Sugar In Food

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Geektastic

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#205021 26-Oct-2016 21:28

So this has been in the news a lot.

Generally I try and avoid unnecessary sugar and make sensible choices (except when in cake stores...).

I often have weetbix (which I have to try hard not to call by the UK name - weetabix!) and noticed that, whilst ostensibly being a healthy cereal, it has sugar added as an ingredient.

Given that a lot of people add sugar to breakfast cereals (I do not but used to) I was wondering exactly why it is necessary to add sugar to weetbix at all? Anyone work in food science and have an idea?

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#1658570 26-Oct-2016 21:41

I also watch the amount of sugar I have...but it is still too much.

I am quite anti taxing sugary drinks etc as this disadvantages the poorer people more than the well off.

The campaigns of the heart foundation over the decades are to blame to a degree....they encouraged companies to reduce fat in their products and in turn got a red tick (for a large fee). The companies simply swapped fat for sugar in their products which has helped create this problem.

As usual education is really the key.

cynnicallemon

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#1658584 26-Oct-2016 21:50

Pumpedd:

I am quite anti taxing sugary drinks etc as this disadvantages the poorer people more than the well off.

You could say the same about the tax on smoking cigarettes too.

Pumpedd

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#1658589 26-Oct-2016 21:56

cynnicallemon:

Pumpedd:

I am quite anti taxing sugary drinks etc as this disadvantages the poorer people more than the well off.

You could say the same about the tax on smoking cigarettes too.

I see what you are saying....sugar in moderation is fine...tobacco in any quantity is not.

Geektastic

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#1658591 26-Oct-2016 22:02

Pumpedd:

cynnicallemon:

Pumpedd:

I am quite anti taxing sugary drinks etc as this disadvantages the poorer people more than the well off.

You could say the same about the tax on smoking cigarettes too.

I see what you are saying....sugar in moderation is fine...tobacco in any quantity is not.

I don't know about that. I suspect that tobacco in moderation is not THAT bad for you. For example, if you smoked one cigar a year on your birthday it is probably not going to contribute significantly to anything much risk-wise.

The problem with tobacco is that moderation is something that it's very nature discourages.

Fred99

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#1658599 26-Oct-2016 22:14

WRT Weetbix, the nutritional label shows about 3.3g / 100g. Not sure how many weetbix bikkies weigh 100g, but they're dry/light, and I'd guess quite a few.

"Sugar" is listed as an ingredient, but some of the "sugar" in the nutritional panel will be from maltose (from malt extract) as opposed to "sucrose" (cane sugar).

Seriously, I wouldn't worry about it too much - unless you're piling masses of sugar on top. You'd be eating half a packet before you'd be getting near the sugar (sucrose) content of a glass of soft drink or chocolate milk or orange juice.

Sucrose (and in particular the 50% of sucrose which is fructose) has certain implications and intake should be limited - IMO - but there's not much sucrose in weetbix. How much - I don't know - the labelling system sucks, sucrose and fructose content should be stated in the same way that trans fats are required to be separately identified in many products, IMO. However, that creates a problem for sellers of products containing "natural" sugars from fruit etc, where content and composition will vary.

OTOH, most of the rest of it is starch, which your digestive system starting with saliva converts to glucose very quickly, the only thing stopping it from dumping a lot of glucose directly in to your bloodstream quickly (which might not be a great idea) is the fibre content - which is there - but not "high". I don't know. There's also a lot of wheat (obviously) and gluten, the gluten an issue to people with celiac disease, but it's also loaded with other proteins and fodmaps as well as the starch, and there's some evidence that perhaps that's not great either, with some possible unusual effects (on gut health, and from there on general health).

In the end, I don't think anybody knows, the more I learn, the more I realise how little "experts" know - and worse, how many "experts" are just salesman selling mass-produced food from global producers. As soon as I feel that way, I have some idiot telling me that if I eat a pomegranate or an avocado or a handful of raw nuts a day, I'll be fathering children when I'm 125 years old - in my spare time between mountaineering and triathlons. I don't believe them either.

