Many of us will buy commercially prepared snacks for our little ones from time to time – and when we do so, we’ll usually check the packaging to make sure they don’t contain any undesirable ingredients… such as sugar!
The problem with food labeling is that some ingredients go by weird and wonderful names that most of us aren’t familiar with – and sugar has a whole range of aliases! And that’s not all – sugar (in its various guises) may appear more than once on the same label – therefore the quantity of sugar that a product contains will be much higher than you may realize.
Many so-called ‘healthy’ foods marketed specifically for children are labeled in this way – so knowing exactly what to look for on a label can help you identify foods that are truly healthy… as opposed to those that manufacturers would have you believe are good for your baby!
Here’s a list of many of the alternative names for sugar frequently used in food labeling, helping you ensure that the food choices you make for your baby are as healthy as possible…
- sucrose
- dextrose
- maltose
- corn sweetener
- fruit juice concentrate
- fructose
- levulose
- corn syrup
- glucose
- high-fructose corn syrup
- lactose
- syrup
- barley malt
- invert sugar
- grape sugar
- sucaryl
- grape sweetener
- sorbitol
- mannitol
- sorghum
- polydextrose
- saccharin
- sucralose
- demerera
- evaporated cane juice
- muscovado
- sucanat
- turbinado
- unrefined cane juice
- whole cane
- yellow-D