The Sugar Code Exposed: 10 Food Label Words to Avoid Like the Plague!

Avoid sugar to lose weight and avoid weight-related health risks like diabetes, high blood pressure and stroke. Seems simple enough, right?

Here’s the problem.

These days, “sugar” rarely tops any ingredients list. Instead, sugar now comes under a variety of “code names.” That’s because the big food companies know three things:

• Sugar is highly addictive. In fact, studies suggest sugar is more addictive than cocaine and heroin.
• That addiction keeps you buying their products.
• They want to keep making money. So the last thing they want to do is remove sugar from their foods.

In seeming response to consumer demands for healthier foods, the big food companies have simply reinvented and renamed sugar. According to recent research, there are now 152 ways to say “sugar.” And this “hidden sugar” sits in 74% of packaged foods sold in supermarkets, including foods you might not expect:

• protein and granola bars
• pretzels
• sweet teas
• dried fruits
• pasta sauces

To say it another way: If you’re concerned about your health and want to lose weight, you’re shopping in a minefield of hidden sugar bombs waiting to go off inside your body each time you step into a grocery store.

To make sure this doesn’t happen to you, here are the top 10 sugar “code names” to avoid like the plague and keep your weight-loss goals on track.

IMPORTANT MEDICAL NOTE: If you’re concerned about the possibility of arsenic in sweeteners, make sure to read Code Name #10.

 

Code Name #1: High-Maltose Corn Syrup

If you go by taste alone to determine the sugar content of a product, you’ve likely consumed far more high-maltose corn syrup than you know, and you’ve paid the price in stubborn pounds.

As a sweetener made from corn starch, high-maltose corn syrup (HMCS) contains the sugars maltose and glucose but little to no fructose. This makes HMCS far less sweet to the taste than its weight-causing cousin, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), and according to sellers of food ingredients, the quality of HMCS presents some distinct advantages. Yet those “advantages” are for the benefit of big food companies, and do little to protect you from the sugar assault and your struggle to lose weight and improve your health.

Here’s what I mean.

You undoubtedly know to limit or avoid obvious weight-causing sweet foods like ice cream, baked goods and other notorious belt-busters (all of which can contain HMCS). Yet because HMCS is at the low end of the sweetness scale, big food makers can slide HMCS into “healthy” products like granola and snack bars and keep them tasting natural. Unless you read the label, you might not know that you’ve been slipped another addicting sugar fix.

Yet for all their tricks, Big Food can’t erase two facts:

• You know how to empower yourself to make smart choices.
• A sugar by any other name is still sugar, and too much sugar spells potential trouble in the form of weight gain, tooth decay, heart disease and more.

So read labels carefully for high-maltose corn syrup and seek healthier alternatives for your favorite foods. Or create a new routine for yourself that includes more time preparing recipes from scratch. When YOU’RE the one adding the ingredients into a meal, you’re the one in better control of your weight, health and life.

 

Code Name #2: Sucrose

In the war against obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease and other deadly risks of elevated dietary sugar, Americans are steadily buying less white table sugar as they struggle to live healthier, fitter lives. Yet despite this, sugar consumption by American adults steadily increases, due in part to the white sugar so many want to avoid.

The problem comes down the sugar code. White sugar may be a favorite posterchild for all that’s nutritionally evil, but the white stuff is alive and covertly thriving in prepared and packaged foods everywhere. It just goes by the name sucrose, and in excess, sucrose can do more damage than packing on a few extra pounds.

As a disaccharide extracted and refined from sugarcane or sugar beets, sucrose bonds together two simple sugars: fructose and glucose. Every cell in your body readily converts glucose into energy (or stores it as excess weight) but your liver cells are one of the few types that can convert fructose into energy. Excess sucrose intake means your liver has to work overtime, and that can result in kidney stones and high blood pressure.

Not only that, sucrose can cause type 2 diabetes, fatigue, mood swings and tooth rot, and in animal studies, sucrose has been shown to impair learning ability and memory.

As an alternative to sucrose, you can look for products sweetened with stevia (a natural sweetener from the stevia plant), which has no calories, sugar or weight-causing carbs. So it’s perfect to help you lose weight. And because stevia boasts a zero glycemic index, it’s a safe sweetener for diabetics.

CAUTION: If you’re cooking with stevia, use a very small amount. Stevia is 200 to 300 times sweeter than sugar, so a little goes a long way.

