Sugar is not always conveniently labelled as “sugar” in a food product’s ingredients list. The food industry comes up with other names for sugar that don’t seem so bad – think “brown rice syrup” or “organic raw sugar” – to hide the real amount of added sugar in their products, says Dr Robert Lustig, Professor of paediatrics at the University of California and author of Sugar Has 56 Names: A Shopper’s Guide.
Here are the names (Note: * = contains fructose, or what Lustig calls “alcohol without the buzz”. Fructose, he says, causes seven times as much cell damage as does glucose, because it binds to cellular proteins seven times faster; and it releases 100 times the number of oxygen radicals, which kills everything in sight.)
1. Agave nectar*
2. Barbados sugar*
3. Barley malt
4. Beet sugar*
5. Blackstrap molasses*
6. Brown rice syrup*
7. Brown sugar*
8. Buttered syrup*
9. Cane juice crystals*
10. Cane sugar*
11. Caramel*
12. Carob syrup*
13. Castor sugar*
14. Confectioner’s sugar*
15. Corn syrup
16. Corn syrup solids
17. Crystalline fructose*
18. Date sugar*
19. Demerara sugar*
20. Dextran
21. Dextrose
22. Diastatic malt
23. Diatase
24. Ethyl maltol
25. Evaporated cane juice*
26. Florida crystals*
27. Fructose*
28. Fruit juice*
29. Fruit juice concentrate*
30. Galactose
31. Glucose
32. Glucose solids
33. Golden sugar*
34. Golden syrup*
35. Grape sugar*
36. High-fructose corn syrup*
37. Honey*
38. Icing sugar*
39. Invert sugar*
40. Lactose
41. Malt syrup
42. Maltose
43. Maple syrup*
44. Molasses*
45. Muscovado sugar*
46. Organic raw sugar*
47. Panocha*
48. Raw sugar*
49. Refiner’s syrup*
50. Rice syrup
51. Sorghum syrup*
52. Sucrose*
53. Sugar*
54. Treacle*
55. Turbinado sugar*
56. Yellow sugar*
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