Foods Surprisingly High in Added Sugar

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Added sugar is ubiquitous! I was recently horrified to find that the chicken breast strips and turkey meat balls from Trader Joe's both have sugar as their second ingredient.

Jill of CA 6:33PM August 26, 2009

What a bad article to follow. You open talking about calorie recommendations, then spend the rest of the article discussing gram units.
As much as I want to follow what you're saying, switching between units makes this article horrendously painful to read and understand. Stick to one set of units or create a conversion that allows people to understand just how bad the things you list at the end really are.
Shame on you! You take a meaningful subject and make your own article o. It nearly intelligible because the listings below are not converted or compared to the news-breaking recommendations listed at the front ofthe article. Unit sleight-of-hand is too common in news today with lazy journalists. This just happens to be the worst example I've ever seen of this.
Again shame on you for almost guaranteeing confusion among your readers on a very important, nay life-saving topic.
Fix this now!!!!!!!!!!!

C of GA 6:07PM August 26, 2009

This could have been a helpful article: grams of sugar in a can of soda, a granola bar. However:
-1 Cup of lemonade POWDER? (how many teaspoonfuls or tablespoonfuls are used per 8-ounce glass -- certainly not one CUP!
- 1 CUP of ketchup? Even my ketchup-loving 11-year-old grandson doesn't use more than a few tablespoons at a time
- 1 CUP of baked beans would feed at least two persons
- 1 CUP of cream substitutes? Come on! One or two teaspoons per mug of coffee or one or two little containers of fake cream -- that is nowhere near ONE CUP! One Cup of cream substitute would lighten many mugs of coffee!
- 1 CUP of salad dressing -- enough for multiple salads!
1/4 Cup of dried cranberries -- probably two or three times as much as one could eat at one serving!
Conclusion: poorly developed article; original premise good, but ended up being terrible unhelpful.

J Miller of NY 5:45PM August 26, 2009

protocol leading decrease didn cost

danonphilp of AK 4:32PM August 26, 2009

How about an article with solutions?
Instead of sugar-bomb cereal, how about old-fashioned rolled oats with 1/4 cup wild blueberries and five or six chopped, raw almonds or walnuts for extra excitement and flavor?
Instead of ketchup, how about no-sugar-added, low-sodium tomato paste thinned with just a little lemon juice and seasoned with a half-teaspoon of finely minced garlic and a grind of fresh pepper? Yummy for dipping thick-cut, home-made oven fries (toss scrubbed, sliced potatoes in a few teapoons of olive oil and bake on a cookie sheet.)
Instead of monster coffee drinks loaded with HFCS and other franken-sugars, how about mixing 1/2 cup of home-made strong coffee with one cup of warmed (not boiled) milk, a half-teaspoon of local (real) honey from the farmer's market plus a quarter-teaspoon of REAL vanilla extract. Yum.
It's not that hard to save LOTS of money and eat a much healthier diet, but Americans are so rushed (and many young people are so ignorant about cooking) that is seems easier to grab the monster portions of poison at the fast food stores. It seems easier, that is, until you're injecting insulin, losing your eyesight and clutching your chest in pain as your type II diabetes takes its toll!

Jean V of WA 2:47PM August 26, 2009

Please note that NO ONE eats a "one cup" serving of ketchup!!!
This article is screaming for the hand of a good editor.
A "one cup" serving of cream substitute?
C'mon.
Other than the crazy so-called servings, I agree with this article's premise 100%. The food industry has been packing more and more sugar, fat and salt into our food every year.
They love our money, but they don't care if WE live or die, or how much we suffer along the way.

Jean V of WA 2:32PM August 26, 2009

Wow! Who knew I had the power to offend so many eaters of ketchup (salad dressing, cream substitutes…) in one fell swoop? Sarah Baldauf again, the author of this article.
I think the main point -- that the amount of added sugars in some foods may be more significant than one thinks -- is getting missed. To do the math I needed serving sizes, which I got from nutrition labels at www.NutritionData.com (see below). Their serving sizes, not mine.
So if you don't eat a cup of ketchup with your fries and burger, wonderful. Maybe you go for half a cup -- or one quarter cup. How would I presume to know? This list simply gives baseline numbers for you to make your own estimates. That is all.
From my previous comment, clarification on the numbers and how I got them:
Using the "USDA Database for the Added Sugars Content of Selected Foods" (a .pdf that can be found here: www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Data/add_sug/addsug01.pdf ), I pulled the added sugar values of the listed foods, which are given in values based on 100 grams of each food item. Using the corresponding nutrition labels on www.NutritionData.com, I found serving sizes, which I used to calculate the added sugar per serving of each food item. The calculations were not based on any brand name food items.

Sarah Baldauf of DC 12:25PM August 26, 2009

Lots of things with the label pectin mislead consumers to think that that product just has pectin in it when in fact unless the pectin is an AMIDATED PECTINS it is likely to be 45% sugar and just put on an Ingredients list as pectin .

Todd Heinz of IL 12:02PM August 26, 2009