3 ms·

A lot of convenient breakfast foods are basically candy: children's cereal, nutella spread, etc.

ceejayoz 5y ago
Yogurt is a really insidious one. More sugar in most of them than a can of soda, but marketed as healthy. As an example, https://www.yoplait.com/products/original-single-serve-strawberry/ https://www.yoplait.com/products/original-single-serve-straw... has 27g carbohydrates. An 8oz Coke has 26g.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  The new legislation to require showing added sugar is very helpful.
- switch007 5y ago
  Calling it yoghurt is such a lie. It’s sugar with some milk! Not sure about the North American markets but plain old Natural/Greek yoghurt is a good way to avoid tons of added sugar. The majority of them in the UK are not desserts masquerading as sugar. They’re around 3-5% sugar from the milk.
  - adventured 5y ago
    In the US you have three options to avoid the high amounts of sugar in the mass products. You can buy proper natural/greek yogurts, they're fairly common, most grocery stores will have multiple options. You can get various low sugar yogurts. You can go with artificially flavored options, which will be 0-3g of sugar typically. Kroger's (popular grocery store) house brand of vanilla yogurt is 4.6g of sugar per ounce. Their Greek version of that product is about half that sugar level. Noosa vanilla bean yogurt is 4g of sugar per ounce. Their Lemon flavor is 4.3g of sugar per ounce. Yoplait original strawberry is 3.1g of sugar per ounce. Chobani greek yogurt with strawberries added is 2.5g of sugar per ounce. Walmart's house brand of vanilla yogurt is 2.5g of sugar per ounce. Walmart's house brand of plain greek yogurt is about 1g of total sugar per ounce, claiming no added sugars. The Greek Gods plain Greek yogurt is 1.5g of total sugar per ounce. Oikos plain greek yogurt is around 1.1g of total sugar per ounce. Oikos sells a "triple zero" brand of supposedly greek yogurt that is popular at grocery stores in the US. It claims zero sugar, zero sugar added, zero artificial sweeteners. It lists Stevia as its fourth ingredient (I guess they get to claim that's simultaneously not sugar and not an artificial sweetener). Chobani makes a zero sugar line, that claims to have zero sugar and no artificial sweeteners. However they list Allulose on the label, which is really just a sugar (D-psicose). The Two Good brand claims 0.38g of sugar per ounce, they use Stevia as the sweetener. The US has about 4,000 yogurt options to choose from. That might be nice but it actually makes it annoying to sort through and find the quality options in the pile.
    - moistly 5y ago
      Grams per ounce is an odd measurement…
- mint2 5y ago
  It’s a stretch to say that yogurt is what companies like yoplait, danon and gogurt market. Sure they will claim it, but it’s pretty much false advertising for gelled sugar goop. And due to the Greek yogurt fad it’s actually hard to get normal yogurt from any brand except for large containers.
- Bancakes 5y ago
  It's sad to see something like Trimona plain yogurt get a bad rep by these sweet oily concoctions. Fun fact: iodine is a litmus test for starch in food, and you can see if yogurt has been thickened in an unnatural way.
- pizza234 5y ago
  This is a very interesting case, for a few reasons. First, marketing: they cleverly declare that the product has "No high fructose corn syrup", while they added a lot of sugars (13g/26%!!). I'm looking forward the next product declaring "no added cyanide" :) The second is classifications of sugar. The "carbohydrates" term is too generic to ascertain the type(s) (and associated health impact); for example, 100g of dry beans are certainly a good meal, but in terms of labelling, they're around 90% of "carbohydrates" (one needs to look at the "sugars" label). On this product label, around 8g are not "sugars", in other words, not simple carbohydrates, but I don't understand where they come from, based on the ingredients; they could be starch, but the label says <1% of corn starch. I wonder if "modified corn starch" classifies as "not corn starch", which would explain the missing 8g.

Yogurt is a really insidious one. More sugar in most of them than a can of soda, but marketed as healthy. As an example, https://www.yoplait.com/products/original-single-serve-strawberry/ https://www.yoplait.com/products/original-single-serve-straw... has 27g carbohydrates. An 8oz Coke has 26g.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
The new legislation to require showing added sugar is very helpful.
switch007 5y ago
Calling it yoghurt is such a lie. It’s sugar with some milk! Not sure about the North American markets but plain old Natural/Greek yoghurt is a good way to avoid tons of added sugar. The majority of them in the UK are not desserts masquerading as sugar. They’re around 3-5% sugar from the milk.
- adventured 5y ago
  In the US you have three options to avoid the high amounts of sugar in the mass products. You can buy proper natural/greek yogurts, they're fairly common, most grocery stores will have multiple options. You can get various low sugar yogurts. You can go with artificially flavored options, which will be 0-3g of sugar typically. Kroger's (popular grocery store) house brand of vanilla yogurt is 4.6g of sugar per ounce. Their Greek version of that product is about half that sugar level. Noosa vanilla bean yogurt is 4g of sugar per ounce. Their Lemon flavor is 4.3g of sugar per ounce. Yoplait original strawberry is 3.1g of sugar per ounce. Chobani greek yogurt with strawberries added is 2.5g of sugar per ounce. Walmart's house brand of vanilla yogurt is 2.5g of sugar per ounce. Walmart's house brand of plain greek yogurt is about 1g of total sugar per ounce, claiming no added sugars. The Greek Gods plain Greek yogurt is 1.5g of total sugar per ounce. Oikos plain greek yogurt is around 1.1g of total sugar per ounce. Oikos sells a "triple zero" brand of supposedly greek yogurt that is popular at grocery stores in the US. It claims zero sugar, zero sugar added, zero artificial sweeteners. It lists Stevia as its fourth ingredient (I guess they get to claim that's simultaneously not sugar and not an artificial sweetener). Chobani makes a zero sugar line, that claims to have zero sugar and no artificial sweeteners. However they list Allulose on the label, which is really just a sugar (D-psicose). The Two Good brand claims 0.38g of sugar per ounce, they use Stevia as the sweetener. The US has about 4,000 yogurt options to choose from. That might be nice but it actually makes it annoying to sort through and find the quality options in the pile.
  - moistly 5y ago
    Grams per ounce is an odd measurement…
mint2 5y ago
It’s a stretch to say that yogurt is what companies like yoplait, danon and gogurt market. Sure they will claim it, but it’s pretty much false advertising for gelled sugar goop. And due to the Greek yogurt fad it’s actually hard to get normal yogurt from any brand except for large containers.
Bancakes 5y ago
It's sad to see something like Trimona plain yogurt get a bad rep by these sweet oily concoctions. Fun fact: iodine is a litmus test for starch in food, and you can see if yogurt has been thickened in an unnatural way.
pizza234 5y ago
This is a very interesting case, for a few reasons. First, marketing: they cleverly declare that the product has "No high fructose corn syrup", while they added a lot of sugars (13g/26%!!). I'm looking forward the next product declaring "no added cyanide" :) The second is classifications of sugar. The "carbohydrates" term is too generic to ascertain the type(s) (and associated health impact); for example, 100g of dry beans are certainly a good meal, but in terms of labelling, they're around 90% of "carbohydrates" (one needs to look at the "sugars" label). On this product label, around 8g are not "sugars", in other words, not simple carbohydrates, but I don't understand where they come from, based on the ingredients; they could be starch, but the label says <1% of corn starch. I wonder if "modified corn starch" classifies as "not corn starch", which would explain the missing 8g.