 

Code Name #3: Dextrose

If you want to avoid GMO foods and avoid weight-causing sugars, you definitely want to stay clear of dextrose, which food companies pass off under a bewildering number of names and often label as “natural.” Yet dextrose is still processed sugar.

As a simple form of glucose cheaply derived from food starches, dextrose is a nutrient-poor carbohydrate that mainly comes from corn, and because of this, food companies can use the word “natural” under USDA food-labelling guidelines. But make no mistake.

Over 75% of the corn grown in the U.S. is genetically modified. That means most dextrose comes from GMO sources, and while the multinational corn-seed supplier Monsanto maintains that GMO foods are wholesome and safe, there are no long-term GMO studies on humans to back up their claims.

The trouble with eliminating dextrose from your diet is that, depending on the original source of the starch, dextrose can go by many different names:

• rice sugar
• wheat sugar
• grape sugar
• dextrose anhydrous
• dextrose monohydrate

To make matters worse, food companies use dextrose as more than a sweetener. Because dextrose adds bulk and texture, food companies use dextrose as filler in products you might never expect, including spices, instant teas and pickled products.

Now, if you’re someone who gets regular exercise, you may not be worried about dextrose in your diet. In fact, some resistance and endurance athletes use dextrose to improve performance. But unless you’re hitting the gym hard every day, keep a sharp eye out for dextrose and its many aliases if you want to lose weight and maintain it.

 

Code Name #4: Agave Syrup

Hardcore health advocates may be offended by what I’m about to tell you, but for the sake of your health, I’ll take the heat so you can keep your weight-loss goals on track by knowing the truth about commercial agave syrup.

If you’ve heard that agave syrup is the “perfect all-natural sweetener,” you’ve only heard the advertising, which is to say, you’ve only a heard an opinion. You haven’t heard all the facts, and here’s what agave makers aren’t telling you:

Agave syrup is just as bad as high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) for unwanted weight gain. In fact, agave syrup can be worse, and the clue is ironically found in agave’s major selling point.

As a gluten-free “nectar” derived from the sap of a flowering plant species native to Mexico, South America and the Southwestern United States, agave syrup has a low glycemic index, making it a diabetic-friendly sweetener. Latching onto this benefit like a puppy with a new squeaky toy, the syrup makers proclaimed agave syrup as a “healthy alternative” sweetener. And the public was eager to buy into the idea in reaction to emerging evidence about HFCS as a major contributor to obesity.

Yet there’s a reason why agave syrup has a low glycemic index.

Agave syrup is mostly fructose, which may be touted as a “better” sweetener for diabetics but fructose is one of the worst sugars for obesity and elevated blood-fat levels in diabetics and healthy individuals. Depending on the processing, agave syrup can be a whopping 90% fructose—or nearly TWICE the fructose level of HFCS, honey or sucrose.

The good news is that agave syrup is one of the easier sugars to avoid. Although it’s sometimes used as a sweetener in “health foods,” agave is mainly sold in bottles like maple syrup. So it’s easy to spot.

 

Code Name #5: Xylitol

As a healthy, low-calorie sugar alcohol, xylitol surprisingly promotes dental health in addition to promoting weight loss. So why is xylitol on a list of sugars to avoid?

Roughly 37-47% of Americans own dogs, and 30-37% own cats. So this article would be negligent if it didn’t mention that xylitol can be fatal to those beloved family members.

Made from a polysaccharaide called xylan (commercially extracted from hardwood trees and corn cobs), xylitol protects oral health by reducing cavities and re-mineralizing tooth enamel. In clinical studies, children administered daily with oral xylitol syrup by their parents experienced an average of 32% fewer cavities than a placebo group.

In other words, unlike the “perfect sweetener” hype surrounding high-fructose agave syrup, xylitol is much closer to the “perfect sweetener” designation because it has about the same taste and flavor as table sugar but 33% less calories. Because of its slow absorption rate in your body, xylitol reduces blood-sugar spikes (making it safe for diabetics) and unabsorbed xylitol acts as soluble dietary fiber to improve digestion and help with weight loss.

Xylitol-sweetened gum can also reduce ear infections in children and help fight mouth, intestinal and vaginal infection caused by the yeast Candida albicans. Studies also show that xylitol may promote younger-looking skin through increased collagen production.

