Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Processed Foods Are Even Sweeter Than You Think

(from mercola.com)

Food companies have doubled the amount of sugar they add to many of their products. Soups, cereals, and other foods have been heavily sweetened to attract more customers. Breakfast cereals have seen some of the biggest increases, but even whole grain bread now routinely contains almost a teaspoon of sugar in every three slices.

In 1978, Kellogg's Special K contained about 10 grams of sugar for every 100 grams of cereal, but that amount has now increased to 17 grams, very close to the sugar level of vanilla ice cream. Over the same period, the sugar per 100 grams in tomato soup has increased from less than 3 grams to more than 6 grams.

Processed foods contain some of the highest sugar content, often with levels close to or higher than 20 grams of sugar per 100 grams of food. Sugar consumption has been implicated in rising levels of tooth decay, diabetes, and obesity.

1 comment:

J shows said...

That is something that I am realizing. We are eating very few processed foods at home (we still need to work on what we eat elsewhere) so I really don't mind making cookies once in a while at home, since I know that we aren't getting near as much sugar as we used to.

Also, we have realized how much salt is in processed foods. It is crazy.