TL:DR version:
There's not much sugar in Weetbix - if you're OK with a high wheat/grain diet, just eat it.

Fred99

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#1658602 26-Oct-2016 22:20

Pumpedd:

I see what you are saying....sugar in moderation is fine...tobacco in any quantity is not.

I'm very unsure what "moderation" in sugar intake means to the average person.

Data I've mined from NZ import stats suggests that the average intake of added sugar (sucrose) in NZ is at least five times higher than the recommended maximum intake by WHO.

Geektastic

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#1658604 26-Oct-2016 22:24

Fred99:

WRT Weetbix, the nutritional label shows about 3.3g / 100g. Not sure how many weetbix bikkies weigh 100g, but they're dry/light, and I'd guess quite a few.

"Sugar" is listed as an ingredient, but some of the "sugar" in the nutritional panel will be from maltose (from malt extract) as opposed to "sucrose" (cane sugar).

Seriously, I wouldn't worry about it too much - unless you're piling masses of sugar on top. You'd be eating half a packet before you'd be getting near the sugar (sucrose) content of a glass of soft drink or chocolate milk or orange juice.

Sucrose (and in particular the 50% of sucrose which is fructose) has certain implications and intake should be limited - IMO - but there's not much sucrose in weetbix. How much - I don't know - the labelling system sucks, sucrose and fructose content should be stated in the same way that trans fats are required to be separately identified in many products, IMO. However, that creates a problem for sellers of products containing "natural" sugars from fruit etc, where content and composition will vary.

OTOH, most of the rest of it is starch, which your digestive system starting with saliva converts to glucose very quickly, the only thing stopping it from dumping a lot of glucose directly in to your bloodstream quickly (which might not be a great idea) is the fibre content - which is there - but not "high". I don't know. There's also a lot of wheat (obviously) and gluten, the gluten an issue to people with celiac disease, but it's also loaded with other proteins and fodmaps as well as the starch, and there's some evidence that perhaps that's not great either, with some possible unusual effects (on gut health, and from there on general health).

In the end, I don't think anybody knows, the more I learn, the more I realise how little "experts" know - and worse, how many "experts" are just salesman selling mass-produced food from global producers. As soon as I feel that way, I have some idiot telling me that if I eat a pomegranate or an avocado or a handful of raw nuts a day, I'll be fathering children when I'm 125 years old - in my spare time between mountaineering and triathlons. I don't believe them either.

TL:DR version:
There's not much sugar in Weetbix - if you're OK with a high wheat/grain diet, just eat it.

Thanks. I just wondered as the sugar was listed as an ingredient, which implied to me that they were actually pouring the stuff in at the factory. I just couldn't really see why they would bother with that.

If I stop eating wheat, I'll be left with meat and potatoes...! ;-)

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Fred99

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#1658636 26-Oct-2016 22:34

There's certainly some sugar added - but not very much. I just looked it up, each weetbix weighs about 15g - you'd need to eat more than 8 to get one teaspoon (~5g) of added sugar.

I used to manage 6 when I was about 14 - but then I had to ride my bike, without a helmet, 10km to school.

cynnicallemon

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#1658656 26-Oct-2016 23:26

Fred99:

WRT Weetbix, the nutritional label shows about 3.3g / 100g. Not sure how many weetbix bikkies weigh 100g, but they're dry/light, and I'd guess quite a few.

I'm a three-a-day guy so they better not start taxing them. If not that then a good bowl of porridge to start the day off.

mattwnz

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#1658660 26-Oct-2016 23:41

I don't know why they put sugar in weetbix. It doesn't taste like it has it in it. There was a product I used to eat called something like vitabix or similar which didn't have any additives, just wheat, and it tasted better than weetbix. But my local store stopped selling it years ago.

