No Sugar Added Products - a Mini Course

We had a lively discussion at Barix on Saturday about no sugar added products.

SOme of your may know that my husband is an executive with a wholesale baking company and has spent many years in product developmet and technical services/quality assurance.  In fact, they produce no sugar added (and yes, regular too) products that are available in most grocery store chains in the US and Canada. I asked him to give me a "mini course" in NSA products for the consumer. Here's what he said. If you have questions, he's your guy, so fire away!1. Be aware that "no sugar added products" MAY have naturally occurring sugar in them. NSA fruit pies, for instance, have the natural sugars from fruits, even if all ADDED sweetners are sugar substitutes. On the other hand, a "NSA" pumpkin pie would have a very low sugar content, because pumpkin has a relatively low amount of naturally occuring sugar. Law requires that any product labelled "No Sugar Added" must also be labelled "NOT A LOW CALORIE FOOD" according to FDA regulations. (Those words must actually appear within a certain number of inches of the No Sugar Added designation.) 2. Labelled "Sugar Free" products, such as a SF angel food cake or SF pecan pie, have no sugar content at all. These would be made with a sugar substitute, and natural ingredients with no natural sugar content. 3. Bakeries and food manufactureres use various kinds of sugar substitutes. Commericial bakeries use primarily sugar alcohols. The most commonly used one is maltitol, but there are various types of artificial sweeteners. Splenda may be used. Stevia (Truvia) is the newest and has only just been released for commercial production. 4. Yes, there are side effects to ingesting sugar alcohols. The compounds are not digestible by the body and have what is called a "laxate" effect - gas, bloating, and diarrhea. These can occur in anyone - not just WLS patients. Typically if the amount of sugar alcohols is kept at 24 gm. or less per day, they are tolerated without any issues. However, this varies from person to person, so be careful and cut back if necessary for you.5. Other sweetners may have side effects as well. Aspartame has an "artificial" aftertaste in baking so is seldom used commercially. Splenda and Stevia have fewer after effects, but ALL may have some laxative effect. 6. Product labels on commercially produced products must be accurate by law. These are regularly monitored during on site inspections and backup documentation must be provided. Products would be subject to immediate recall. This is taken very seriously in the industry. No company wants to be in the news!7. Now, all that said: Products produced and sold "On Premesis" such as those at a local bakery are NOT required to have  nutrition facts and ingredient lists provided. In this case, you may never really know exactly what is used. This becomes a  "buyer beware" kind of situation.  8. Another "buyer beware" fact: when sugar is removed from a product, fat may be added to enhance flavor.

Thank you for the info Lynn!

Well....when I posted this I had it formatted NICELY with each item numbered....but the actual post ran together like a paragraph! Sorry!

Great info - thanks so much for sharing. I've found that I have to read most things very carefully (says the dumb-dumb who dumped on OJ last week) - but ice cream is one of those deceptive items that can get you - there is a huge difference between the NSA ice cream bars and the 100 calorie ice cream bars - those are loaded with sugar! So its good to see these guidelines laid out. I love Splenda and that's all I use now - I don't use a lot of sugar in anything but I made my own ice tea and use Splenda in it, and over the weekend I made an apple pie using Splenda instead of sugar and NOBODY knew. There's no nasty aftertaste to it.

Johnny and my son went to grocery store. My son wanted Pumpkin Pie and keeping his mommy in mind......bought a 2nd one that was marked NSA.

I *knew* it would still have some sugar in it, but had a slice hoping it wouldn't be enough to make me dump.

WRONG! I was sicker than if I'd just ate a bite of candy bar.

He didn't understand why I was sick. I had to explain the NSA and SF to him, as I've learned over the years..........there is a BIG difference.

 i would like to  ask a question? it is about non-dairy creamer(coffee-mate). the label says sugars are 0 but the first ingredient is corn syrup solids. even the sugarfree has this as the second ingredient. when i looked up corn syrup solids the articles refer the this as gloucose. so the question is this ok to use?

Cheryl, I asked Mike this specific question.

He said that if sugar content is less than 1 gm. per serving, it may legally be listed as 0.

However, even the milk solids would include some lactose, so he said he would have to see the label to really respond.

Best advice he gave was this: Contact the manufacturer to ask. They should get back to you PRONTO via e mail (isn't CoffeeMate by General foods?) And if in doubt...skip it. There is increasing FDA regulation of labelling, but let the buyer beware!

Lynn,

Thank hubby for the useful information. This will teach us to READ LABELS CAREFULLY!!!

P.S. I didn't forget about posting the brownie recipe, just been busy....

I am going to post that separately...

Beth

Lynn,

Thanks for the info.  This is all very good to know. Especially after this weekend, I found out I DON'T dump or get sick in any way when I eat sugar.  I had a small brownie.  So I now know I have to be more vigilant that ever if I don't want to fall into the same eating pattern of eating the carb loaded sugar loaded sweets I loved.  I have learned that if I want something sweet, I keep SF jello pudding and mousse in my house.  That's it!  If my husband has a sweet tooth. He'll buy a single serving of whatever it is he's after. He knows I can't have the temptations in the house.

Thanks again,
Cyd