Everyone is talking about sugar. It is recommended that we consume no more than 6 teaspoons of sugar a day but most of us are consuming more than that, creating innumerable long-term health problems. How can we know how much sugar, especially the hidden sugars that manufacturers often disguise on food labelling, is in the food that we consume? While naturally occurring sugars in fresh fruit and milk do not have the same harmful effects, we have no way of knowing the difference just by looking at the food label. Labelling may show the total sugar content of everyday foods but that doesn’t reveal the whole picture, as not all sugars are unhealthy. Since food manufacturers are still not required to list added sugars, the Smart Person’s Guide to Hidden Sugars will help you to decode food labels, enabling you to understand what you’re buying, what you’re eating and its effect on your health. Dr Elizabeth Roberts, a dietician who specialises in nutritional advice to prevent and treat illness, draws on the 2015 CoFID database, the most up-to-date scientific guide to the sugar actually in your food, to provide a breakdown of the healthy naturally occurring sugars and the unhealthy added sugars in over 3,000 common foods in an accessible form.
