With kids in the house I find I'm more careful about reading labels in the grocery store. No big surprise, pretty much everything has too much sugar in it. But I recently came across several food items that shocked me.
Applesauce
I was shocked to learn that most applesauce brands add sugar. It's so bad in fact that it's very difficult to find applesauce without added sugar or corn syrup, unless you're shopping at a healthfood store or someplace like Trader Joes. Seriously, why do they add sugar to applesauce? Isn't applesauce sweet enough without added sugar? I guess the answer is no or else they wouldn't do it.
Peanut Butter
For a long time now I've only used "natural" peanut butter. Natural peanut butter can be made with a single ingredient - peanuts. Although sometimes they add salt or even a little bit of oil (to help stabilize it). I was recently on a trip shopping in a major chain grocery store for peanut butter. One major brand of natural peanut butter (I don't remember which one) boasted on the front of the label that it contained 90% peanuts. Um, natural peanut butter should be 100% peanuts, so what is this other 10%, and why are they so proud of it? Reading the ingredients the other 10% was sugar! Seriously, they put sugar in peanut butter!?! I couldn't believe it.
Costco has a brand of applesauce that has no sugar, that my kids seem to find acceptable.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing that has a ton of sugar (well high fructose corn syrup) that I wouldn't have thought is ketchup. I mean it's supposed to be savory/salty right? Why the HFCS/Sugar?