Sugar content of food

This appears to be the most relevant site to post my question about the sugar content of foods. For the various sugar products that I have come across recently, it appears that typically one teaspoon contains 4 grams of sugar. I use this relationship to gauge how much sugar is added to commercial products.

But I'm also curious about natural products. So for instance I currently have a bag of dates (the only ingredient) and the label says that 5 dates contain 29 grams of sugar, so about 6 grams per date. Using the above relationship, that implies that each date is equivalent to consuming about one and a half teaspoons of sugar. So having a few dates is equivalent to consuming several teaspoons of sugar? Is this a correct way to think about it?

food-science sugar

Best Answer

That is actually correct - depending on the fruit you may be looking at different sugar component ratios (fructose/glucose), but ultimately, fruit is sweet because it contains sugar.

If you looking at dried fruit, the loss of water means a lot of concentrated sugar remains - and if you remember how sugar is made, it’s to be expected.

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How do you calculate sugar content in food?

Here's how to translate from calories to grams to teaspoons. Use the \u201cdivide by 4\u201d rule of simple sugar math. Take the calories and divide by 4 to get the grams of added sugar. For 200 calories, this is 50 grams.

Which foods have high sugar content?

The main foods that contain added sugar include:

Candy.
Cakes.
Cookies.
Pies and cobblers.
Sweet rolls, pastries, and doughnuts.
Dairy desserts, such as ice cream and yogurt.
Sugar sweetened drinks, such as soft drinks, sports drinks, energy drinks, and juice drinks.

What is sugar content?

Sugar content was predominantly distributed amongst lactose, sucrose, maltose or glucose (77.5 \xb1 34, 68.6 \xb1 28.5, 19.1 \xb1 24.7 and 6.6 \xb1 10.1%, respectively), in products that contained said sugars, with little to no free fructose or galactose detected in most products (Table 1).

The shocking amount of sugar hiding in your food - BBC

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