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Sugar is added to so many food products, and with such a large number of other names for ’sugar,’ it can be really difficult to know what to look out for on the food label.
Note: After reading this, you may also be interested in How to Reduce Sugar Intake or discovering is there’s such a thing as Healthy Sugar.
So, here is a list to help you identify the different forms of sugar in your food:
- Barley malt
- Beet sugar
- Brown sugar
- Buttered syrup
- Cane juice crystals
- Cane sugar
- Caramel
- Corn syrup
- Corn syrup solids
- Confectioner’s sugar
- Carob syrup
- Castor sugar
- Date sugar
- Demerara sugar
- Dextran
- Dextrose
- Diastatic malt
- Diatase
- Ethyl maltol
- Fructose
- Fruit juice
- Fruit juice concentrate
- Galactose
- Glucose
- Glucose solids
- Golden sugar
- Golden syrup
- Grape sugar
- High-fructose corn syrup
- Honey
- Icing sugar
- Invert sugar
- Lactose
- Maltodextrin
- Maltose
- Malt syrup
- Maple syrup
- Molasses
- Muscovado sugar
- Panocha
- Raw sugar
- Refiner’s syrup
- Rice syrup
- Sorbitol
- Sorghum syrup
- Sucrose
- Sugar
- Treacle
- Turbinado sugar
- Yellow sugar
What other names for sugar can you think of?
Did you realise there were so many different terms used? It’s no wonder reading food labels can be confusing at times!
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I had no idea there were that many names for sugar! thanks for posting this!
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Hi Danielle,
I didn’t realise there were so many alternatives either. While is not necessary to totally avoid sugar, it’s useful to know what to look out for.
then of course, there’s the actual product that some how fails to mention anything….i.e. do those chup-pop (?sp) things actually any writing about sugar….I often hear people saying that
xyz is OK ’cause it says nuthink! so therefore it must be Ok!
I suspect there are other ways not to say all those words….like a – bet-ween something……so we are lured into believing it must be better because they have attached a good-thing to the product
Great list Mel – some of these are really sneaky, like the Ethyl maltol and Diatase
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An alternative name to “cane juice crystals” is “evaporated cane juice”.
E.g. sorbitol is a sugar alcohol (like its healthier cousin xylitol), not a sugar, strictly speaking.
Hi everyone,
Thanks for your comments.
Great list! the list is so long. a few more off the top of the head you might see on a package are:
Raisin syrup
Apple Sugar
Amasake
Barbados sugar
Carbitol
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One80 Fitness,
Thank you for adding more to the list, it seems we could go on for a long time yet adding to this. It’s really quite scary how many different forms of sugar there are out there!
One sugar substance I have discovered recently is sugar alcohol in so called sugar free candies. If you have any information about this sugar substance please let me know about it.
Hi Linda,
I found this article which you should find helpful in understanding what sugar alcohols are and what they do in the body.
Xanthan Gum is fermented corn sugar. Locust Bean Gum is a polysacharide made from the sugars galactos & mannose. Galactos is on the above list. Mannose is a hexose sugar monomer & I am unsure of the results when eaten.
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