams of sugar per slice and ideally shouldn’t contain ingredients like high fructose corn syrup or evaporated cane juice. For an example of a healthy bread label, take a look at the Powerseed bread from Dave’s Killer Bread, which contains just 1 gram of sugar per slice. Ezekiel sprouted whole-grain bread is even healthier with zero grams of sugar.

3. Instant oatmeal

quaker oats — If you’re going to eat Quaker oats, you’re better off buying whole rolled oats and sweetening it with fruit. At least, if you’re trying to keep your sugar intake down.

Quaker Oats

Oatmeal in its purest form — whole oats — is rich in fiber, B vitamins, magnesium, selenium, zinc and other minerals. But when it’s processed and portioned into convenient single-serve packages, it’s often got lots of sugar there, too.

One packet of Quaker Instant Oatmeal in the maple and brown sugar flavor contains 12 grams of sugar, about half of the recommended daily limit of 25 grams. If you add dried fruit, honey or other oatmeal toppings, you may surpass that daily recommendation before you’re done eating breakfast.

4. Granola and granola bars

nature's path honey granola — Even packages that look healthy can (and often do) contain added sugars.

Nature’s Path

Another breakfast favorite, granola and granola bars are often marketed as healthy because they’re low in fat and (sometimes) high in whole grains. Those two health claims can quickly be canceled out by the sugar content, though. One Nature Valley Trail Mix bar has 7 grams of sugar with corn syrup listed as the second ingredient. One serving of Nature’s Path Honey Almond Granola contains 7 grams of sugar (6 added).

Granola is also deceiving because of its notoriously tiny portion sizes. You may look at a granola label and think that 6 grams of sugar per serving isn’t bad, but take a moment to consider whether you actually ever eat a quarter-cup of granola — usually, serving sizes look more like a half-cup or two-thirds of a cup, which means you may be eating nearly 20 grams of sugar in one sitting.

5. Protein bars

quest protein bars — Sugar-free or low-sugar protein bars exist, but they use sugar alcohols or artificial sweeteners instead.

Quest

Protein bars are popular snacks, especially for people who are trying to build muscle and those who need filling meals on-the-go. However, many protein bars are stuffed with sugar, often to the point where they contain more sugar than doughnuts, cookies or a bowl of ice cream.

ZonePerfect’s chocolate peanut butter bar, for example, contains 15 grams of sugar, which puts you close to the recommended daily limit from just one snack alone.

Fortunately, some brands do make low-sugar protein bars: Quest’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough flavor has 21 grams of protein and just 1 gram of sugar, although it does make up for the lack of sugar with sugar alcohols. If you’re sensitive to alternative sweeteners, your best bet is to opt for a whole-food protein bar, such as an RX bar made from fruit and egg white protein.

6. Sauces, condiments and salad dressings

heinz ketchup bottle — The ever-popular Heinz ketchup is made with high fructose corn syrup.

Heinz

Ketchup, barbecue sauce, berry-based salad dressings and other sweet toppings are known to contain sugar, but some others may surprise you: Marinara sauce, for instance, can contain more than 20 grams per serving, as can ranch and caesar salad dressings. As always, check the label and opt for varieties without added sugar.

7. Sports drinks

gatorade zero sports drinks — Look for the “zero” versions of sports drinks if you’re trying to cut calories, sugar and sodium.

Gatorade/Amazon

That sports drink you’re chugging during your workout may taste good and keep you hydrated, but beware of the type you’re drinking. Many sports drinks are high in sugar and calories, as the original intent of now-household name brands like Gatorade and Powerade was to fuel intense exercise for long periods of time.

Most people don’t exercise long enough or with enough intensity to justify drinking 20 or more grams of sugar during their workout, so low-calorie and zero-sugar options are usually a better choice from the perspective of nutrient balance and weight management. Or, you can always just drink water.

8. Pressed juices

green machine juice bottle — This juice looks healthy — and technically contains no added sugar — but it still clocks in with more than 50 grams of sugar.

Naked

Your favorite green juice probably contains more sugar than you’d care to know about. Obviously, fruit juice contains sugar, so pressed juices made with oranges, apples, mangos and other fruits unsurprisingly contain high amounts of sugar.

The thing is, some of those juices still contain added sugar beyond what’s provided by the fruit and green juices made primarily with celery and leafy greens may contain added sugar to offset the earthy taste of juiced vegetables. Even if they technically don’t contain added sugar (such as if the sugar comes from natural fruit juice), the sugar content can still surpass 50 grams per serving, like in this Green Machine juice by Naked Juice.

