Sugar Wears 56 Different Names

If you can't find sugar on the label, it's wearing a disguise.

Ever flip a box over, scan for "sugar," not see it, and assume you're safe? That's exactly the design.

The name game

There are more than 50 different names food labels use for added sugar. Cane juice, brown rice syrup, maltodextrin, dextrose, fruit juice concentrate, barley malt, agave nectar — all sugar, just parked in different spots on the ingredient list.

Why the disguise works

Ingredients are listed by weight. Split one sweetener into three differently-named sugars, and no single one has to appear near the top. A cereal can be mostly sugar and still list "whole grain oats" first. Death by a thousand syrups.

The "-ose" tip

A fast filter: most simple sugars end in -ose — glucose, fructose, dextrose, maltose. Anything ending in syrup, nectar, or juice concentrate is sugar too. Spot three or four of these on one label and you're looking at a dessert in a health-food costume.

The move

Don't just search for the word "sugar." Count the sweeteners. One near the bottom is normal. Three or four scattered through the list is a strategy.

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