There are millions of people in the US who are making sacrifices to reclaim their health. They’re taking a step away from old habits and are working to form new, better ones. These are the people who are trying their hardest to make it to the gym, think consciously about their food intake and improve their overall wellness.

A large percentage of these people are being done a disservice by the food industry. Everywhere you look you will find products that claim to be healthy. You may recognize these buzzwords:

• “Low fat!”

• “Low calorie!”

• “Organic”

• “Non-GMO”

In some instances, these buzzwords aren’t the end of the world. The issue arises when marketers take advantage of them to try and package something that isn’t healthy as healthy. If you look on the back of packages that have these phrases boldly emblazoned across the front of them, you’ll most likely find a TON of sugar and ingredients you can’t pronounce.

Let’s take a second to unpackage that last sentence and go into the details of why sugar isn’t ideal. We all know sugar isn’t good for us, but why exactly is that?

According to Medical News Today:

1. ‘Lacks nutritional value: Sugar is an empty calorie. Adding it to foods and drinks significantly increases their calorie content without adding any nutritional benefit. The body usually digests these foods and drinks quickly. This means that they are not a good source of energy. Products that naturally contain sugar are different. For example, fruits and dairy products contain natural sugars. The body digests these foods at a slower rate, making them a lasting source of energy.

2. Can cause weight gain: A significant risk of consuming excess dietary sugar is weight gain. In most cases, sugary foods and drinks are high in calories. Consuming too many of these products will lead to weight gain, even with regular exercise. There is strong evidence showing that excess dietary sugar is a cause of weight gain. As the body usually digests products containing added sugars more quickly, they do not offset hunger for very long. This can lead to eating more regularly throughout the day and a greater calorie intake overall. There is also some evidence to suggest that sugar can affect the biological pathways that regulate hunger. Leptin is a hormone that regulates hunger by determining how much energy the body needs. Disruption to leptin functioning can lead to weight gain and obesity.

3. Increases risk of diabetes: There is a link between consuming sugary drinks and developing type 2 diabetes. It is not true that sugar causes diabetes. A high-calorie diet of any kind can lead to type 2 diabetes. However, in most cases, diets high in sugar are high in calories. This can increase the risk of diabetes. Sugary drinks are particularly problematic. A meta-analysis of data from 310,819 people found that those with a high consumption of sugary drinks had a 26 percent greater risk of type 2 diabetes than those with a low consumption. The study defined "high consumption" as between one and two sugary drinks per day.

4. Can cause tooth cavities: After eating sugar, bacteria in the mouth form a thin layer of plaque over the teeth. These bacteria react with the sugars present in foods and drinks. This reaction triggers the release of an acid that damages teeth.

5. Increases risk of heart disease: High-sugar diets may increase the risk of heart disease. The results of a 15-year study suggest that people with a lot of added sugar in their diet are significantly more likely to die from heart disease than people with minimal amounts of added sugar in their diet. Again, research suggests that sugary drinks may be particularly problematic for increasing the risk of heart disease. This association may be because sugary drinks are high in calories, do not affect hunger, and provide an insufficient amount of energy. Although there is a clear link, more research will be necessary to better understand the relationship between sugar and heart disease.’

Below are foods that are designed to look and feel healthy, but can actually contain way more sugar, overall calories or unfortunate ingredients than is advertised.

Yogurt:

Yogurt can be healthy. For instance Greek yogurt (if you tolerate dairy) is healthy for a lot of the reasons it’s been marketed: it contains live cultures and bacteria. The problem is not ALL yogurt is healthy. If you pick up the flavored, “light and fit,” “low calorie” or “low fat” types of yogurt, they very likely contain a lot of added sugar. Look at the nutrition label on the back, some small cups of yogurt can have up to 21 grams of added sugar, and the number two ingredient will be fructose.

“Organic” foods:

This pertains to foods that are already unhealthy. Marketers know that when we see “organic” on a label, we consider it to be better than something without. With this in mind, you can find a wide array of organic foods that are clearly still not healthy. On shelves you can find organic Pop Tarts, cookies, ice cream and more. Just because something is organic doesn’t automatically make it healthy, in many cases these are still sugar-packed processed foods.

Smoothies:

Say you go to Panera bread and you pick up a smoothie to be healthy, they blend up some fruit, maybe throw some protein in there, sounds good, right? That smoothie is really just LOADED with sugar. Yes, fruit has a lot of sugar in it, but fruit also has fiber that helps counteract the sugar. The smoothie, on the other hand, allows you to consume so many pieces of fruit at once, while not getting the benefit of chewing the food or the fiber. Especially if you go out somewhere and get a smoothie. In a smoothie bar or a restaurant, you don’t know what is going in your smoothie. Most contain between 40 and 55 grams, not just of carbohydrates, but of straight-up sugar. When you make your own smoothies, they can be healthier, but when you’re drinking something versus eating it, your body will respond differently. If you drink 300 calories versus eat 300 calories, you will be much hungrier much faster after drinking 300 calories than eating it.

Juice Cleanses:

These are really just a way to disguise starving yourself. The reason people drop weight (mostly water weight) is because you haven’t eaten. The better way to get the marketed effect of a juice cleanse is to eat close to the same quantity of food you did before (or just a little under) but really focus on improving the quality of the food you consume. Try to consume as many whole, unprocessed foods as you can.

Dried Fruit:

What happens when you dry fruit? You put it through a process, so it is no longer a whole unprocessed food. In that process, you suck out the water and fiber, and all the sugar stays. On top of that, many dried fruit products you buy in the store have sugar added ON TOP of that. Plus, it is extremely easy to overeat dried fruit, it's like sweet little candy that you feel better about. If you dry your own fruit it is better, although you still sacrifice fiber. The biggest ones to look out for are the products with even more sugar added.

Iced Tea:

Iced tea by itself is a great thing, it is even considered a superfood by some individuals. The problem here is that companies like Arizona will then pile a ton of sugar into it. Arizona Green Tea has 47 grams of sugar in it, because they know it tastes better and keeps people buying the product.

Energy and Sports Drinks:

These are marketed to us as being absolutely vital if you want to be competitive at the next level of your endeavor. You won’t make the basketball team without Gatorade, you won’t go to the X Games without Monster. Really, these things are loaded with sugar and food dye. There is a time and a place for things like Gatorade, but many people consume it when it isn’t necessary. If you’re about to enter hour two of summer football training camp, that is the time for Gatorade. Drinking it as a snack when you get home or with a meal is not necessary. Your body has nothing to use those carbs for, so they’ll get stored as body fat instead.

Coffee Drinks:

This is in the same vein as the iced tea section above; black coffee is great. I drink it everyday, and many people practicing intermittent fasting use coffee to help stay on track in the morning time when they’re not eating yet. The problem here is the crazy drinks coffee places come up with. Look at a “Frappuccino,” that is really just ice cream, whipped cream, syrup and a little bit of coffee. Not even touching on the sugar, Frappuccinos have upwards of 500 CALORIES alone. For the same calorie content you could either get a Frappuccino from Starbucks or a Big Mac.

Wraps:

Wraps can also be healthy things, but people tend to regard wraps as being vastly better for you than bread based sandwiches. A normal wrap is the equivalent of one and a half slices of bread, so it’s a little bit better, but it doesn’t have the big “because it's a wrap, it’s healthier than a sandwich” feeling that is associated with it. I do it too, when I’m traveling and I need to pick something up quickly, I’ll go for the wrap because it feels “healthier.” That notion doesn’t make any sense, it’s still a sandwich, you just hold it differently.

Rice:

Rice is a good food, the only issue is that it is so so easy to overeat. One cup of rice has 45g of carbohydrates, which is perfectly fine for a meal. For the carb content of a meal, that can be really good. But, most people consume much more than one cup. In a dish with rice, the rice becomes the base of the meal, and people can consume 2-3 servings of rice at one meal. If you are looking to lose weight or get healthier, the better option would be to focus on getting carbs from vegetables, and if you just like rice really focus on your serving sizes.

Sauce and Dressing:

These substances add up over the course of the week, and in a meal. People will make up this great salad, and then pour a hydrogenated vegetable oil based sauce all over it. Or people will use large amounts of barbecue sauce, teriyaki sauce, or even ketchup on their foods. One tablespoon of ketchup, which is a pretty small amount, contains 4g of sugar. In one tablespoon, that’s a fair amount. Over the course of a week, that’s a lot of sugar that you don’t even realize you’re taking in. Instead, choose things like mustards (check the label) for sauce and olive oil based dressings.

Protein Bars:

So many protein bars that are marketed as healthy are really just candy bars with protein mixed in. There are some good options for protein bars: Quest bars, RX bars and GoMacro (plant based) are a few good examples. Check the nutrition label for any bar you’re looking to try, check how much sugar (surprise!) and carbs it has, as well as how many servings are in the package. Some protein bars will boast “30g of protein,” but will not tell you on the front that there’s two servings in the package, with 20g of carbs and 15g of protein per serving. So that would actually be 40g of carbs per package. Not nearly as good as it sounded before, right? Also check out the ingredients, try to stick to bars with more ingredients you can pronounce and understand.

Bonus round! Here’s a list of words that can show up on ingredient labels, that are really just another way to say sugar! There are 61 different ways to say sugar on an ingredient label:

• Agave nectar

• Barbados sugar

• Barley malt

• Barley malt syrup

• Beet sugar

• Brown sugar

• Buttered syrup

• Cane juice

• Cane juice crystals

• Cane sugar

• Caramel

• Carob syrup

• Castor sugar

• Coconut palm sugar

• Coconut sugar

• Confectioner's sugar

• Corn sweetener

• Corn syrup

• Corn syrup solids

• Date sugar

• Dehydrated cane juice

• Demerara sugar

• Dextrin

• Dextrose

• Evaporated cane juice

• Free-flowing brown sugars

• Fructose

• Fruit juice

• Fruit juice concentrate

• Glucose

• Glucose solids

• Golden sugar

• Golden syrup

• Grape sugar

• HFCS (High-Fructose Corn Syrup)

• Honey

• Icing sugar

• Invert sugar

• Malt syrup

• Maltodextrin

• Maltol

• Maltose

• Mannose

• Maple syrup

• Molasses

• Muscovado

• Palm sugar

• Panocha

• Powdered sugar

• Raw sugar

• Refiner's syrup

• Rice syrup

• Saccharose

• Sorghum

• Syrup

• Sucrose

• Sugar (granulated)

• Sorghum

• Syrup

• Treacle

• Turbinado sugar

• Yellow sugar

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