Plus, even if a pressed juice made of fruit doesn’t contain added sugars, fruit juice is still not as nutritious as eating whole fruit, because juicing a fruit strips it of fiber and fiber helps slow the digestion of sugar and makes you feel full.

9. Dairy-free milk alternatives

silk oat yeah milk — Silk, long known for its soy and almond milk products, makes a variety of oat milks as well — just watch out for added sugar.

Silk

You may think you’re doing your body good by avoiding dairy products and lactose, but some dairy-free alternatives undo those healthy intentions with their sugar content. Silk Vanilla Almondmilk, for example, contains 13 grams of added sugar in a one-cup serving — half of the recommended limit of 25 grams per day.

Try out unsweetened varieties for dairy-free milk with less sugar. You might find yourself surprised that you enjoy the unsweetened version of your favorite plant-based just as much as the sugary one.

10. Canned soups

chowhound taco soup — Homemade soup made with fresh ingredients is usually healthier and you can make large batches to freeze for quick meals later.

Chowhound

After a long day, especially on a chilly evening, canned soup seems like a nutritious, comforting, convenient way to get in a hearty meal. While canned soups do contain vegetables and some protein, some varieties contain added sugar.

For example, Campbell’s Soup on the Go Classic Tomato Soup contains 17 grams of sugar, with high fructose corn syrup listed as the third ingredient. You can make healthier soup at home with fresh vegetables (make big batches and freeze for quick meals later), or simply check the nutrition facts label before purchasing a can.

11. Peanut butter (and other nut butters)

maranatha peanut butter jar — MaraNatha is a better-for-you peanut butter brand.

MaraNatha

Peanut butter, almond butter and cashew butter all serve as great ways to eat healthy fats and they’re delicious as toast toppings or to eat by the spoonful. Be careful about which brands you choose, because some nut butters are processed with sugar and hydrogenated oils that turn a healthy food into one that may interfere with your health goals.

One of the best-selling peanut butter brands in the US, Jif, lists sugar as the second ingredient (behind peanuts, of course), and follows with molasses. Although the sugar content per serving is only 2 to 3 grams in most peanut butters, that can still add up if you eat more than the standard one-tablespoon serving. Also, it’s worth knowing that peanut butter typically contains sugar so you know to read the label if you’re actively trying to avoid excess sugar.

There are some sugar-free peanut butters out there, such as MaraNatha peanut butter, which only contains peanuts and sea salt.

How to avoid hidden added sugar

Truthfully, no added sugar is hidden, especially with the recent changes to nutrition facts labels that rolled out in 2020. All of the information is there for you; you just have to read past the buzzwords on the front of the label.

Ignore the exclamations on the front of the box — such as “made with whole grains!” and “all-natural!” — and actually read the nutrition label. Check out how much sugar the product has and how much of it is added sugar (the new labels must report that information).

For even more information on what you’re consuming, read the ingredients list. In the US, food labels must list ingredients by volume, beginning with the ingredient that is most prevalent in the item. If “sugar” or any variant is in the top five, you may want to try a different product.

Be sure to catch fancy names for added sugar, too: Coconut palm sugar, turbinado, agave nectar, evaporated cane juice, fruit juice concentrate, brown rice syrup and maple syrup are still sugar. And they’re still added sugar if they aren’t naturally part of the packaged item.

Boost your nutrition with these reads:

The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.

Stress eating? Here’s how to train your brain to crave healthy foods.

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Worries about inflation, the economy, the lingering effects of the pandemic and other world wide crises have induced tension levels in the United States to surge to new highs. For some persons, that strain is demonstrating up on the scale.

There are a lot of organic mechanisms that explain why tension and nervousness can induce persons to pack on undesired kilos. In some situations, attaining pounds can by itself develop into a supply of worry and stigma that fuels further more bodyweight acquire.

Whilst we can’t remove every main resource of worry in our life, we can control — to some extent — the affect it has on our bodies. Researchers have located that there are ways to alleviate stress and retrain your mind to boost your diet program and protect against worry-induced fat achieve.

How stress encourages belly fat

Our bodies evolved to secrete the stress hormone cortisol when our mind senses danger. Cortisol elevates your coronary heart price, blood pressure and blood-sugar levels. In the brief term, cortisol guards you from speedy threats by sending your human body into fight-or-flight method. But when your job, funds and other situation ratchet up your strain stages on a regular foundation, it can lead to serious cortisol elevation.

How anxiety can harm your brain and entire body

Just one facet result of cortisol is that it promotes entire body excess fat, specially stomach and visceral fat, which is a especially harmful kind of fat that surrounds inside organs. Reports present that persons with higher cortisol stages have a tendency to have a better body mass index.

If you consistently grapple with tension, it can deliver indicators to your overall body to accumulate unwanted fat, said A. Janet Tomiyama, the head of the Dieting, Anxiety and Well being Lab at the College of California at Los Angeles.

“Even if you really do not adjust a one issue that you consume, the actuality that you are stressed is going to boost unwanted fat deposition,” mentioned Tomiyama, who has examined the mechanisms guiding pressure and weight problems.

Why a stressed mind makes you eat far more

In laboratory reports, experts have observed that administering artificial versions of cortisol to persons triggers them to consume substantially a lot more energy than men and women who are given a placebo. That’s in part because cortisol reduces your brain’s sensitivity to leptin, also regarded as the satiety hormone, which regulates your appetite and will make you come to feel comprehensive.

In a person analyze of department store personnel, men and women ate extra sugar, saturated fat and over-all calories when they experienced to do the job long, demanding shifts compared with when they worked fewer tense shifts with lighter workloads.

What are ultra-processed foodstuff? What should really I eat in its place?

Even worry from functions we get pleasure from can lead to overeating. In a single examine, researchers followed ardent football enthusiasts in distinctive towns. They uncovered that lovers whose NFL teams missing on Sunday consumed a lot more energy and saturated unwanted fat the subsequent working day. Fans whose groups gained ate significantly less foods and saturated extra fat the next day. The scientists observed comparable final results when they seemed at the dietary patterns of French soccer lovers.

Chocolate, candy, ice product and other comfort and ease foodstuff alleviate stress in element through their outcomes on the mind. They activate reward areas this sort of as the nucleus accumbens, flooding them with dopamine, the hormone that promotes satisfaction, and other neurotransmitters.

Some men and women find that in nerve-racking situations their appetites plummet. Experts are not really absolutely sure why strain potential customers some persons to the cookie jar and not other folks, but body weight seems to engage in a part. Some research counsel that insulin resistance, a precursor to variety 2 diabetes, which is far more common in individuals with obesity, may well spur variations in brain action that intensify meals cravings in reaction to tension.

How to retrain your mind to fight tension having

Although you cannot constantly decrease the pressure in your life, you can retrain your brain to want greater foods when you’re tension consuming.

In a research revealed very last calendar year, Tomiyama and her colleagues recruited 100 older people with elevated pressure ranges and break up them into two teams. Everybody was properly trained to do a everyday, 6-moment pressure reduction training named progressive muscle mass peace, which will involve tensing and relaxing your muscle tissues from toes to head. You can uncover an illustration of it here. This deep rest approach has been proven in scientific tests to lessen pressure and anxiousness.

But users of a person team had been assigned to try to eat a serving of clean fruit these kinds of as sliced pineapple, honeydew and pears, about 5 minutes into each and every of their every day progressive muscle mass relaxation sessions. Immediately after a single 7 days of this, the scientists uncovered that feeding on just the fruit alone created the contributors experience less stressed and put them in a improved mood. By pairing the fruit with a peace training, their brains began to watch the fruit as anything that diminished their stress ranges — primarily turning the fruit into convenience food.

“Anytime two points take place at the exact time your brain results in a connection among them,” Tomiyama mentioned. “By pairing peace and fruit alongside one another, your mind starts to see them as the very same detail. After a though, you will not even have to have to do the 6 minutes of relaxation: All you are going to will need to do is try to eat the fruit, and you will get that identical leisure benefit.”

Tomiyama provided a couple of guidelines for all those who want to try this.

Choose a sort of fruit that you really do not try to eat often, this kind of as star fruit, kiwi or mango. If new variations of these fruits are too pricey or inconvenient, use frozen fruit.
Attempt this workout at distinctive occasions of day and at unique destinations in your property or office environment. If you normally do this at your kitchen area table, it will only do the job at your kitchen table.
At occasions when you are feeling pressured or nervous, achieve for your “comfort fruit” rather of a bag of potato chips.

“This is a way to hack your comfort and ease eating habit for fantastic,” Tomiyama claimed.

Do you have a query about balanced feeding on? Electronic mail EatingLab@washpost.com and we may possibly reply your question in a potential column.

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The Best Foods for Heart Health, and What to Avoid

When it comes to your risk of heart disease, some factors are out of your control — like, say, your blood type. But other factors are more changeable, including your diet. Everyone from the American Heart Association to the US Department of Health and Human Services recommends making specific food choices to support a healthy heart. Because foods for heart health can reduce other potential cardiovascular issues — like high blood pressure and high cholesterol — it’s worth keeping in mind as you plan your weekly meals.

Keep reading to find out which foods to look for and what a heart-healthy diet looks like overall.

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What is a heart-healthy diet?

