Sugar is playing hide and seek with you. You'd think it would be pretty easy for you to win, considering all the sugar in sodas, ice cream, candy, and big white bags labeled sugar. People get about half of their added sugars from those drinks and treats, so it might seem like sugar is hiding in plain sight, but like someone in the witness protection program, the other half is hidden in places you'd least suspect. Check the ingredients on ketchup, bologna, spaghetti sauce, soy milk, sports drinks, fish sticks, and peanut butter. You'll find sugar hiding in most of those products. In fact, you'll find added sugars in three-quarters of the more than 600,000 items available in grocery stores. But how is sugar hiding? Can't you just look on food labels? It's not that easy. Just like your friend Robert might go by Bob, Robby, Rob, Bobby, or Roberto, added sugar has a lot of aliases. And by a lot, we don't mean five or six, try fifty-six. There's brown rice syrup, barley malt, demerara, Florida Crystals, muscovado, and, of course, high fructose corn syrup, sometimes called HFCS, or corn sugar. Even sugar's tricky nicknames have nicknames. Grape or apple concentrate has the same effects on your body as its 55 sugary twins. And even though organic evaporated cane juice sounds healthy, when you evaporate it, you get sugar! Chemically speaking, it's all the same. And even trickier, when multiple added types of sugars are used in one type of product, they get buried down in a long list of ingredients, so the sugar content might appear to be okay, but when you add them all together, sugar can be the single biggest ingredient. Currently, the FDA doesn't suggest a recommended daily limit for sugar, so it's hard to tell if this 65 grams in a bottle of soda is a little or a lot. But the World Health Organization recommends limiting sugar to just 5% of your total calories, or about 25 grams per day. So, 65 grams is well over twice that amount. But just what is sugar? What's the difference between glucose and fructose? Well, both are carbohydrates with the same chemical composition of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. But they have very different structures and behave quite differently in our bodies. Glucose is the best source of energy for nearly all organisms on Earth. It can be metabolized by all organs in the body. Fructose, on the other hand, is metabolized primarily in the liver, and when your liver gets overloaded with sweet, sweet fructose, the excess is metabolized to fat. Fresh fruits actually contain fructose, but it's naturally occurring and doesn't cause an overload because the fiber in fruit slows its absorption. This gives your liver the time it needs to do its job. It's sugar that makes cookies chewy and candy crunchy. It even turns bread crust a beautiful, golden brown. It's also a great preservative; it doesn't spoil or evaporate, so the foods it's added to are easier to store and ship long distances and tend to be cheaper. That's why sugar is hiding everywhere. Actually, it might be easier to list the foods that added sugar isn't hiding in, things like: vegetables, eggs, meats, fish, fruit, raw nuts, even your kitchen sink. Simply choosing water over soda, juices, and sports drinks is a great way to avoid hidden added sugar. At the very least, try to pay attention to food labels, so you can keep your sugar intake at a healthy level. Because in this game of hide and seek, every time you don't find added sugar, you win!
食物中的糖喜欢和你捉迷藏 你可能认为找到它非常容易 因为所有的糖都可以在苏打水,冰激凌, 糖果以及贴了糖分标签的白色食品包装带中发现。 人类大概有一半的添加糖 来源于这些饮料以及零食, 所以看起来糖份 藏在我们可见的范围内, 但是就像显而易见反而容易被忽略一样, 他们就藏在你的眼皮底下。 查看番茄酱,波隆那熏肠, 意大利面条酱,豆浆,功能饮料 鱼条和花生酱的原材料。 你会发现糖分大部分隐藏在这些食物当中。 事实上,你会发现 在超过60多万种的杂货店食物中, 三分之二都含有添加糖。 那么糖分是如何藏起来的呢? 难道不可以只看标签吗? 其实没有那么容易。 就像你的朋友罗伯特 可能被叫做鲍勃,罗比,罗博,鲍比,或者是罗伯托, 添加糖有很多不同的名字。 而且这种很多,并不是说5,6种, 而是56种。 像是糙米糖浆,大麦芽, 德梅拉拉蔗糖,佛罗里达晶体,黑砂糖, 以及玉米糖浆, 有时简称为 HFCS(果葡糖浆),或者是玉米葡萄糖。 甚至糖分这些种类繁多的名字也有小名。 葡萄或者苹果果汁对身体有着相同的影响 与它的55个相似糖一样。 尽管有机浓缩甘蔗汁听着很健康, 但是当你对它脱水后, 你就能得到糖分! 化学意义上来说,它们是一样的。 更加棘手的是, 当不同种类添加糖 用在同一类产品中时, 它们被藏在长长的原料名单中, 所以含糖量看起来是低的, 但是当你把它们全部加起来, 糖分会变成最多的原料。 如今,FDA(食品药品监督管理局)并没有建议 适当的每日糖分摄入量, 所以不好判断一瓶苏打水中65克的糖 是多还是少。 但是世界卫生组织建议 糖分控制在一天摄入的所有卡路里中的5%, 或者25克每天。 所以,65克远超过了这个数值的两倍。 但是什么是糖? 葡萄糖和果糖的差别是什么? 他们都是碳水化合物 有着相同的化学元素, 比如碳,氢,氧。 但是它们的结构却大不同, 并且在人体内产生的作用也不一样。 葡萄糖是提供能量的最好来源, 对地球上所有的生物来说。 它能被在生体内的所有器官吸收代谢。 另一方面,果糖, 主要是在肝脏中进行新陈代谢, 并且当你的肝脏中有过多 甜甜的果糖, 超出的部分便会转化为脂肪。 事实上,新鲜的水果含有果糖, 但是这是自然形成的 不会导致过多的果糖存在于肝脏中, 因为水果中的纤素维会减缓它的吸收。 并让你的肝脏有足够的时间 去完成它的工作。 是糖分让曲奇有嚼劲, 并让糖果香脆。 它甚至让面包皮呈现出漂亮的金黄色。 它同时也是很好的保卫者; 它既不会被破坏也不会蒸发, 所以添加的食物能够更加容易的 储存并且可以远距离运送, 并且更加便宜。 这就是为什么糖分藏在各个地方。 事实上,标记不含添加糖的食物 或许会更容易一些, 比如:蔬菜,鸡蛋,肉, 鱼,水果,生坚果,甚至你厨房的水池。 简单来说,选择喝水代替苏打,果汁以及运动饮料 是一种更好的方法避免摄入添加糖。 最后, 尝试去关注食物的标签, 这样你就可以保持糖分摄取量在一个健康的标准。 因为在这场捉迷藏中 每当你找到不含添加糖的食物的时候, 你就赢了!