Fred99

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#1658753 27-Oct-2016 09:34

I think you'll find, if you stroll down the breakfast food aisle, that Weetbix may be about the lowest total sugar content processed cereal product on the shelf. Some - particularly the stuff targeted to kids - is loaded with sugar, including many so-called "healthy" muesli-ish options.

As for breakfast, I usually skip it, because I don't feel like eating until I've been up for a while.

I (like most of us) bought in to the "common wisdom" that "breakfast is the most important meal of the day". I think nutritionists bought in to that as well. Turns out that it's not based on anything scientific, but was a bloody good way for Kelloggs etc to drum up business in the breakfast cereal market. Some kids won't eat brekky willingly either, hence the very unfortunate result that the breakfast food makers loaded masses of sugar into some cereals to make them "irresistible" to kids - when it's probably very much more harmful to feed them crap like that than let them skip breakfast. That relieves parental guilt, that they could be "neglecting kids" by not providing them with the "most important meal of the day".

Very slick marketing. Even slicker than one of Kelloggs earlier brainwaves - that feeding kids bland cornflakes etc would eliminate the scourge of masturbation.

networkn

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#1658755 27-Oct-2016 09:39

Fred99:

There's certainly some sugar added - but not very much. I just looked it up, each weetbix weighs about 15g - you'd need to eat more than 8 to get one teaspoon (~5g) of added sugar.

I used to manage 6 when I was about 14 - but then I had to ride my bike, without a helmet, 10km to school.

Up hill in both directions in the snow? :)

Fred99

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#1658759 27-Oct-2016 09:54

networkn:

Fred99:

There's certainly some sugar added - but not very much. I just looked it up, each weetbix weighs about 15g - you'd need to eat more than 8 to get one teaspoon (~5g) of added sugar.

I used to manage 6 when I was about 14 - but then I had to ride my bike, without a helmet, 10km to school.

Up hill in both directions in the snow? :)

Not quite - but that reminds me, on good frosty mornings, that achy feeling as you were trying to defrost your fingers on the radiator.

Stay well behaved until at least morning interval - you didn't want "six of the best" on semi-frozen hands.

networkn

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#1658761 27-Oct-2016 09:58

Fred99:

networkn:

Fred99:

There's certainly some sugar added - but not very much. I just looked it up, each weetbix weighs about 15g - you'd need to eat more than 8 to get one teaspoon (~5g) of added sugar.

I used to manage 6 when I was about 14 - but then I had to ride my bike, without a helmet, 10km to school.

Up hill in both directions in the snow? :)

Not quite - but that reminds me, on good frosty mornings, that achy feeling as you were trying to defrost your fingers on the radiator.

Stay well behaved until at least morning interval - you didn't want "six of the best" on semi-frozen hands.

Heh, thankfully whilst I was raised in a small farming community (Springdale in case anyone cares) and it was damn cold riding to school, by the time I got to schooling, caning was pretty much done away with, though my principal could still find ways to make you wish you had been well behaved. Having said that, through my entire school career, I never got a detention, not even a class one (I refused to be punished for things I didn't do, which got me hauled in front of the Principal @ my high school a couple of times. I actually won those arguments.

robjg63

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#1658773 27-Oct-2016 10:16

I think the problem is the huge amounts of extra sugar they pour into drinks (and some other products) to make them more 'appealing'.

There was an NZ tv show about food etc a few years back (Whats really in our food? - I think it was).

They got some common brands of 'fruit juice' - they all contained added extra sugar.

They modified some of the juices to reduce the sugar content by about 50%.

In taste tests with kids at a school, most preferred the lower sugar version of the products.

You get used to sugar and it becomes a bit addictive. I used to have 4 tsp of sugar in a cup of tea when I was up to my mid 20s. Likewise coffee. I cut it out completely and sugar in those drinks seems to taste wrong now. Dont get me wrong - I LOVE cakes and sweet things from time to time - as a treat - but you are in the hands of the manufacturers if the products come from a factory.

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