Hidden sugars: Watch out for these foods you consume every day. The nutritionist's advice to "find" them on the label

Sugar is hidden in many commonly used products including tomato sauces and purees. The nutritionist tells us how to avoid it

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There are really many foods that, surprisingly, contain more or less significant quantities of "hidden" sugars. How to protect us? We always pay attention to the labels! "Our" nutritionist gives us some advice on this.

We add it to coffee, tea or other drinks, we use it to prepare sweets but also some savory recipes. Let's talk about sugar, which in the cases listed we use consciously. As consumers, however, we may happen to buy foods or drinks that contain "hidden" sugars.

Obviously the presence of sugar (or similar) is actually indicated on the label but, if we do not have the good habit of reading it, we could put in the cart some products that we think are sugar-free and that instead increase the daily level of intake of these substances.

We asked the nutritionist Flavio Pettirossi which are the most "unsuspected" foods to watch out for. As he explained to us, sugar is used in the preparation of many foods including:

le canned tomatoes and ready-made sauces (the tomato itself is acidic and therefore the sugar helps to compensate for the taste)
i cold cuts like cooked ham and mortadella
all kinds of sausage
i breakfast cereals (pay attention to those enriched with chocolate, honey and various icings)
thebalsamic vinegar
le breading of packaged foods
la mayonnaise
il packaged bread

But that is not all:

Soups, minestrone and frozen side dishes are also rich in it, precisely because sugar, in addition to being used for sweetening, acts as a thickener. Furthermore you must always pay attention to light foods, in fact, the wording "low in fat" often hides the pitfall of adding sugar in an attempt to compensate for the loss of taste.

Read the labels carefully

Doctor Pettirossi advises us to always carefully read the labels of the food and drinks we buy: When reading the label, remember that sugar hides under many names and it is not certain that in the list of ingredients we find the classic wording "sugar" . We can also find other names, such as sucrose, cane sugar, invert sugar, glucose syrup, fructose syrup. Fructose, lactose, maltose, dextrins, starch syrup with fructose, maltodextrin, mannitol, malt syrup, dehydrated sugar juice, evaporated sugar juice or concentrated apple juice, maple syrup, rice syrup, are also often used. sorghum syrup, agave juice, manna. In summary, if you want to avoid sugars, be careful that one or more of the following ingredients are not found on the label: