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food facts

Where’s The Sugar Hiding?

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Sugar is sweet but it’s also sneaky, masquerading under many different names. Read one of those jam labels that says, “All Fruit” or “Spreadable Fruit” on the front.  Then turn the jar over and read ingredients. Most likely you’ll find juice concentrates (often as the first ingredient) and maltodextrin — both forms of sugar.

How Good Is Your Sugar Vocabulary?

According to Environmental Nutrition foods with all of the following names are sugars (these are common sources, there are other sugars that aren’t listed here):

  • Dextrose
  • Corn syrup
  • High fructose corn syrup
  • Maltodextrin
  • Fruit juice concentrates
  • Malt syrup
  • Molasses
  • Invert sugar
  • Honey
  • Sorghum
  • Agave
  • Maple syrup
  • Cane sugar

Added Vs. Natural Sugars

The sugars that you eat can occur naturally or be added. Natural sugars are found naturally in the food — like fructose in fruit and lactose in milk.  Added sugars are the many kinds of sugar and syrup – including sweeteners like honey, agave, and maple syrup, for example — that are added into food at the table or during the food’s preparation or processing.

Common Sources Of Added Sugars

Some sources are obvious – others require a bit of checking of the ingredients label.  Here are some examples of foods that usually have added sugar:

  • Regular soft drinks
  • Sugar; syrups (do you put maple syrup on your pancakes?); and candy
  • Cakes; cookies; pies; donuts; pastries; breakfast and snack bars
  • Fruit drinks like fruitades and fruit punch; sweetened teas, sports drinks, and flavored water
  • Dairy desserts and milk products like ice cream; sweetened yogurt; pudding; and flavored milk
  • Many cereals; toast with jelly/jam; and many breads — both home made “quick breads” and store-bought sliced breads
  • Sweeteners added to coffee, tea, cereal; canned fruit

Not More Than Half Of Your Discretionary Calorie Allowance

What’s daily discretionary calorie allowance?  It’s the number of calories you have left to use after you meet your nutrient needs — without exceeding your energy needs.

In other words, they are the calories that you can use up eating different types of foods after you’ve eaten enough to meet your body’s nutrition needs — but not so many that they would contribute to weight gain.

Discretionary calories can come from any source of calories (protein, fat, carbohydrates, alcohol).  The American Heart Association recommends that no more than half of your daily discretionary calories come from added sugars.

For most American women that’s no more than 100 calories a day, or about 6 teaspoons of sugar.  For men, that’s no more than 150 calories a day, or about 9 teaspoons of sugar.  (FYI there are about 10 teaspoons of sugar in a 12 ounce can of regular soda.)

 

Oreo — The Interactive Cookie That Says Something About You – Turns 100

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What happened the same year that the Titanic sank and the South Pole was discovered?  The cookie that millions have twisted apart and dunked was born!

The Oreo  — sweet sugary creme sandwiched between two decoratively embossed chocolate flavored wafers – celebates its 100th birthday on March 6, 2012.

Some Oreo Trivia

Oh, Oreos!  We must love them because we eat 20.5 million of them a day.

Over 491 billion Oreo cookies have been sold since they were first introduced in 1912, making them the world’s favorite cookie and the best-selling cookie brand of the 21st century.

They were first baked at the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco) factory in an 1890’s building — now called Chelsea Market — that runs from 15th to 16th Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenue in New York City. Just to show how popular Oreos are, West 15th Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenue is now known as Oreo Way.

You can buy Oreos in more than 100 countries.  The most sales ( 2010 data) are in the US followed by China, Venezuela, Canada, Indonesia, Mexico, Spain, Central America and the Caribbean, the UK, and Argentina.

The Original Oreo

One hundred years ago Nabisco’s new idea for a cookie was two chocolate disks with a creme filling in between. Early Oreos looked a lot like today’s Oreo with just a slight difference in the design on the chocolate disks.

Originally they came with either a lemon or vanilla creme filling, cost 25 cents a pound, and were sold in cans with glass tops so customers could see the cookies. The vanilla creme filling turned out to be more popular so the lemon was discontinued in the 1920s.

Today there are a whole bunch of different fillings like mint, chocolate, caramel; double stuffs; chocolate coatings; and colored holiday fillings.

Remember Hydrox, the other sandwich cookie?  Oreos weren’t the first sandwich type cookies on the market. Sunshine introduced Hydrox in 1910 two full years before Oreo’s debut but Hydrox never became as popular as Oreo and production stopped in the mid 1990s.

Oreos: Interactive

An interactive cookie?  Think about it — Oreo’s interactivity is one of the keys to its success. You don’t just eat it — you can dunk it, bite it, or twist it apart.  Oreos hold such fascination that food lovers, psychologists, and food writers have all speculated about whether the way someone eats their Oreo indicates a personality type.

Using the iconic Oreo “twist, lick, dunk” ritual, 50% of all Oreo eaters pull apart their cookies before eating them, with women twisting them open more often than men.

According to a History.com video, in 2004 Kraft (Nabisco is now a Kraft brand) surveyed over 2000 Oreo eaters and found that they are divided into three categories:

  • Dunkers tend to be energetic, adventurous, and extremely social. 87% of dunkers say milk is their liquid of choice for dunking.
  • Twisters — and who hasn’t twisted an Oreo – (I personally think it makes the Oreo last longer ‘cause you get two cookies) – tend to be emotional, sensitive, artistic, and trendy.
  • Biters are easy going, self-confident, and optimistic.

The survey also discovered that more women tend to be dunkers while men tend to be biters.  And, Democrats tend to twist, Republicans tend to dunk!

Some Stats

One 2pack of Oreos (two regular cookies, not double stuffs) has 140 calories, 4g of fat (3g saturated), 14g carbs, and 1g protein.

 

What Do Total Carbohydrate And Added Sugar On The Nutrition Label Mean?

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Trying to figure out the carbohydrates on nutrition facts labels can be downright confusing.  There’s a number for total carbohydrates but then there are subheadings for dietary fiber, sugars, and sometimes insoluble fiber, sugar alcohols, and other carbohydrates.

What Does Everything Mean?

  • Total Carbohydrate, shown in grams, is first. It gives you the total number of usable carbs per serving. This number includes starches, complex carbohydrates, dietary fiber, added sugars, and non-digestible additives.
  • The subheadings under Total Carbohydrate are Dietary Fiber, sometimes broken down into Soluble and Insoluble Fiber; Sugars; and sometimes categories for Sugar Alcohols and/or Other Sugars. The sum of these numbers will not always equal the total carbs because some starches — types of carbs often used as binders or thickeners — aren’t required to be listed on food labels.
  • Dietary Fiber, shown in grams, gives you the amount of fiber per serving. Dietary fiber is indigestible, usually passes through your intestinal tract without being absorbed, doesn’t raise your blood sugar levels, and slows down the impact of the other carbs in a meal. Subtracting the non-impact carbs – the ones that don’t affect blood sugar (fiber and sugar alcohols) from the total carbs gives you the number of net (also called usable or impact) carbs – the ones that do affect your blood sugar.
  • Sugars gives you the total amount of carbohydrate, in grams, from naturally occurring sugars like lactose (milk sugar) and fructose (fruit sugar) PLUS any added sugars like high fructose corn syrup, brown and white sugar, cane juice, etc. Added sugars are the sugars and syrups added to foods during processing or preparation.  They add calories but little or no nutrients.
  • You can determine if there are a lot of added sugars by checking the product’s ingredients label. Ingredients are listed in order of quantity so if added sugars (white/brown sugar, corn syrup, etc.) are listed in the top three or four ingredients you can guess that the bulk of the sugars are added, not naturally occurring.
  • Some products, although not all, separately list Sugar Alcohols. You might see mannitol, sorbitol, xylitol, erythritol, and others on the ingredients label. If the package says the product is “sugar-free” or has “no sugar added” it must list the sugar alcohols in the ingredients. If more than one type of sugar alcohol is listed, there must be a line for sugar alcohol grams on the nutrition label.
  • Other Carbohydrates shows the number of digestible complex carbohydrates not considered a sugar (natural or added) and includes additives like stabilizers and starchy thickening agents.

Now, isn’t that crystal clear?


Do You Know How Many Calories Are In Your Wine Glass?

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Do you love a glass of wine (or two) with dinner – or maybe some champagne at Sunday brunch or at your friend’s wedding?  What about that wonderful, sweet, thick dessert wine to polish off a fantastic meal?

You may have your preferences – most of us do – but whether it’s red, white, dry, sweet, or sparkling, it is really easy to overlook the calories in those long-stemmed glasses.

What Is The Standard Serving Size Of Wine?

A standard portion of table wine (red or white) is 4 ounces.  But, how many ounces are really in the glass of wine that you usually drink?  Probably five to eight!

So, on average, if 4 ounces of red or white table wine has about 100 calories, you are drinking anywhere from 100 to 200 calories of wine – in one glass. Think about how many glasses of wine and in what size wine glass you drink with a meal.

If you have dessert wine after dinner it’s about double the calories per ounce — although the standard serving is less:  usually 2 to 3 ounces.  So add on about another 100 to 150 calories for each glass of that smooth dessert wine.

Calories In Wine

So it’s easier to compare, here are the number of calories in one ounce of various wines:

  • Champagne: 19 calories
  • Red table wine (burgundy, cabernet): 25 calories
  • Dry white wine (Chablis, hock, reisling): 24 calories
  • Sweet white wine (moselle, sauterne, zinfandel: 28 calories
  • Rose: 20 calories
  • Port (about 20% alcohol): 46 calories
  • Sweet dessert wine: 47 calories

 

Snacks: Are They Your Fourth Meal?

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Why can a day’s worth of snacks be considered a fourth meal?  Because, according to research, snacking accounts for more than 25% of Americans’ calorie intake everyday.

How Many Calories Do We Snack On A Day?

Between 1977 and 2006 Americans averaged about 580 calories each day for their snacks — which basically turned those snacks into “a full eating event,” or a fourth meal.

Maybe we snack on so many calories because eating and drinking while we’re doing something else has also increased.  Between 2006 and 2008, the amount of time we spent eating our main meals – breakfast, lunch and dinner – was about 70 minutes.  Secondary eating, the kind you do when you’re doing things like working on the computer, driving, or walking down the street, doubled from 15 minutes in 2006 to nearly 30 minutes a day in 2008.  There was nearly a 90% jump in the time we spent on secondary drinking:  from 45 to 85 minutes. (Ever wonder why Starbuck’s is so crowded?)

Come On, Be Honest

Haven’t you ever chowed down on a whole bunch of food — maybe the equivalent of a meal — around 5PM and then tried to convince yourself that it’s just a snack?

Although nearly 100% of Americans of all ages snack every day, there isn’t a standard definition  of what a snack is or what motivates us to snack. So, what happens is that it’s left up to each one of us to “self-define” what snacks and snacking mean, leaving plenty of room for us to blur the line between snacks and meals.

How Much Do We Spend On Packaged Snacks?

We spend about 12% of our total food money at the supermarket on packaged snacks. Kids are learning to replace meals with snacks – a lifestyle that is likely to continue when those kids grow up and have their own families.  And food companies are smart – they’re making health claims and highlighting things like fiber and nutrients on the snack packages which often make them sound more appealing and even healthy.  That packaging, with the illusion of health, could even ease the guilt people might have when they reach for a caloric prepackaged snack that may or may not be made of real food.

So, What’s A Snack?

There’s an increase in snacking across the board, but beverages make up 50% of snack calories. those calories in drinks — including the sugar and cream in coffee — can add up to a pretty significant number.

A snack shouldn’t be a fourth meal.  Most recommendations are that an individual snack, like the one so many of us have mid-morning or mid-afternoon, be between 150 and 200 calories and have some protein in it for satiety and to help keep your  blood sugar level stable.