Unfortunately, xylitol has a potentially fatal downside. While it’s generally safe for humans, xylitol can be lethal for cats and dogs. Because their metabolisms are different, xylitol leads to rapid insulin release and a crash in blood-glucose levels that leads to hypoglycemia. And it doesn’t take much. Dogs are affected by a mere 0.1gm of xylitol.

To say it another way: With the increase of xylitol as a substitute for sugar in foods, a simple piece of cookie could be fatal to your pet if you don’t know whether that treat has xylitol. So carefully screen products if you’re a pet owner and, if in doubt, don’t buy it.

 

Code Name #6: Invert Sugar

Many people have never heard of invert sugar. That’s because invert sugar (or, inverted sugar syrup) rarely if ever appears in bottles or cans on the grocery-store shelf. It’s largely been a behind-the-scenes sweetener in the food industry. So even anti-sugar activists and nutritionists tend to give it little more than footnote mention. Yet make no mistake. Invert sugar is as much a threat to your weight and health as any sugar, and its presence in food reaches farther than you might think.

As a syrup made from glucose and fructose, invert sugar is highly valued by bakers since it’s hygroscopic, meaning it absorbs moisture from the surrounding environment. So invert sugar helps foods stay moist and acts as a preservative in all kinds of baked goods:

• Cookies and cakes
• Biscuits and burger buns
• Breads and pastries

Invert sugar is also less prone to crystallization. So confectioners love invert sugar because it produces the desired soft-center consistency for candies, chocolates, fudge, jellies, sorbets and ice cream. Yet invert sugar may catch you unaware since it’s also used in many so-called “healthy” foods.

Nabisco Original Wheat Thins, for example, are advertised as “100% Whole Grain Crunch,” which seems like a healthy, sugar-free choice. However, Wheat Thins contain “refiner’s sugar” (combining invert sugar and sucrose) as well as malt syrup. Similarly, Quaker Chewy Yogurt Granola Bars may seem like wholesome family snacks in commercials aligning the product with smiling, fresh-faced children. Yet these “wholesome” bars contain invert sugar and many other sugars.

As a healthier alternative, look for sugar-free crackers and granola bars that really ARE sugar-free. Or try any number of easy cracker or granola bar recipes at home. That way, you control the ingredients and stay in control of your weight.

 

Code Name #7: Sorbitol

As a sweetener lower in calories than sugar, sorbitol may help with weight loss. Yet too much sorbitol can result in abdominal pain, diarrhea and the kind of weight loss that could land you in the hospital.

As a sugar alcohol naturally found in apples, apricots, pears and other fruit, commercial sorbitol is a sweetener made from corn syrup. With about half the calories of table sugar, sorbitol is also about 40% less sweet than sugar. It has a lesser effect on blood sugar than other sugars (making it diabetic friendly) and sorbitol is a nutritive sweetener because it provides dietary energy.

So at first glance, sorbitol seems the perfect sugar replacement to cut calories and boost energy. However, too much sorbitol can cause mild to severe diarrhea, abdominal pain and extreme weight loss requiring hospitalization.

The trouble is, it’s hard to know how much sorbitol you’re actually ingesting each day.

The FDA requires food manufacturers to put warning labels on products with sorbitol if the manufacturer thinks consumption will exceed 50 grams per day. Yet sugar-free candy can contain anywhere from 35 – 95 grams of sorbitol. So candy may contain a warning label or not. Plus, companies put sorbitol in all kinds of other products:

• diet drinks
• jams and jellies
• cough drops and mouthwashes
• baked goods
• frozen dairy desserts

So depending on what products you buy and how you combine them, you can’t be 100% sure that you’re not exceeding the FDA’s recommended daily sorbitol limit of 50 grams.

To maintain a good dietary margin of safety, remove one or more of the above sorbitol product groups from your shopping, or limit your daily intake. Look for sorbitol-free mouthwashes and keep a sharp eye out for sorbitol’s other code names: Sorbo, Sorbogem, s-sorbitol, d-glucitol and E420.

 

Code Name #8: Maltodextrin

Unless you’re lifting weights regularly as part of a serious weight-loss and strength-training program, this “agent” of the food industry carries the risk of several nasty surprises—in addition to causing unwanted weight gain.

Often confused for another starch-based sugar called dextrin (not to be confused with dextrose), maltodextrin is the name of a group of complex sugars popular with bodybuilders to help with quicker recovery after a hard physical workout.

