Monday 3 April

Fructose and Lactose the 2 exceptions to the rule

These 2 sugars sit outside the WHO guidelines, not because they are metabolised in a drastically different way, they sit outside the guidelines because the foods that are natural sources of these sugars provide many health benefits and useful nutrients.

Fructose is the naturally occurring sugar which occurs in fresh fruits and vegetables. It is the sugar we eat when we have a piece of fresh fruit or a serving of fresh vegetables.

The World Health Organisations sugar guidelines do not include sugar intake from fresh fruit and vegetables, but they do discourage the intake of concentrated sources of fructose that are added to foods.

A piece of fresh fruit is considered fine by the WHO guidelines, but a product that has been

sweetened with concentrated sources of fruit, such as fruit juice is not. This sort of product is

considered the same as a product sweetened with table sugar. Some food manufacturers try to

market their products with phrases such as “no added cane sugar”, this does not mean their

product is necessarily low in sugar.

Concentrated sources of fructose

Below are some examples to help put this into perspective.

1 average orange contains 12g of sugar

1 250ml glass of orange juice contains 21g of sugar

¼ Cup fresh grapes contains 4g of sugar

¼ Cup raisins contains 24.5g of sugar

1 average apple contains 15g of sugar

1 250ml glass of apple juice contains 24g of sugar

1 250ml glass of apple juice concentrate contains 102g of sugar

100g corn contains 0.6g of sugar

100g of corn syrup contains 76g of sugar

As you can see concentrated sources of fructose can become very high in sugar

Lactose the milk sugar

Lactose is the naturally occurring sugar found in all dairy products. Actually, it is the sugar found in all mammalian milk products, even in breast milk. Dairy products (Milk, Yoghurts and Cheeses) provide many fantastic nutrients for growing kids, namely calcium and protein. As with fructose, naturally occurring lactose that occurs in dairy products is considered fine by the WHO guidelines. Dairy products however, can be a vehicle for added sugars. Flavored yoghurts and milks can be laden with either sucrose or concentrated sources of fructose. In fact, some yoghurts marketed to children can contain similar amounts of added sugar as ice cream. We know that ice cream is sweet, but often we assume a yoghurt is a good choice. It therefore pays to be a label reader when it comes to these products. This article provides a snap shot of the sugar content of kid yoghurts.

Standard milk has naturally occurring sugar content of between 4-5g per 100ml, and natural

unsweetened yoghurt is similar (although some can be lower than 2g per 100ml) If you are looking at a flavored yoghurt or milk and the sugar content is significantly higher than 4-5g of sugar per 100 ml then this will be added sugar.

The minus 5 program is therefore simplifying label reading. The goal is to have all products that contain less than 5g of sugar per 100g marked with the minus 5 logo and label.

Minus 5 aims to make identifying the lower sugar packaged products easier.

Check out the following links for more information on this:

https://youtu.be/sLaf1dV5AyE

https://mykidslickthebowl.com/sugar-kids-yoghurt