Studies have revealed two things: foods that are riskier for your heart and foods that strengthen it. Fortunately, you’re not about to get hit with a bunch of curveballs. The best foods for heart health are ones you probably already think of as healthy. Similarly, the not-so-heart-healthy foods are probably already on your radar for not doing your body any favors.

Before we dive in here, let’s say: everything in moderation. Unless you already know you have a heart health issue, you don’t need to cut out any foods or make drastic changes. We’re not saying you can never have another piece of bacon or crack open another soda. Instead, being mindful of what a heart-healthy diet looks like can help you incorporate more of those foods into your meals.

Now, let’s talk details. According to the AHA and Department of Health, a heart-healthy diet is rich in:

Produce
Lean proteins
Fiber-rich complex carbs
Healthy fats

A diet full of colorful fruits and vegetables, whole grains and healthy proteins and fats will give your body the fiber, vitamins and minerals it needs to support a healthy heart.

A bright rainbow spectrum of produce on a platter. — David Malan/Getty Images

Conversely, if you’re trying to boost cardiovascular health, you want to limit your intake of:

Trans fats
Saturated fats
Processed meats (for example, lunch meat, salami and hot dogs)
Excess salt
Excess sugar
Refined carbohydrates (for example, white breads and snacks)
Red meat
Excess alcohol

If a lot of your favorites are on the less heart-healthy list, don’t panic. You can still include them in your diet (unless your doctor says otherwise). Just make sure that these foods aren’t taking over every meal, and try to add as many heart-healthy foods into your day as you can.

Heart-healthy foods

Person in a long brown dress browses a grocery store aisle. — d3sign/Getty Images

If you want to feel good about what your next grocery trip will do for your heart health, you can grab items in these specific categories.

1. Fruits and vegetables

Remember the food pyramid from back in the day? It was on to something. Your body benefits from eating quite a bit of produce.

That’s because veggies and fruit load in a lot of nutritional density per bite. Bananas and sweet potatoes deliver potassium, a key mineral for heart health. Cruciferous veggies may help to prevent clogged arteries. Leafy greens deliver fiber, which can help to lower cholesterol and blood pressure.

Long story short, the more produce you’re packing in, the better. And if fresh produce doesn’t work for your budget or your lifestyle, don’t worry. You can get plenty of nutritional benefits from frozen, dried and canned options. Just make sure they’re marked low-sodium.

2. Whole grains

Not all carbs are bad. Refined carbs like the ones in white bread fly through your body, usually doing you more harm than good. But complex carbohydrates, like the ones you’ll find in whole grain products, deliver fiber, which we’ve already mentioned as a heart health booster.

Plus, they often come packed with vitamins and minerals like iron, selenium, thiamin (Vitamin B1), riboflavin (Vitamin B2), niacin (Vitamin B3), folate (Vitamin B9) and magnesium. If you’re looking for a heart-healthy diet, choose products that have whole grains in their ingredient list. Plus, complex carbs can also be found in beans, potatoes, peas and corn.

Fish tacos on a plate, with corn tortillas and fresh cilantro. — GSPictures/Getty Images

3. Lean and plant protein

While certain proteins — like red and processed meat — can be hard on your heart, others top the list of foods for heart health. The key here is to look for plant-based protein, lean animal proteins and fish. Experts recommend mixing up your protein sources. So you have plenty of options, stock up on:

Lentils
Beans
Nuts
Seeds
Tofu
Fish, especially ones high in omega-3 fatty acids
Eggs
Low-fat dairy products
Poultry
Seeds

Swap some of your red meat and cured pork for the options above and you’ll be doing your heart a favor.

4. Healthy fats

You might think that fat spells heart trouble, but it’s all about the type of fat. While trans and saturated fats have been linked to cardiovascular issues in numerous studies, your body, including your heart, needs healthy fats. You can get these from fish, nuts and seeds, along with avocados and moderate amounts of plant oils like:

Olive oil
Sesame oil
Sunflower
Soybean oil
Canola oil
Corn oil
Safflower oil

As a general rule of thumb, if the fat would be solid at room temp, it’s probably saturated. If it would be a liquid, it most likely falls under the unsaturated variety. Think butter (controversial for health) versus olive oil (definitely part of a heart-healthy diet).

Sesame oil pouring into a small dish. — SUNGMIN/Getty Images

5. Heart-check foods

The American Heart Association has certified certain foods for heart health and given them the Heart-Check seal, which you can find on some food packaging. Once you learn that seal, it can make it easier to stock your cart with foods for heart health.

For the best results, pair your heart-healthy diet with other heart health boosters like regular exercise, sleep and stress management techniques. It can also be helpful to learn your blood type and what it means for your risk of specific cardiovascular conditions.