Found in sports drinks, sports supplements and protein shakes, maltodextrin helps with post-workout recovery by stimulating a quick strong release of insulin. That burst helps muscles recover more quickly, which means a quicker return to the gym, which means more muscles faster, and so on.

That’s great news if you’re a serious bodybuilder—but BAD news if you’re not.

As a highly refined carbohydrate devoid of nutritional value, maltodextrin works so well to cause weight gain than many sports supplements use that fact as a selling point. Because it has a high glycemic index, maltodextrin is NOT considered suitable for diabetics. And in addition to posing the risk of allergic reactions like skin rash and itching, maltodextrin can cause bloating and flatulence.

The problem with avoiding maltodextrin is that its’ not just used as a sweetening agent. Maltodextrin is a triple agent in that it can be a thicker, binding agent or sweetener. So maltodextrin can be found in hundreds of products in nearly every food category, from baby formula to peanut butter and vitamins.

Now, many nutritionists will tell you to simply avoid products with maltodextrin in order to avoid unwanted weight gain and other health problems. However, given that maltodextrin is used in practically everything (including prescription drugs, coffee powders and soups), telling you to completely avoid it would be like telling you to avoid walking into air.

The practical advice for maltodextrin: Check all product labels. Choose maltodextrin-free alternatives whenever possible and take relief in the fact that, where some sugars hide under different and confusing names, maltodextrin is just called maltodextrin.

 

Code Name #9: High-Fructose Corn Syrup

In the war against obesity, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) has definitely earned its reputation as Public Enemy No. 1 when it comes to health and weight loss.

As a calorie-rich combo of glucose and fructose, HFCS has been clinically shown to cause substantial weight gain. Studies also show that HFCS can cause diabetes and dramatically raise your risk of heart disease in as little as two weeks.

Now, the fattening effects of HFCS may not be new information for you. However, if you’re as concerned about your total-body health as I think you are, you might not know that HFCS can cause fatty liver disease.

Through a process called lipogenesis, your liver uses fructose (a carbohydrate) to create fat. When your liver gets too much fructose, it turns into a fat-making factory, and as tiny fat droplets begin to accumulate in liver cells, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease sets in.

The good news is that, when caught early on, nonalcoholic fatty liver is reversible. However, if left too long, fatty liver disease can lead to a degeneration of liver function (cirrhosis) and cascade into stroke and heart disease.

Since its introduction to commercial food production in the late 1960s, HFCS has spread to countless products, from yogurts and crackers to cough drops and ketchup. While the FDA maintains that HFCS is safe, the agency also recommends limiting HFCS consumption, but stay alert when reading labels.

Having lost a 2012 bid to change the name of HFCS to the more natural-sounding “corn sugar,” the Corn Refiners Association succeeded in changing the name of HFCS-90 (HFCS with a whopping 90% fructose) to simply “fructose.” Other HFCS code names include:

• maize syrup
• tapioca syrup
• dahlia syrup
• crystalline glucose

 

Code Name #10: Brown Rice Syrup

If you’ve read every section of this important article about weight loss and sugars to avoid, you’re probably feeling a bit “sugared out” right about now. So I’ll keep this last part quick.

Brown rice syrup may sound “natural” but don’t be fooled by the “healthier” hype.

As a sweetener made up of 3% glucose, 45% maltose and 52% maltotriose (a three-part sugar consisting of three glucose molecules), brown rice syrup has a glycemic index rating of 98 (compared to 64 for sucrose). So it’s not considered a safe sweetener for diabetics. Also, brown rice syrup enters the bloodstream quickly. So it’s not recommended for anyone who has trouble monitoring blood sugar.

As a sweetener frequently used as an alternative to high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), brown rice syrup also has a history of potentially lethal impurity.

In a 2012 study by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), researchers found high levels of arsenic in baby formula, cereal bars and energy bars sweetened with brown rice syrup, presumably due to the high prevalence of arsenic in rice. And here’s the part that’ll shock you:

Where the word “organic” is commonly associated with “healthy” and “better for you,” the products tested by the NIEHS contained “organic brown rice syrup.”

Other names for brown rice syrup:

• rice malt syrup
• rice syrup
• rice malt

Other names for weight loss:

• knowing the top 10 sugar code names
• using the codes to unlock the healthier life you want by avoiding sugars

Don’t forget. Knowledge is power—and the key to a lifetime of strong health. As a FREE lifetime resource and service to you and those you love, please bookmark this article.