Finding how much sugar is in a product can be tricky, and this is especially true of sugar-coated breakfast cereals. That label does list sugar as an ingredient, but other ingredients might include sweeteners such as corn syrup, fructose, dextrose, or honey. Actually, the product may contain more sweeteners than anything else.
The words fortified and enriched also hold traps in understanding. White bread, for example, may say enriched, but this is what it means: of the twenty-two nutrients processed out, eight are put back in. Although the product may be fortified with 100 percent of the Recommended Dietary or Daily Allowance (RDA) of various vitamins and minerals, the original product, especially if its a grain product, might have contained more of these nutrients and a wider variety of other nutrients.
Foods that are labeled organic are usually those grown without synthetic pesticides, fertilizer, or chemicals. The government is increasingly gaining greater oversight when it comes to labeling foods organic.
A list of ingredient is mandatory on most food products, and the ingredients must be listed in order of weight content in the food. For example, if water leads the list it is the primary ingredient. So the best advice is to read all the labeling carefully, including not only the ingredients list but also the number of calories, vitamin, and mineral content.
Robin Westen is ThirdAges medical reporter. Check for her daily updates. She is the author of Ten Days to Detox: How to Look and Feel a Decade Younger.
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